Boston Computation Club
by Max von Hippel
Latest episode
Experiments with vibecoding hardware, Lewis Coriolan
Experiments with vibecoding hardware, Lewis Coriolan
About this podcast
The Boston Computation Club is a small seminar group focused on mathematical computer science, and computational mathematics. Its name is plagiarized from the London Computation Club. Boston Computation Club meetings occur roughly every other week, on weekends, around 5pm EDT (modulo speaker availability). The usual format is a 20m presentation followed by 40m of discussion. Some, but not all, meetings are posted on YouTube and in podcast form.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 91 episodes
- Experiments with vibecoding hardware, Lewis Coriolan · 41 minLewis Coriolan is a hacker, inventor, and entrepreneur, with wide-ranging interests. Today he joined us to talk about his experimentation vibe-coding hardware. This was a really…
- From percolation theory to recursive self-improvement and AI risk, Olle Häggström · 56 minOlle Häggström is a pure mathematician. Today, he joined us to tell the story of how his entire field of mathematics was essentially conquered by large language models in a short…
- Sum-check protocol: categorical view, Alex Sorokin · 46 minAlex is a friend of mine and a mathematician. He did his PhD in mathematics with other Alex (Martsinkovsky), who has presented at the seminar group previously. We're huge fans of…
- P-stability for 3-uniform Hypergraphs, Daniel Yu · 1 h 4 minToday Daniel Yu gave a pure math talk on an extension he performed independently of work he had conducted during his math semester abroad in Budapest.
- Understanding patterns of adoption and adaptation of open models on local systems, Woohyeuk (Kevin) Lee · 35 minToday Woohyeuk (Kevin) Lee joined us to discuss local AI (and the question of just how local it really is). This is exciting work at the intersection of computer science and…
- Cellular automata and artificial life in the deep learning era, Casey Martin · 1 h 9 minCasey Martin is a dirtbag intellectual, local savant, and recent PhD in the Boulder metro area. He's a party favorite and today he joined us to discuss cellular automata and…
- 06/26/26: Tracing Introspection Across Model Depth, Zach Maas · 48 minZach Maas is an independent AI safety & mechanistic interpretability researcher in Boulder, Colorado, funded by Coefficient Giving. Today Zach joined us to talk about some of his…
- An Extremely Short Proof of the Hairy Ball Theorem with Peter McGrath · 58 minToday Peter McGrath An Extremely Short Proof of the Hairy Ball Theorem. Peter is a professor of mathematics at NC State, where he researches geometric analysis, minimal surfaces…
- Logic.py: Bridging the Gap between LLMs and Constraint Solvers with Pascal Kesseli · 57 minPascal Kesseli is a software engineer and technical lead at Microsoft AI, with a PhD in Computer Science from Oxford (or a DPhil? Or whatever they call PhDs on that side of the…
- 2/17/26: Approximately Aligned Decoding with Daniel Melcer · 49 minDaniel Melcer is a PhD student at Northeastern University, where he researches formal methods, reinforcement learning, and large language models, among other things. Daniel also…
- 02/06/26: Early experiments in FMxAI at Galois with Max von Hippel · 54 minMax von Hippel is ... me, the organizer and founder of the Boston Computation Club. Today I hosted an extremely informal event to chat about some of the early experiments in…
- VeriExploit: Automatic Bug Reproduction in Smart Contracts via LLMs and Formal Methods, Chenfeng Wei · 42 minChenfeng Wei is a PhD student at the University of Manchester, where he researches formal guarantees for large language models. Today he joined us to talk about his latest work…
- Breaking the Sorting Barrier for Directed Single-Source Shortest Paths - Xiao Mao · 58 minToday Xiao Mao joined us to discuss his groundbreaking work, Breaking the Sorting Barrier for Directed Single-Source Shortest Paths. It's not every day you beat Djikstra at…
- Infecting Generative AI with Viruses - David A. Noever and Forrest McKee · 60 minDavid A. Noever and Forrest McKee are researchers at PeopleTec, where they work on problems at the intersection of security, defense, and AI/ML. Today David joined us to present…
- 08/15/25: An LLM Agent for Functional Bug Detection in Network Protocols with Mingwei Zheng · 57 minMingwei Zheng a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, advised by Prof. Xiangyu Zhang since 2021. Before that, she received her Bachelor’s…
- 08/01/25: Formal Reasoning Meets LLMs: Toward AI for Mathematics and Verification with Kaiyu Yang · 1 h 13 minToday Kaiyu Yang from Meta joined us to discuss formal reasoning using LLMs, particularly in the context of interactive theorem provers. This is a really fast-moving and exciting…
- 07/25/25: RefinedC: Automating the Foundational Verification of C Code with Refined Ownership Types with Michael Sammler · 52 minMichael Sammler n assistant professor leading the Programming Languages and Verification Group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Today he joined us to…
- 06/20/25: TypeScript Types Can Run DOOM with Dimitri Mitropoulos · 1 h 41 minDimitri Mitropoulos is a Michigan-based typescript dev, linguist, and classicist who joined us to talk about his completely unhinged, odyssean, and frankly just unwise project to…
- 06/13/25: Gradual Verification with Jenna DiVincenzo · 59 minJenna DiVincenzo is an Assistant Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering @ Purdue University. She is broadly interested in research spanning…
- 05/07/25: Exploring Zero-Shot Prompting for Generating Data Format Descriptions, Prashant Anantharaman · 40 minPrashant Anantharaman is a long-time BCC group member and has presented as both a solo researcher and a panelist to prior events. Today he joined us to present some of his work…
