It’s far more than “just” a presentation: defending your thesis is the last (and one of the biggest) challenges in your academic qualification – and it doesn’t only require well-prepared content. This workshop addresses aspects of the defense related to communication and presentation. We will work on participants’ body language as well as on strategies for convincing argumentative and rhetorical positioning during the disputation. A significant portion of the workshop will be devoted to simulated defenses and evaluations of the performances.

Sharpen your skills in software development courses and poster design/presentation. Explore career paths beyond academia by engaging with HGS MathComp alumni now working at leading companies such as AbbVie, Apple, Merck and Carl Zeiss.

Machine Learning is here to stay and is shaping the future of fundamental physics research. From optimal inference, over theory-inspired network architectures, to anomaly detection, representation learning and foundation models, a new generation of scientists is driving these exciting developments. This school aims to further strengthen technical expertise and foster new connections.

Central themes of the school are:

- Modern network architectures
- Precision and uncertainties
- Scientific foundation models
- Generative Networks
- Representation learning
- Optimal inference
- Quantum field theory and networks

2025 lecturers:

- Thea Aarrestad (ETH Zurich) -- Particle experiments, anomalies
- Jim Halverson (Northeastern University) -- Particle theory, KANs
- Michael Kagan (SLAC) -- Representation learning, foundation models
- Siddharth Mishra-Sharma (Anthropic, Boston University) -- Cosmological analyses
- Veronica Sanz (University of Valencia) -- ML for data mining
- David Shih (Rutgers University) -- Linking particle and astrophysics
- Ramon Winterhalder (University of Milan) -- Generative Networks