Mila Tea Talks

A cornerstone of our community for many years, Tea Talks are scientific keynote-like talks held every week during the academic year. These presentations cover a range of technical subjects related to machine learning. The talks are also open to the public.

Yoshua Bengio with other professors and students talking together

How do Tea Talks Work?

Typically, an in-house or guest speaker gives a talk lasting around an hour, with around 15 minutes devoted to questions throughout. As most of the participants are Mila students and professors, the content is geared towards this level of understanding. 

Speakers are also encouraged to stay after the lecture to talk with students in individual or group meetings to discuss research interests and ideas. 

Past Sessions

Diverse Retrieval and Generation in LLMs for Comprehensive Answers
Rethinking Creativity in the Age of Generative AI: Lessons from a Direct Comparison Between LLMs and 100,000 Humans
Pushing Forward in Geospatial: What to Keep, What to Change, What to Overhaul?
BDH: The Missing Link between the Transformer and Models of the Brain

When Will the Next Tea Talks Take Place? 

Tea Talks are typically held in Mila's auditorium on Friday mornings at 10:30 a.m. EDT. The talks are also live-streamed on Google Meet via the following link: https://meet.google.com/nqu-embv-juy 

The Tea Talks series is taking a break for the summer and return at the beginning of September 2025.

Get Schedule Notifications

To join the Tea Talks external mailing list, visit this link, click on the 'Ask to join group' button, and provide a brief description of yourself (e.g., name and affiliation/organization).

Get Tea Talks schedule notifications

Have questions or interested in becoming our next speaker?