Community Connections Events for Staff

The Office of Emergency Preparedness and Safety will conduct the annual Fire Life Safety Evacuation Exercise on Wednesday, Feb. 4, from 10:40 to 11:10 a.m. This practice drill ensures that students, faculty, staff and visitors know exactly what to do and where to go in the event of a real fire or other life-safety emergency where an evacuation may be required.

At 10:40 a.m., the fire alarms will sound in the following buildings: Jacobs, Keck, Sprague, Parsons, Galileo, Olin, Beckman, McGregor, Shanahan Center, Kingston and the Platt Campus Center. When evacuating:

• Proceed to your building’s designated emergency assembly location.
• Check in for roll call by either:
  • Scanning the QR code provided by the evacuation coordinator, or
  • Checking in directly with the evacuation coordinator in-person.

For this exercise, you may re-enter your building once the fire alarm has been silenced. For more information regarding building evacuation procedures, please visit the HMC Emergency Preparedness and Safety webpage.

The Office of Human Resources continues its spring learning series in partnership with Optum, featuring the theme “Ignite Your Impact: Creating Wellness, Joy and Purpose at Work.” These monthly, live, instructor-led virtual sessions (via WebEx) are designed to help you bring energy, motivation and meaning into your professional and personal life through engaging and practical topics. Each session will be recorded so you can revisit the content at your convenience.

During the spring semester, President Nembhard’s office hours are open to all students, faculty and staff. These sessions provide an opportunity to discuss projects, ideas for the College, the strategic plan, issues affecting the community and other topics.

To request a meeting, please choose a preferred slot on the Doodle. Submitting a request does not guarantee an appointment, and a member of the President’s Office will follow up to confirm next steps.

Please note:
• Groups should be limited to no more than five people.
• Requests are reviewed and confirmed on a first-come, first-served basis and are subject to change.

Continuing from last semester, the Office of Human Resources is excited to welcome employees back to Breakfast Connections, a monthly gathering that provides a welcoming space to connect with HR, share feedback and engage in open conversations about workplace experiences.

The Cabinet is hosting informal coffee breaks in spring 2026 for students, faculty and staff. These coffee breaks will be attended by most of the Cabinet team and will provide an opportunity for the community to share ideas, express concerns and highlight successes.

All are welcome to stop by as schedules allow.

“Tilings on Polyhedra and Polyhedra on Tilings”

A talk in two acts. In the first act, “Tilings on Polyhedra,” we count a family of tilings first enumerated by the artist M. C. Escher, and then lift these questions into three dimensions. This allows us to answer questions such as: How many ways can we arrange panels on a soccer ball?
The second act, “Polyhedra on Tilings,” focuses on joint work with Prof. Andrés, describing an algorithm to count “generalized polyforms.” This algorithm counts objects such as the number of pieces in the (166 + 4)-piece 3D puzzle Hexacube, donated to the HMC Math Department by HMC alum Andy Niedermaier ’04, or the number of ways to arrange the building blocks of TOWARD, a temporary sculpture built in 2024 outside of Jacobs.

“Single Cells, Many Paths: The Role of Data Science in Drug Discovery”

We face a challenging reality that it takes $3.2 billion and 12 years on average to develop a new medicine that is approved for sale in the United States. Computational research holds promise to improve our ability to make medicines – through predictions of toxicity, generative design of molecules, mining public research, among many other examples. In this presentation I’ll focus on data science in the very first step of drug discovery: identifying disease-associated genes to drug. Leveraging genome-wide data from single cells, we use stochastic optimization and deep neural networks to create cell atlases. These cell atlases can be used to identify novel cell types, infer disease-associated cell state changes, and predict the effects of gene perturbations via transfer learning. We applied these techniques to identify anti-inflammatory genes for progressive multiple sclerosis, and further characterized the disease with dynamic spatial imaging from mouse tissue sections. I’ll conclude with comments on data science in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry – what careers look like, how to train toward this field, and the great opportunities for computational scientists to reimagine the paths towards innovative medicines for patients.

Speaker Bio

Sarah Spencer received a B.A. in biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009, and then pursued a PhD from MIT in computational and systems biology from 2011–2017. For the next three years, she joined CRISPR Therapeutics, researching gene editing and supporting the first clinical trials using CRISPR technology. She spent a year at Alltrna, a start-up engineering RNA drugs, prior to joining Novartis in 2022. As an associate director and senior principal scientist at Novartis, Sarah leads a computational research team focused on the very earliest stages of drug discovery.

Human Resources is excited to introduce a new learning series: The HR Compass – Chart Your Course. This series is intended to empower every staff member to spark innovation, influence outcomes, harness digital tools, build resilience, take accountability, coach for growth and navigate change with clarity and confidence across Harvey Mudd.

The session “Magnetic Influence” will build trust and presence to align ideas and shape outcomes across the community.

Advance registration is required to attend the live virtual session. Access information will be shared with registered participants prior to the session.

The Office of Human Resources is pleased to invite you to our next HMC Staff Conversations (HSC) event, our quarterly meeting series designed to provide an open forum for sharing important College updates, gathering feedback and fostering meaningful staff engagement.

In the February HSC session, Karl Haushalter, vice president for academic affairs and R. Michael Shanahan Dean of the Faculty, will present on the topic of “Exploring the HMC Curriculum: From Foundations to Frontiers.” A Q-and-A session will follow, including light refreshments.

Join the Office of Human Resources in celebrating Employee Appreciation Day, a time to recognize and thank our dedicated employees for their hard work, commitment and contributions to our community.