Lecture Me! a series

Tuesday, September 15, 2026 

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence: Big Ideas Behind How Machines Learn 

Modern generative artificial intelligence feels like magic. But actually, under the hood, it's all math that has been developed over many decades. This talk will pull back the curtain, taking a historical perspective before developing intuitions for how these newer models are built, what they are capable of, and why they make the kind of mistakes they do. The goal is to have very little math (maybe a few multiplications and additions) and focus more on the "big ideas." Throughout, the talk will draw on research related to misconceptions and mistakes that learners make about artificial intelligence and machine learning

Learning to Communicate: How Do We Pay Attention to What's Relevant in Our Busy Auditory World? 

Dr. Christina Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden studies how children become fluent in two of the most important forms of human communication: music and language. As a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, her work uses lab tasks and electroencephalography (EEG) to measure how infants, children, and adults perceive pitch and rhythm in speech and song and how perception and production changes as children develop. Christina will also highlight how musical features can be leveraged to improve speech perception and how the human brain is biased to seek out certain types of sounds in our busy auditory environments. 

Disabling Cities: Stories about Food, Barriers and Safety 

Cities are often celebrated as places of opportunity, connection, and inclusion. Yet for many disabled people, everyday activities such as buying groceries, travelling across town, or crossing a street can become difficult, frustrating, and dangerous. The problem is not disability itself, it is often the ways cities are designed, organized, governed, and experienced. 

More than one quarter of Canadians aged 15 and over identify as disabled, and most live in urban areas. Many report disabilities related to pain, mobility, flexibility, and mental health, ways of being that shape how people move through and experience city life. 

Drawing on decades of research, as well as my experiences with acquired hearing loss and as the parent of a disabled child, I explore how cities can disable the people who live in them. Using stories from research and everyday life, I examine three interconnected issues: the hidden relationship between disability and food insecurity; the nature of barriers that can turn an apparently accessible city into an impassable one; and the ways traffic and pedestrian environments can create disproportionate safety risks for disabled people. Taken together, these stories show how disability is shaped not only through bodies and minds, but also through the design and organization of urban life. After all, cities are not accidents; they are made by us.