IHES
Looking Back on the Friends of IHES Events in San Francisco and New York
During the week of April 28, Friends of IHES held two events in San Francisco and New York City, in the presence of Emmanuel Ullmo, Director of IHES, Claire Lenz, Director of Communications and Development, and Richard Kruel, Deputy Director of Communications and Development.
On April 29, French Consul General Florian Cardinaux hosted Friends of IHES at his Residence for an evening focused on artificial intelligence in the sciences, with Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former visitor of IHES, as keynote speaker.
In her talk, titled “Artificial Intelligence & the Shifting Intellectual Landscape”, Dr. Chayes demonstrated, through her own research, how AI is accelerating and radically transforming the way science is conducted at the intersection of mathematics, chemistry, and materials science.
Organized at the initiative of Friends of IHES Board Member and Google DeepMind executive Eugénie Rives, and IHES supporters Nathalie Bontoux and Cédric Hutchings, the event brought together more than 70 participants. Attendees included members of the fast-developing San Francisco Friends of IHES community and representatives from IHES corporate sponsors such as Agilent Technologies, IBM, and Société Générale, for a lively exchange on the future of science in the age of AI.
While in the Bay Area, IHES also visited friends and partners of the Institute, including a tour of Professor Oussama Khatib’s Robotics Lab at Stanford University.
IHES and Friends of IHES would like to extend warm thanks to Florian Cardinaux, Emmanuelle Pauliac-Vaujour, Attachée for Science and Technology at the French Consulate, her team, and Chef Lamia Spohn, for their generous hospitality and for strengthening the connection between IHES and the local academic and tech communities.
On their way back to Bures, Emmanuel, Claire and Richard, stopped in New York City on May 1st for a Public Lecture at the CUNY Graduate Center, organized by Friends of IHES Board Member Delaram Kahrobaei and Honorary Committee Member John Terilla.
In the presence of Friends of IHES Chair Marilyn Simons, Alex Kontorovich, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University, presented his joint work with Kei Nakamura on the geometry and arithmetic of crystallographic sphere packings. During his lecture, he explained a classification theorem for generalized Apollonian circle packings, a result published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.
IHES and Friends of IHES would like to extend warm thanks to the City University of New York for hosting this event.
The visit to New York also provided a welcome opportunity to continue preparations for the upcoming Friends of IHES Gala, themed Cinema & Mathematics, which will take place on October 28 at the iconic Plaza Hotel.
IHES and Friends of IHES is deeply grateful to all members of its community who initiate and contribute to the success of these events, helping to raise awareness and support for the Institute’s unique model of free and selfless basic research.
