Jennifer Chayes' talk was great!

Jennifer Chayes, Manager of the Theory Group at Microsoft Research, gave a fabulous talk on Thursday last week, although I still think the professors probably got more of a kick out of it than the students. She's a real good speaker, one of the few people that can talk lively about CS Theory. Her talk on "Phase transitions for Combinatorial Optimizations" is archived here. (Windows Media Player needed)

I personally found her talk didn't go over my head nearly as much as I expected it would... but if you watch it, be prepared that it might! Jennifer definately shows the amazing things that happen when you get a cross-disiplinary background -- She gravitated from Biology to Physics to Math to Computer Science. She was a fabulous speaker, and is a fabulous person in real life too!

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