11:00am, Marc Hertzman,The 'Indians of Palmares': Conquest, Violence, and Land in Northeast Brazil.

In 1695 after the fall of Palmares, one of history's largest and longest-lasting fugitive-slave settlements, Indigenous people who participated in its defeat staked claim to land promised to them by the Portuguese crown. For multiple reasons and in multiple ways, their history has been systematically silenced. This presentation examines this largely unexamined story while seeking to place in dialogue insights from Indigenous and diaspora Studies.

Noon, Lucas Wagner, Simplicity from Complexity: Learning Simple Physics from Detailed Quantum Simulations

Almost everything we experience in our daily life is made up of nuclei and electrons and is very precisely described by quantum mechanics. However, there is a large gap between that microscopic precision and concepts like “life,” “chair,” and “window.” Professor Wagner will describe the efforts of his research group to use computation and learning methods to begin to bridge that gap starting from the bottom.