Past Events

This event is presented by MIT CSAIL Alliances and hosted in Palo Alto, California by Alliances member LDV Partners with DaVinci Cafe. 

CSAIL Alliances members, please join us for our 2nd annual Embodied Intelligence Summit. MIT CSAIL is a leading hub for embodied intelligence research, with the of understanding the nature of intelligent behavior in the physical world, through the study of human intelligence and the design and implementation of intelligent robots. We bring expertise in perception, sensing, language, learning and planning, and have the objective of integrating these disciplines to make physical agents with human-like intelligence.

In this engaging summit, dive deep with talks from four leading MIT CSAIL faculty members

• CSAIL Director Professor Daniela Rus: Physical AI
• CSAIL Associate Director Professor Armando Solar-Lezama: Programming with AI Beyond Vibe Coding
• Associate Professor Phillip Isola: Language as a Camera
• Associate Professor Vincent Sitzmann: Modeling the world (and yourself) from vision

Additionally, hear from the head of LDV Partners and bring questions for two compelling panels featuring startups and industry, moderated by LDV Partners.  Panel conversations will dive into how companies are turning raw multimodal inputs (vision, movement, biometric signals) into actionable intelligence as well as exploring advances in manipulation, assistive systems, and humanoid platforms for real-world impact.

Meet CSAIL Alliances startups Leela AI, Dexmate, and Autonomous Living Technology, and Liquid AI, as well as K-Scale Labs, RealSense, and Waymo.

There will be networking opportunities during breakfast and lunch. 

Traveling? Graduate (by Hilton) Palo Alto is extending a special 15% discount for the Summit. Book directly with this link: Graduate Palo Alto Booking Link | MIT Special Events (If you wish to book directly through the hotel website, click "special rates" and enter this code in the corporate account field: 2787021)

CSAIL Alliances members, please log in to register below. If you cannot log in, please contact your CRC or event host for the registration link.

The Quant-essential Qualities: Insider Insights for Thriving in Algorithmic Trading

Abstract: The world of quantitative trading is notoriously siloed, secretive, and intensely competitive. In this talk, Hanna and Dan will offer an insider's perspective on quant trading, sharing insights from our firm, and outline the key qualities you can cultivate to excel in the industry.

Daniel Goldbach, Quantitative Developer

Dan has worked at Quadrature for 9 years in various roles across research and technology, including Head of ML Infrastructure. Dan now focuses on low-latency research and trading systems.

Hanna Yakubovich, Quantitative Developer.

Hanna has been at Quadrature for 4 years and worked on various projects including low-latency infrastructure optimization and portfolio construction. Hanna is currently focusing on alpha forecasting research.

This event is organized and hosted by MIT Press.

Meet Blaise Agüera y Arcas at the MIT Press Bookstore 4-6pm on Tuesday, 9/23 as we celebrate his new book, What Is Intelligence? (MIT Press and Antikythera, 2025) with a drop-in signing session!

What Is Intelligence? is a radical new perspective on what intelligence really is, and how AI’s emergence is a natural consequence of evolution.

The MIT Press Bookstore is located on the lower level of 314 Main Street, steps away from the outbound Red Line MBTA subway stop.  The bookstore is accessible by both stairs and an elevator.

Books available while supplies last.  Questions? Contact books@mit.edu.
 

CSAIL Alliances & FinTechAI@CSAIL Board Member Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Borealis AI Group will be at CSAIL on 9/22 in Kiva to deliver a technical talk from Dr. Greg Mori as well as connect with interested students for job opportunities. 

Talk Title: Foundation Model Challenges and Opportunities in Financial Services

Monday 9/22 in Kiva 32-G449 12-1pm EST.  Food will be served so please register for accurate food order!

Registration link for the event: https://lu.ma/2fygnljp

Speaker: Dr. Greg Mori, VP, RBC AI Fellow at RBC Borealis and Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University.

Talk Abstract:  Financial services are at the core of our economy. Opportunities for machine learning abound in this space, from capital markets to insurance services to wealth management to lending to tools that assist clients in managing their money.  Modern machine learning methods have transformed industries, yet particular challenges exist in realizing the full potential of machine learning in financial services.  These include explainability, data imbalance, partial observations, distribution shift, and self-supervised learning in low-signal settings.  I will describe the ATOM foundation model, which specializes in learning from asynchronous event sequences, to maximally utilize the richness of transactional data in financial services.

Speaker Bio: Greg Mori is VP, RBC AI Fellow at RBC Borealis, where he leads AI Research and Innovation.  He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University.  He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2004 and an Hon. B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1999.  He was a Visiting Scientist at Google in Mountain View, California in 2014-2015. He served as Director of the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University from 2015-2018.  Dr. Mori conducts research in computer vision and machine learning.  He received the ICCV Helmholtz Prize in 2017.  He was a Program Chair for CVPR 2020 and a General Chair for CVPR 2023.  At RBC Borealis his team builds AI-based products for financial services.  These include the award-winning NOMI Forecast and numerous other industry-leading machine learning solutions.