(Colloquium) Austin MBaye, Northeastern University
2025-01-31 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Henry Seely White Lecture I), Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
2025-02-12 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300
Join us on Wednesday February 12 at 4PM in Rocky 300 for the first of two Henry Seely White Lectures delivered by Professor Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University.
Note: This is the first of two lectures in the Henry Seely White Lecture Series. The second lecture is on Thursday February 13 at 2PM.
Title: Learning, Teaching, and Communication in the Age of AI: Wisdom and Warnings from Harvard Data Science Review (Or: Are you smarter than GPT-4?)

(Henry Seely White Lecture II), Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
2025-02-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300
Join us on Thursday February 13 at 2PM in Rocky 300 for the second of two Henry Seely White Lectures delivered by Professor Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University.
Note: This is the second of two lectures in the Henry Seely White Lecture Series. The first lecture is on Wednesday February 12 at 4PM.
Title: From a Cauchy Surprise to the Half-Cauchy Miracle
Abstract: This talk follows the path from Pillai and Meng (2016, Annals of Statistics), “An Unexpected Encounter with Cauchy and Lévy,” to Liu, Meng, and Pillai (2025, arXiv:2501.01065), “A Heavily Right Strategy for Integrating Dependent Studies in Any Dimension,” inviting the audience to join a journey to explore an emerging and mystic force in statistical inference: heavy-tail approximations.

(Colloquium) Jamie Juul, Colorado State University
2025-02-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Andrew Schultz, Wellesley College
2025-02-25 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 310

(Colloquium) Tim Goldberg, Lenoir–Rhyne University
2025-03-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Katie Ellman-Aspnes, Notre Dame University
2025-04-03 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300

(Colloquium) Jinyoung Park, Courant Institute at NYU
2025-04-17 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300

(Colloquium) Becca Thomases, Smith College
2025-04-23 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300

(Colloquium) Peter Oberly, University of Rochester
2025-08-25 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-17 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Robyn Brooks, University of Utah
2025-08-25 16:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-07 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Asprey) Terence Tao, UCLA
2025-09-11 17:00 - 18:00, 2025-09-12 15:00 - 16:00 | Rockefeller Hall 300

(Colloquium) Ron Buckmire, Marist University
2025-09-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 203
Different Differences: An Introduction to Nonstandard Finite Difference Schemes
From Calculus we know that a derivative of a function can be approximated using a
difference quotient. There are different forms of the difference quotient, such as the
forward difference (most common), backward difference (less common) and centered
difference (more accurate). In this talk I will discuss several different differences,
specifically nonstandard finite differences (NFSD) that can be used to approximate the
derivatives that appear in differential equations as a solution technique. Many NSFD
schemes have been created, discovered, and promoted by Dr. Ronald E. Mickens, an
African American Emeritus Professor of Physics at Clark Atlanta University, who has
written more than 300 research articles and a dozen books. I’ll provide examples of
NSFD schemes that can be used to solve a wide variety of problems drawn from
several different areas, such as first-semester Calculus, elementary ordinary differential
equations, and more advanced differential equations.

(LAVA) Anthony Cheng, VC '23
2025-10-03 15:00 | Rockefeller Hall 310
LAVA Talk on Learning how to learn: my journey from the classroom to doing research, with Anthony Cheng (VC ’23), PhD Student, University of Pennsylvania. Friday, October 3, 2025 at 3PM in Rocky 310.

About Anthony:
Anthony Cheng is a Class of 2023 alum who studied applied math, competed on the varsity swim team, and played trumpet in the symphony orchestra while at Vassar. He enrolled in the engineering dual-degree program with Dartmouth, studying mechanical engineering with a focus in dynamical systems. He continued at Dartmouth for another year of graduate research in fluid mechanics applied to glaciology contexts and defended his master’s thesis in July 2025. Now, Anthony has started a PhD program at UPenn in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, with a focus in fluid mechanics applied to urban wind pattern sensing and reconstruction.

(Colloquium) Adam Lowrance, Vassar College
2025-10-08 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 203

(Colloquium) Patrick Gambill, Washington State University and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories
2025-10-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 200

(LAVA) Eli Schwamm, VC '19
2025-10-17 15:00 - 16:00 | Rockefeller Hall 310
LAVA Talk on My early career with math, statistics, and medicine, with Eli Schwamm (VC ’19), MD, Friday, October 17, 2025 at 3PM.
Note: this LAVA talk will be virtual. Please join us on Zoom at https://vassar.zoom.us/j/96274757988

About Eli:
Dr. Eli Schwamm, class of 2019, majored in Math and Statistics. After graduating from Vassar, he worked for two years at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center, a health policy lab that specializes in projecting the costs and impacts of proposed public health programs. His work focused on multi-level survey analysis and Markov multi-state modelling, investigating behavioral trends in smoking and e-cigarette use among youth and adults. He went on to study at Harvard Medical School, class of 2025, and is now in his first year of residency at the Harvard/Mass General Brigham Neurology program. He still uses R to this day!

(Colloquium) Christina Athanasouli, Williams College
2025-10-31 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Richard Schwartz, Brown University
2025-11-10 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Sébastien Labbé, CRM-CNRS
2025-11-13 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 200

(Colloquium) Tara Holm, Cornell University
2025-12-05 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(LAVA) Rachel Wagner-Kaiser, VC '10
2025-12-08 17:00 - 18:00 | Rockefeller Hall 200
LAVA Talk on Beyond the AI Hype Cycle, with Rachel Wagner-Kaiser (VC ’10), Monday, December 8, 2025 at 5PM in Rocky 200.

About Rachel:
Rachel Wagner-Kaiser, Ph.D., class of 2010, double-majored in Physics & Astronomy at Vassar. Rachel is now Director, Data Scientist in consulting at KPMG US. She has 15 years of experience in data and AI and specializes in building AI and natural language processing solutions for real-world problems constrained by limited or messy data.

Rachel works across industries to lead technical teams to design, build, deploy, and maintain NLP solutions. Her expertise has helped companies organize and decode their unstructured data to solve a variety of business problems and drive value through automation at scale.
She is also author of the book “Teaching Computers to Read”, a practical guide to effective AI solutions.

(Colloquium) Cheyne Glass, SUNY New Paltz
2026-02-05 16:00 - 17:00 | Taylor Hall 203

(Colloquium) Kaitlyn Cook, Smith College
2026-02-16 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 312

(Colloquium) Enrique Alvarado, Iowa State University
2026-02-23 16:00 - 17:00

(LAVA) Elijah Appelson, VC '23
2026-02-27 15:00 - 16:00 | Rockefeller Hall 310
LAVA Talk Data Science @ ACLU of Louisiana with Elijah Appelson (VC ’23)
Friday, February 27, 2026 at 3PM in Rocky 310.

About Elijah:
Elijah Appelson is an activist, mathematician, and computational social scientist. Since 2023, he has served as the first Data Scientist at the ACLU of Louisiana, focusing on immigration, policing, and the broader criminal legal system. In this role, he conducts statistical analyses for legal cases, supports policy change, and develops educational tools, including “Visualizing Police Violence in Louisiana”. Skilled in web scraping, machine learning, and data storytelling, Elijah uses these tools to promote accountability. Previously, he held positions at the Center for Community Alternatives and the Vera Institute of Justice, blending technical expertise with a commitment to civil rights. His research interest is the intersection of technology, human rights, and the political economy. Elijah graduated from Vassar College in 2023 with a Degree in Mathematics (core/pure path).

(Colloquium) Matt Jones, Colby College
2026-03-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Rockefeller Hall 310
