Community Connections Events for Students

Multi-layer transformer models form the backbone of modern deep learning, yet little mathematical work details their benefits and deficiencies as compared with other architectures. This makes it difficult to answer practical and fundamental questions about the transformer architecture: What powers increase with model depth? Can alternative architectures improve efficiency without sacrificing expressivity? Clayton Sanford presents a communication-based theoretical framework for understanding the representational capabilities and limitations of multi-layer transformers. These results imply that parallelizability is a key property of the standard transformer that other architectures cannot easily replicate. Stanford contextualizes these results within the broader conversation about the challenges of developing a principled theory of neural networks and share opinions on how theoretical computer science can remain relevant to their study.

Speaker

Clayton Sanford is a senior research scientist at Google, where he works on distillation and pretraining for Gemini. He has a PhD in computer science from Columbia University and studied machine learning theory with advisors Rocco Servedio and Daniel Hsu. His research focuses on the theoretical capabilities of neural architectures, particularly transformers.

Room Draw 2026 will take place from April 7–9! Be sure to keep an eye out later this semester for the approved regulations and additional details. If you have any questions, please contact the Residential Life team at reslife@g.hmc.edu or reach out to the RALs at ral-l@g.hmc.edu.

We gather every other Friday to talk and reflect as one community on the readings from John Fugalsang’s book Separation of Church and Hate.

We welcome you to bring your lunch and join us in talking about topics that stood out to you regarding the reading(s).

Join us for an engaging career panel discussion exploring how data science is transforming the future of human health. Hear from professionals working across academia and industry as they share their career paths, discuss how they apply technical and analytical skills to real-world health challenges and offer advice for students interested in this rapidly growing field. This event will provide insight into the many ways data science can make a meaningful impact on human wellbeing.

Speakers: Nadia Abuelezam ’09 Math Bio (Michigan State University),
Christine Lee ’11 Math Bio (Brightside Health),
Kyle Suver ’18 CS/Math (Modern Health),
Kenneth Mitchell ’24 Math Comp Bio (Axiom Bio)

In collaboration with the Innovation Accelerator Lab for Emerging Health Technologies and the Innovation Accelerator Lab for Data Science and Social Impact

At Harvey Mudd, students learn to become highly competent scientists and engineers, but beyond that they learn skills for analyzing the world around them, seeing things from different perspectives and breaking down the underlying systems that exist in many diverse contexts. Although many students will go on to work in more traditional technical industries, the skills learned at Mudd can be applied to many different pursuits: art, policy, business and more. Through the lens of video games, Israel Jones will discuss ways that systems thinking can be brought to bear in fields we would traditionally consider less “technical,” such as the arts. Jones will go through broad problem spaces in the industry as well as incredibly specific problems that he’s tackled in his own work, discussing the ways a technically trained perspective can provide solutions to non-technical problems.

Speaker

Israel Jones ’19 is a gameplay engineer and technical designer at Secret Door. He majored in CS/math with a concentration in literature and media studies. In his senior year, he realized he felt called to creative pursuits but still had a love for math and programming. He then went on to pursue his master’s in interactive media at USC, where he identified more clearly how he could stand at the crossroads of work that is both artistically fulfilling and technically challenging. He has now spent four years sitting in an office doing that. Outside of work he also does choir, improv and student mentoring. If you want, he could even mentor you!

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.

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.

We gather every other Friday to talk and reflect as one community on the readings from John Fugalsang’s book Separation of Church and Hate.

We welcome you to bring your lunch and join us in talking about topics that stood out to you regarding the reading(s).

Alumni and students who are in biotech, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and all areas associated are invited to this casual reception, hosted by Matina Donaldson-Matasci (professor of biology) and Steven Santana ’06 (professor of engineering). We aim to grow the network and connections of all who are in and interested in the field of biotech.