MaD+: Bringing CDS’s innovation to virtual space
When CDS closed its doors in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed like it might be a temporary end to the lively exchange of ideas that happens every week on the 7th floor of 60 5th Avenue. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case at all since CDS has partnered with ETH Zurich to bring us the Math and Data Plus (MaD+) seminar to our homes via Zoom.
MaD+ takes inspiration from the Theoretical Computer Science Plus seminar and aims to bring together leading specialists in Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Machine Learning together in virtual space. When starting MaD+, CDS faculty Jonathan Niles-Weed, Joan Bruna, and Carlos Fernandez-Granda and ETH Zurich Faculty Afonso Bandeira had low expectations for turn out. With all the uncertainty in the world, it was hard to predict if people would still be interested in weekly seminars even if you could watch them from your couch. But that turned out to be incorrect since attendance has been strong from the outset and has been growing every week. As Jonathan Niles-Weed said, “Perhaps especially during these strange times, people are eager to learn about new ideas and make new connections with their colleagues. The MaD+ seminar has been a terrific opportunity to share our fantastic roster of speakers with the mathematics and data science community around the world.”
No doubt the interest in MaD+ is driven by the experts giving the talks every week. CDS and ETH Zurich have tapped some of the best minds in their fields to participate in the series. Past speakers and topics include Sara Van de Geer (ETH Zurich) on “Total Variation Regularization”, Philippe Rigollet (MIT) on “Statistical and Computational aspects of Wasserstein Barycenters”, and Emmanuel Candes (Stanford) on “Reliable Predictions? Equitable Treatment? Some recent progress in predictive inference.” Speakers in the coming weeks include Francis Bach (INRIA/ENS), Lenka Zdeborova (CNRS), and Ingrid Daubechies (Duke).
The series is open to anyone and runs on Wednesdays in two time slots (each week one time slot) 4pm CET (10am EST) and and 2pm EST (8pm CET.) Links to upcoming seminars can be found on the MaD+ webpage.
