Events

Understanding the communication systems of non-human animals is a scientific challenge that bridges biology, linguistics, and machine learning. It involves making sense not only of the sounds animals produce but also how they influence and drive group behaviors, giving us insights into the cognition and intelligence of other species.

In this talk, Pratyusha Sharma will present recent progress towards deciphering the structure of naturally occurring communication in the wild, focusing on the vocalizations of sperm whales. She will share experiments that led to uncovering a unique combinatorial communication system in sperm whales—revealing a level of structural complexity and context sensitivity not previously recognized. She'll conclude by outlining a broader research project: developing a generalizable, data-driven framework for decoding the communication systems of diverse species. This work opens the door to a deeper understanding of non-human intelligence and the underlying principles that govern its expression.

Are you a CSAIL entrepreneur? Are you curious about the resources that CSAIL Alliances, as well as the rest of the MIT Ecosystem can offer you?

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This month, CSAIL's Christiana Kalfas will be joined by Rob Ashcraft from Samsung Ventures, a CSAIL Alliances Member Company.

Underscore VC is a Boston-based venture capital firm backing bold B2B software entrepreneurs at Pre-Seed and Seed. We’re hands-on business builders, enthusiastic community cultivators, and we're dedicated to underscoring your success.

Gabby McCarthy is an early-stage B2B software investor at Underscore VC in Boston, primarily focused on vertical software, applications of AI, and enterprise application software. Gabby joined Underscore from OpenView where she focused on Series A-C investments in application software and product-led growth. Before OpenView, Gabby started her career at Klaviyo in Boston in go-to-market on their enterprise sales team.

Christiana Kalfas, Senior Client Relations Coordinator (CSAIL Alliances), brings a rare blend of expertise to the entrepreneurial journey, anchored by an MS in Computer Information Systems and a BA in Neuropsychology. This background shapes her focus at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and human potential. With over eight years dedicated to accelerating ventures within the MIT ecosystem (including roles at CSAIL Alliances and MIT VMS), she has a proven track record of helping deep-tech ideas transition from the lab to the market. A recipient of multiple MIT Spot Awards, she specializes in building impactful programs and actively leveraging her role within CSAIL Alliances to directly facilitate connections between deep-tech ventures and senior industry leaders, helping translate complex research into scalable business plans. As an active Member of the Greek Scientists Society, she also offers an expanded perspective on global community and network building. Leverage her office hours to gain strategic guidance, access key institutional resources, and tap into the knowledge required to launch a successful MIT-affiliated venture.

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Please join RCB Borealis and CSAIL Alliances for a compelling talk! RBC Borealis will also share more information and answer questions on thier current research, career opportunities, early talent programs, and more.

​Many important problems—like planning routes, assigning resources, or selecting the most useful subset of items—require making discrete choices under constraints.

Although modern machine learning has achieved remarkable success, it still struggles with this type of decision-making problems. This limitation is not accidental: most ML models rely on smooth, differentiable functions, while combinatorial problems live in inherently discrete, constrained spaces.

In this talk, Akbar Rafiey will present a framework for bridging this gap by transforming hard combinatorial problems into continuous formulations that are compatible with gradient-based optimization, while still guaranteeing high-quality discrete solutions. He will describe two recent results: one for problems involving permutations, such as routing and matching, and another for problems involving constrained set selection.

The CSAIL Forum is a monthly series hosted by Professor Daniela Rus, Director of CSAIL. This month features Professor Vincent Sitzmann.

LLMs have ushered in a new era of how humans interact with computers: They can code, write, and automate many of our everyday tasks. Yet, in our physical world, AI has so far *not* delivered autonomy: There does not exist a robot today that can do your cleaning, load your dishwasher, or help the elderly get out of bed: in fact, it remains impossible to automate any but the most restricted and controlled tasks. In this talk, Sitzmann will discuss how the billions of hours of video that mankind has collected are a candidate for ushering in an "LLM moment" of AI that can interact with the physical world, and show recent results from my research group that work towards this goal.