The Wednesdays @ NICO Fall Seminar Series returns on September 24th and will run through November 12th, 2025. Please visit our web site in early September for detailed speaker information, talk titles and abstracts.

This fall, we are honored to host the following distinguished speakers:

9/24 - Emma Alexander, Dept of Computer Science, Northwestern University
10/1 - Sebastien Martin, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
10/8 - Tomer Ullman, Dept of Psychology, Harvard University
10/15 - Patrick Park, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
10/22 - Max Kreminski, Midjourney
10/29 - Elizabeth Gerber, Mechanical Engineering and Communication Studies, Northwestern University
11/5 - Julio Ottino, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University
11/12 - Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Google Research

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: TBA via Zoom

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

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Northwestern's 2025 Fall Tech Career Fair

Co-hosted by Department of Computer Science, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering Career Development Office

Date: Friday, September 26, 2025

12:00pm – 4:00pm

Norris University Center - 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208

Join us for the Northwestern 2025 Fall Tech Career Fair, a collaborative in person career fair, connecting you with employers looking for talented students in computer science, data science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, machine learning, and similar programs. This is a great opportunity for you to learn, network and possibly be recruited with various industries. This fair is open to undergraduate, Masters and PhD students for internship, co-ops, and full-time positions.

Registrations for this event will be handled through Handshake, please click here to get started!

Pre-registration is preferred but students will be given access on the day of the event.

Wildcards will be required for all attendees.

Professional Business Attire recommended (No Jeans, Joggers, Sweats/Sweatshirts, or T-Shirts, please)

Check back regularly to see which companies are coming! List is subject to change.

·Conduct company research to better familiarize yourself with companies.

·Search McCormickConnect and Handshakefor available positions and apply for the position(s) ahead of time so companies know you’re interested.

·Be prepared and be ready with your “elevator pitch”.

·Bring copies of your resume and business cards! Resume should be uploaded into McCormickConnect

Engineering Career Development (ECD is here to assist as you prepare for the fair. You can schedule an appointment in McCormickConnect to meet with your dedicated career advisor.

Additional questions, please contact:

Engineering Career Development (ECD) Office

Ford Motor Engineering and Design Center, First Floor, 1.200

847.491.3366

ecd@northwestern.edu

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All alt text for images should be based on the context of the image and what is being portrayed to the user. Writing appropriate alt text can be difficult, especially for complex images such as charts and graphs. This session will discuss the best practices for writing alt text, explore AI tools that can help, and discuss how to evaluate the output of AI tools before adding alt text to your images.

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Each year, Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) invites a renowned speaker to campus for our Annual Public Lecture. This year's speaker is Harvard astronomer and experimental physicist Professor Christopher W. Stubbs.

This year marks the birth of an ambitious new scientific project. Based in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will take a decade-long time-lapse movie of the entire Southern sky, using the largest digital camera ever made. First-look images were released this summer, and the project is now transitioning into full operation.

Professor Stubbs' talk will describe how the unprecedented torrent of 20 terabytes per night will propel projects ranging from searches for potentially hazardous asteroids to mapping out the history of cosmic expansion. In particular, the Rubin data will provide new insights into "dark matter," the mysterious substance that comprises 90% of the mass in our own Milky Way galaxy, as well as "dark energy," which is driving the runaway expansion of the Universe. Stubbs will also describe the evolution of the project itself, and the romance of working in the high Atacama desert.

This event is generously supported by The Alumnae of Northwestern University.

If you have any questions about this event, or would like to make an accessibility request (eg. ASL interpretation), please contact ciera-events@northwestern.edu.

For those unable to make it to Evanston, the lecture will be livestreamed on CIERA's website: https://ciera.northwestern.edu/ciera-livestream/

About the Speaker

Professor Christopher W. Stubbs is an experimental physicist at Harvard University working at the interface between particle physics, cosmology and gravitation. His interests include experimental tests of the foundations of gravitational physics, searches for dark matter, characterizing the dark energy, and observational cosmology. He was a member of one of the two teams that first discovered the dark energy by using supernovae to map out the history of cosmic expansion. Stubbs is deeply engaged in helping give birth to the Rubin Observatory, having spent much of the 2024-2025 academic year on sabbatical in Chile. He served in scientific management roles during the construction of the camera, is the architect of the flux calibration system, and is a member of the Rubin Project Science Team, the project's most senior technical management group. He founded the APOLLO collaboration that is using lunar laser ranging and the Earth-Moon-Sun system to probe for novel gravitational effects that may result from physics beyond the standard model.

About CIERA

CIERA promotes research and education in astrophysics through support of independent postdoctoral fellows, advanced graduate and undergraduate research, a vigorous visiting researchers program, and multi-faceted seminars, education, and public outreach programs. Special emphasis is given to interdisciplinary connections with computer science, applied math, statistics, electrical and mechanical engineering, planetary science, education and the arts.

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According to Northwestern’s Digital Accessibility Policy as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), all software used at Northwestern needs to be accessible to all users. Unfortunately, pretty much everything has some accessibility issues. This session will help you ensure tools you use are in compliance. We will discuss the steps that need to be taken to identify potential accessibility issues and develop plans to ensure all users have an equitable experience. The session will focus on using AI tools to help quickly decipher accessibility information from software companies and develop equally effective alternative access plans (EEAAP).

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Part of the Music Studies Distinguished Speaker Series

Presented by Alexander Rehding, Fanny Peabody Professor of Music, Harvard University
Music has entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), and the figure of J. S. Bach is never far away. From Doug Hofstadter’s 1979 smash hit book Gödel Escher Bach to a cute 2019 chorale-harmonizing Google doodle, Bach has played a central role in bringing AI to the masses. Why? And what exactly do we mean by “music AI”? In exploring these connections, this presentation will also shine a spotlight on the discrepancies between what we think music AI does, and what its actual strengths and weaknesses are.

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The Chemical and Biological Engineering Department is pleased to present the 19th Annual Richard S.H. Mah Lectures on Modeling and Computation in Chemical and Biological Engineering with David Sholl from The University of Tennessee Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

How Reliable is the Chemical Engineering and Materials Chemistry Literature?

Reliability and reproducibility are bedrock principles of quantitative research in engineering and the physical sciences. Systematic efforts testing reproducibility of findings from the peer-reviewed literature in fields including biomedicine and psychology have given striking examples with high failure rates. How relevant are these observations to the chemical engineering and materials chemistry literature? This question has always been important for researchers basing their work on earlier reports, but has even more resonance when considering AI methods that are trained on large collections of published data. I will describe systematic efforts to assess reproducibility in studies of porous adsorbents, and argue that the characteristics of this specific topic are relevant to many areas in chemical engineering and materials chemistry. I will also describe approaches available to individual researchers, reviewers, and journals to improve reproducibility.

David Sholl is the Executive Director and Vice Provost of the University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII), Director of the Transformational Decarbonization Initiative at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Editor-in-Chief of AIChE Journal. From 2022-2023 he was a Strategic Policy Advisor for DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. From 2013-2021 David was the School Chair of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has published over 400 papers and several books. David was on the Board of Directors of AIChE from 2019-2021 and in 2020 chaired the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Separations. In 2024 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

A reception will be held after the general lecture at the second floor Pancoe Cafe from 5:30-6:30pm.

The Chemical and Biological Engineering Department is pleased to present the 19th Annual Richard S.H. Mah Lectures on Modeling and Computation in Chemical and Biological Engineering with David Sholl from The University of Tennessee Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

When Do I Get My Flying Car? Assessing The Potential Of AI To Revolutionize Separations Science

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been suggested as tools that will revolutionize many areas of science and society. I will discuss the potential and pitfalls for these methods in a key field within chemical engineering, namely separations science. Examples will include scanning collections of thousands of porous materials for adsorption-based separations of complex molecular mixtures, searching for high performance materials for Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide, and developing mixed matrix membranes for gas separations.

David Sholl is the Executive Director and Vice Provost of the University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII), Director of the Transformational Decarbonization Initiative at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Editor-in-Chief of AIChE Journal. From 2022-2023 he was a Strategic Policy Advisor for DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. From 2013-2021 David was the School Chair of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has published over 400 papers and several books. David was on the Board of Directors of AIChE from 2019-2021 and in 2020 chaired the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Separations. In 2024 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Bagels and coffee will be provided at 9:30am, and the seminar will start at 9:40am. Please plan to arrive on time to grab a bagel and mingle!

Machine learning of cytoskeletal machines

Traditional bottom-up physical-mathematical models have longstanding popularity and success in studying cytoskeleton and mechanochemical machines driving cell movements and division. These models brought and will continue to bring mechanistic insights into cell migration. However, such models are either too simple to embrace the complexity of the multiscale cell processes or are hopelessly cumbersome and unwieldy to be used to nimbly test multiple hypotheses. Machine learning and AI approaches have demonstrated immense strength in identifying statistical patterns in cytoskeletal machines and in predicting cytoskeletal dynamics from microscopy data. However, these data-driven approaches largely neglect the laws of physics and chemistry needed to ground the discoveries in biological mechanisms. These complementary strengths and weaknesses between the traditional modeling and modern data-scientific approaches suggest a promising avenue forward: augmenting traditional models with data-scientific and AI methods for the sake of building more complex traditional models that can be directly connected with the enormous volumes of biological data of cytoskeletal machines.

This workshop will convene data scientists, experimental biologists, mathematical modelers and biophysicists using or interested in starting to use ML to study cytoskeletal dynamics, cell migration and mitosis. The goal is to foster an exchange of ideas between these research communities. The workshop is structured to help participants identify the most promising opportunities for developing and using ML tools to answer biological questions. The program includes both overview and research talks, poster sessions and lightning talks by poster presenters, and will have ample time for participants to get to know each other, exchange ideas and foster collaborations.

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Machine learning of cytoskeletal machines

Traditional bottom-up physical-mathematical models have longstanding popularity and success in studying cytoskeleton and mechanochemical machines driving cell movements and division. These models brought and will continue to bring mechanistic insights into cell migration. However, such models are either too simple to embrace the complexity of the multiscale cell processes or are hopelessly cumbersome and unwieldy to be used to nimbly test multiple hypotheses. Machine learning and AI approaches have demonstrated immense strength in identifying statistical patterns in cytoskeletal machines and in predicting cytoskeletal dynamics from microscopy data. However, these data-driven approaches largely neglect the laws of physics and chemistry needed to ground the discoveries in biological mechanisms. These complementary strengths and weaknesses between the traditional modeling and modern data-scientific approaches suggest a promising avenue forward: augmenting traditional models with data-scientific and AI methods for the sake of building more complex traditional models that can be directly connected with the enormous volumes of biological data of cytoskeletal machines.

This workshop will convene data scientists, experimental biologists, mathematical modelers and biophysicists using or interested in starting to use ML to study cytoskeletal dynamics, cell migration and mitosis. The goal is to foster an exchange of ideas between these research communities. The workshop is structured to help participants identify the most promising opportunities for developing and using ML tools to answer biological questions. The program includes both overview and research talks, poster sessions and lightning talks by poster presenters, and will have ample time for participants to get to know each other, exchange ideas and foster collaborations.

Related Info

Register Now