The Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) recently announced the start of the application period to attend the 8th annual HLF, which will take place September 20–25, 2020 in Heidelberg, Germany. Organized by the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation and Klaus Tschira Stiftung, HLF brings together laureates in compute science and mathematics with young researchers in the fields in “a one-week event combining scientific, social and outreach activities. The recipients of the most prestigious awards in mathematics and computer science, the Abel Prize, ACM A.M. Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Fields Medal and the Nevanlinna Prize are invited to participate in the Forum. They will give lectures on subjects of their choosing which […]

The following post is from Khari Douglas, who is currently at the 2019 Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Heidelberg Germany.  Every year at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) a hot topic, or theme, related to mathematics and computer science is chosen to be addressed by a panel of experts. At this year’s HLF the hot topic sessions, which took place on Tuesday, September 24th, focused on climate change and what we can do to tackle the problem. The sessions addressed questions like: “How can we predict the next century’s climate if we can hardly predict this weekend’s weather? Is the latest flooding or heat wave due to climate change, or not? Why […]

Who wants to spend a week in beautiful Heidelberg Germany surrounded by the recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award and the ACM Prize in Computing? I do! In September, I had the unique opportunity to participate as part of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) international blog team. I got to watch 200 students from around the world have personal conversations about their research with some of the biggest names in our field. The evenings were spent dining in beautiful venues such as the Technik Museum Speyer and the Heidelberg Castle. Now it is YOUR chance (or your student’s chance) to come to the seventh HLF on September 22 to 27, 2019. ACM encourages young computer […]

On Wednesday afternoon, HLF got out of the lecture halls and cruised down the Neckar River. I decided to spend my time listening in on conversations and jumping in when I could by asking “what do you think is going to be the most exciting thing in computing in the next 10 years?” I thought I would get a consensus or at least have duplicated answers, but after talking to a number of different students none of their answers were the same. In fact, some of them didn’t even say that their research would be the most exciting thing in computing in ten years (although a few of them did- […]

Only day two of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum and the term machine learning or “ML” has been popping up throughout talks and in conversations with young researchers and the laureates. Machine learning uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to learn without them having to be explicitly programmed. The goal is for a program to learn by itself without any human intervention. In a discussion with Jeffrey A. Dean, the winner of ACM’s 2012 Prize in Computing and the current head of Google’s AI Division, he repeatedly mentioned and stressed the importance of machine learning. Google AI currently has an open source machine learning platform called TensorFlow which Dean said […]

Preparations for the fourth Heidelberg Laureate Forum are in full swing, and applications from young researchers to attend are now being accepted. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the Turing Award, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal.  To date three forums have been held (2013, 2014, and 2015), and all have been viewed as a major success by the 40 laureates and 200 young researchers in computer science and mathematics who attended […]