STAMP professor to attend German event with mathematics and computer science prize winners

Assistant Professor Abraham Glasser has been selected as one of 200 young researchers to attend the prestigious Heidelberg Laureate Forum, to be held September 24 to 29 in Heidelberg, Germany. This is the tenth year for the event, which invites every living recipient of the top awards in mathematics and computer science — the Abel Prize, ACM A.M. Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Fields Medal, IMU Abacus Medal, and Nevanlinna Prize — to mingle with up-and-coming minds from around the world.

The packed schedule is both scholarly and social, with events that include a lecture by Robert Melancton Metcalfe (who invented Ethernet and helped develop the personal computer), workshops on algorithmic fairness and physics-informed machine learning, visits to local labs and research centers, as well as a castle tour, a boat ride on the Neckar River, and a traditional Bavarian keg tapping.

Glasser, who has just joined Gallaudet’s faculty to teach in the M.S. in Accessible Human-Centered Computing program, looks forward to the exchange of knowledge. “At the forum, I’ll be meeting a lot of people, learning how they think about things, and seeing what they think the future will hold,” he says. “I want them to also see it from my perspective as a deaf person. I feel like most of them have probably not taken accessibility into consideration.”

Technical concepts and math models will be the central focus of the forum, Glasser notes. A few panels will explore ethics and security related to artificial intelligence. “These overlap with accessibility. So hopefully I can start the conversation and get the ball rolling,” he says.

Applications for next year’s forum will be accepted starting November 9. For more information, visit: https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org