Computational Science and Engineering

**REGISTER AT THE LUMA EVENT PAGE!!!** https://luma.com/2e6rhzjo **Agenda:** ​​6:00 - 6:30 PM - Welcome and mingle 6:30- 6:45 PM - Introductions 6:45 - 7:30 PM - Talk 7:30 - 8:00 PM - Wrap up ​​**Description:** ​IAI coding agents can now scaffold entire applications from a single prompt. But for mission-critical systems that require compliance, reliability, and auditability, "it works on my machine" isn't enough. When your agent makes fifty tool calls, rewrites three files, and confidently hallucinates a security vulnerability, how do you even begin to debug that? ​This talk introduces a practical, open-source toolkit for injecting observability, control, and systematic testing into agentic AI development. Using MLflow's tracing and evaluation framework, we'll follow a single throughline: building an AI agent with a coding assistant (Claude Code), tracing both the assistant's work **and** the agent it produces, then evaluating quality with LLM judges - closing the loop from development through production monitoring. ​You'll walk away with a concrete workflow for turning the black box of agentic coding into something you can inspect, measure, and trust. No vendor lock-in required. ​**Speaker Bio:** ​Tim Lortz is an AI Product Specialist at Databricks, where he has worked since 2019. He currently serves as the technical lead for Databricks' go-to-market efforts for AI in regulated industries, focusing particularly on enterprise-grade governance for AI platforms. ​ Prior to Databricks, Tim spent many years in various data science practitioner and leadership roles in the Federal contracting space. He holds a PhD in Industrial & Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!!) and a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.

Spec-driven development flips the traditional workflow on its head: instead of code being the source of truth, the specification becomes the backbone of design, collaboration, and delivery. In this session, we’ll explore how GitHub Spec-Kit enables teams to treat specifications as first-class artifacts—living documents that drive architecture, implementation, and verification. You’ll learn how Spec-Kit helps teams clearly express intent using structured, version-controlled specs that live alongside code. We’ll walk through a practical workflow that starts with defining system behavior and constraints, then progressively refines those specs into testable, automatable outcomes. Along the way, we’ll show how specs can reduce ambiguity, improve cross-functional collaboration, and make design decisions explicit before a single line of production code is written. This talk will cover: --What spec-driven development is (and what it isn’t) --How GitHub Spec-Kit fits into modern developer workflows --Using specs to align product, engineering, and AI-assisted development --Real-world examples of turning specs into implementations with confidence Whether you’re building greenfield systems, integrating AI into your stack, or trying to reduce costly rework, spec-driven development offers a scalable way to move faster without sacrificing clarity. Attendees will leave with concrete patterns and a clear mental model for adopting GitHub Spec-Kit in their own projects.

Everyone is welcome to attend our weekly happy hour, at Tony & Joe's Waterfront Bar in Georgetown (3000 K. St, NW). The event goes from 7:15 to around 10:00 PM. Feel free to show up at any time. French speakers of all levels- from beginners to expats- are invited. We hope to see you there!

[Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Torture in the Middle Ages,”** with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, visiting assistant teaching professor of English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and author or editor of ten books on medieval violence. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-torture-middle-ages](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-torture-middle-ages) .] When *Pulp Fiction*’s Marsellus Wallace vows to “get medieval” on someone we assume that they’re in for some serious pain. Torture—that most notorious aspect of medieval culture and society—more recently has been portrayed in popular culture in series like G*ame of Thrones* and *Vikings*, through lurid scenes depicting torture and gruesome punishment as standard medieval practice. In many modern European cities one can find popular museums displaying such gruesome implements as the rack, the strappado, the gridiron, the wheel, and the iron maiden. The dominant mythology suggests that the Middle Ages was a period during which sadistic torment was inflicted on citizens with impunity and without provocation. The truth, however, is a lot more complicated. Join Professor Larissa “Kat” Tracy, who has extensively researched torture, punishment, and social justice in medieval society, for a talk challenging preconceived ideas that popular historians, films, and media have promoted about the prevalence of torture and judicial brutality in medieval society. She’ll discuss medieval Europe’s actual use of torture—the instruments, the laws, the cultural norms, and the victims—and make clear that the act of punishment was actually a very different legal event. She’ll argue that the portrayals of medieval torture in literature represent satire, critique and dissent; they have didactic and political functions in opposing the status quo. The books that Professor Tracy has written or edited include *Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature*; *Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages*; *Medieval and Early Modern Murder*; *Flaying in the Premodern World*, and most recently *End Game: Exile and Execution in Medieval and Early Modern Society*. When she gets medieval on you it means you are going to learn. The experience, however, won’t be painful at all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: Torture instruments on display at Prague Castle. Photo by Clayton Tang / Wikimedia Commons.

Let's get together to play some fun BB level Quads games at Bluemont. **Format**: Doubles **COST**: FREE **Court Type**: Outdoor grass **Minimum Skill Requirements**: Intermediate-BB (click [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PojSi4qdlRsv1msCHhvpQ43iDc4FfzQwpWCc3kafVMY/mobilebasic) for details) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **Smiley Social documents:** 1. [Group Rules ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HrG35p_0M08leRvCp8XWG3CMkr_GL928XFabl5T6Dvg) 2. [Liability Waiver ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W2mq-7m99lmvd7gdWYaSUFtvVg4UGnzV6koafAbHmco) 3. [Volleyball Levels](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PojSi4qdlRsv1msCHhvpQ43iDc4FfzQwpWCc3kafVMY/)

Pitch your idea, get feedback, give feedback, meet with a mentor and most importantly, take action. Come to the meetup with a specific issue you are stuck with. **10:30 am Introductions:** 2-minute pitches tell us who you are? What you're working on? and what you need help with? **11:00 am Problem Solving:** Let's figure out how we can help, and what action you can take today to move forward. **12:00 pm** Open Networking: Keep the discussion going and connect with other attendees. Bring yourself, notebooks, laptops and anything else you need to pitch your idea and get work done. Interested in joining the Studio? [APPLY NOW](https://unstucklabs.com)

💃 Beginner-Friendly Dance Fitness Get ready to move, sweat, and have fun! This high-energy class blends Brazilian Carnival vibes with global street dance for a full-body workout that doesn’t feel like one. ✨ No experience needed ✨ No partner required ✨ Just come ready to move and enjoy the music Expect a fun, welcoming environment where you can let go, build confidence, and leave feeling amazing. 📍 Location: Salsa With Silvia (Bethesda) – Studio B ⏰ Please arrive 5–10 minutes early 💵 Drop-in: $12 (pay at the door or message for details) 🔗 More info + schedule: https://fitnesswithmikissz.com/connect-with-miki Let’s sweat, dance, and make it a vibe 🔥

# 🧠 **Build With Me #1: Prompt to Product (Live Demo Night)** 🗓 Wednesday \| 7–9 PM 📍 Venue: Martha Washington Library Ever had an idea… but no clue how to actually build it? In this session, we’ll take a simple idea and turn it into a real, working product — live. No slides. No theory. Just building. *** ## ⚡ What You’ll See * Idea → working app in real time * A project dashboard built from scratch * A landing page generated and refined live * How AI improves as it learns your context *** ## 🧠 What You’ll Learn * How to talk to AI effectively (prompting that actually works) * How to go from vague idea → structured build * How non-engineers can start building real tools *** ## 🎯 Who This Is For * People with ideas they haven’t built yet * Developers curious about AI workflows * Founders, operators, and side-hustlers *** This is your starting point. Come see what’s possible — and how fast you can get there.

**The next GeoDC will be held on Wednesday, May 6 from 6-9pm at Sudhouse DC (1340 U St NW, Washington, DC 20009) with the program starting at 7pm.** We’ve got 3 presentations scheduled for the evening– Please check out the program details below. Join us early from 6-7pm to grow your network, socialize and grab a snack. Our host, Sudhouse DC has a solid happy hour menu with reasonably priced food and beverage from 4-8pm. Please remember to [RSVP through the GeoDC Meetup page](https://www.meetup.com/geo-dc/), and we hope to see you in a few weeks. *If you’d like to present or sponsor a future GeoDC Meetup, please complete this [form](https://forms.gle/QbAXPfrDnX12GGaS8).* **Brian Davidson:** **Zero to Map: A 10-Minute Geospatial Speedrun with Gemini** * Think building a functional mapping application requires hours of boilerplate and API frustration? Think again. In this talk, we’ll race against the clock to build a live mapping app from scratch using Gemini and Antigravity. You’ll see how to leverage LLMs to handle everything from a mapping provider integration to complex coordinate rendering in minutes. Whether you’re a seasoned GIS pro or a curious dev, my hope is you'll leave with a better understanding of how to turn your idea into a working map before your coffee gets cold. **Noah Goodman**: **Voyager Solutions** * The Voyager platform has enabled customers to resolve data management issues, such as duplication, lack of governance & metadata. Demos of the Voyager platform capabilities and will discussion of a recent State DOT project. **Dr. Aditya Kapoor: Assessment of Inundation Dynamics in Nebraska Using AlphaEarth Foundations** **Embeddings** * This study demonstrates that AlphaEarth Foundation Embeddings (AFE) provide a highly efficient, "analysis-ready" framework for mapping regional surface water inundation without the computational burden of traditional multi-source data fusion. By applying Random Forest classifiers to AFE data across 901 Nebraska lakes from 2017 to 2025, I found that this method outperformed existing products like Dynamic World, which exhibited estimation errors of up to 43.8%. The analysis revealed a critical environmental trend: a mean inundation decline of over 6,600 m² per year, closely mirroring a regional rainfall reduction of 14.18 mm/year. Ultimately, the findings highlight AFE as a scalable tool for identifying hydrological instabilities, particularly in smaller water bodies, offering significant advantages for real-world water resource planning and flood risk assessment.

What does it look like when ideas come to life? Join NOVA Scribes and MAFN for a full-day, in-person open house where the public is invited to step inside the world of facilitation. This is a come-and-go experience designed for curiosity, exploration, and conversation. Whether you are new to facilitation groups, you are welcome. The space will be set up as a "theater in the round," (see the image) with facilitators working live around the room. Throughout the day, you will see different techniques, styles, and modalities demonstrated in real time, from visual templates, facilitation tools, and decision-support methods. You can observe, ask questions, and engage directly with the practitioners as the work unfolds. **What you can expect** * Live demonstrations of facilitation techniques * Multiple practitioners working simultaneously, each with their own approach and style * Short, informal demos and tiny teaches that explain how and why specific techniques are used * Opportunities to talk one-on-one with experienced facilitators * A chance to see how facilitation can support sensemaking, alignment, and group dialogue **What you might explore** * Methods and templates for planning, strategy, and reflection * Facilitation methods that support participation and decision making * Tools, materials, and setup considerations for live work This open house is designed to be accessible, hands-on, and inspiring. You do not need to stay all day. Come for 20 minutes or stay for hours. Watch ideas take shape. Notice how facilitation can change the energy in the room. Ask the questions you have always wanted to ask. If you have ever been curious about how facilitation works and supports groups, this is your chance to experience it up close. **Open to the general public. No prior experience required.** We’re not charging for this workshop, but we will be asking for donations!

Join Service Design DC for a community movie night focused on learning, reflection, and connection through two keynote presentations from last year’s Service Design Global Conference. SDGC25 brought the global service design community together around the theme “Business Transformation by Design,” exploring how service design can influence strategy, operations, and customer experience across organizations. For this gathering, we’ll watch 2 selected talks from SDGC25, then open up a casual group discussion about what resonated, what feels relevant for our work now, and what these ideas might mean for service design practice in DC. The 2025 conference centered on service design’s role in helping organizations navigate cross-functional transformation, making these talks especially relevant for practitioners working across systems, teams, and change. **What to expect** * Watch 2 selected presentations from SDGC25 together. * Casual facilitated discussion after each talk. * Time to connect with other service design and adjacent practitioners in the DC area. **Evening Agenda** 6:00 P.M. - Doors Open + Socializing & Networking 6:30 P.M. - First talk highlights + conversation 7:15 P.M. - Second talk highlights + conversation 8:00 P.M. - Wrap up **Many thanks to our host and sponsor, MediaBarn!** *Mediabarn’s customer-centric philosophy defines who we are.* *In its simplest form, we are committed to applying Human-Centered Design (HCD) methods to understand customer needs, collect feedback, and use that feedback to improve services and products. Whether it’s for customers, citizens, or employees, our Experience Design Studio creates research-informed designs to improve the experience of every human involved.*

Join us on **Thursday, May 7th** for Kickback & Connect in **Washington, D.C.** From magazines to motion graphics and from newsrooms to nonprofits, if you make things in D.C., you’re invited. This is a low-key happy hour bringing together designers and creatives across disciplines in the DMV to kickback, connect, and share ideas—no panels, no pitches, no pressure. We hope to see you there! **Book launch:** Designer, author, and educator Reginé Gilbert will be signing copies of her book ‘Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind’ (2nd edition.) [https://reginegilbert.com/](https://reginegilbert.com/) **Music by: Friends on Mars** Hosted by Good People DC and **[SPD](https://www.spd.org/)**, a nonprofit design community rooted in publishing and creative excellence. No cover charge = no excuse not to come Must be 21 to enter. Please drink responsibly.

Customer identity resolution becomes increasingly complex as organizations scale across multiple systems, regions, and data formats. Traditional rule-based approaches often fail to keep up with data variability, require constant manual tuning, and struggle with real-time processing needs. This session presents a practical approach to building a scalable identity resolution pipeline using AWS services and modern AI techniques. The architecture combines data ingestion through Amazon S3 and AWS Glue, transformation pipelines using Spark on EMR, and machine learning models deployed via SageMaker for entity matching and standardization. Graph-based relationship modeling is implemented using Amazon Neptune to improve resolution accuracy by incorporating household and shared attribute context. We will walk through how machine learning models can be used for name and address normalization, how intelligent blocking strategies improve matching efficiency, and how feedback loops can be introduced to continuously improve accuracy. The session also highlights how serverless components such as AWS Lambda can be used for orchestration and real-time processing. **SPEAKER BIO** Mosaic Syed is a Senior Data Engineering and Cloud Solutions Architect with over 20 years of experience designing and delivering scalable, secure, and high-performance data solutions across global enterprise environments. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mosaic-basha-syed-92300856 **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: [https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/](https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/) **THANK YOU** *VEEAM* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Veeam*, please visit their website: [https://www.veeam.com/](https://www.veeam.com/) **DIRECTIONS** 8800 Lyra Dr #450 · Columbus, OH go to 4th floor. **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

Join us for a practical, beginner-friendly guide to choosing the right large language model. We’ll compare major models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama, talk about when to use hosted APIs versus local models, and break down the tradeoffs around cost, speed, quality, privacy, context windows, coding ability, and reliability. You’ll leave with a clearer mental model for picking an LLM based on your actual use case instead of hype, benchmarks, or brand names. No deep AI background required. LOGISTICS AND PARKING: The talk starts at 7:00 PM. The first half hour is reserved for everyone to get set up and mingle. Free pizza and drinks! The cheapest parking option is to find street parking, which will only cost you a few bucks. Otherwise, park in the nearby veteran's museum lot for $8. It's highly recommended you avoid the nearby $15 garage parking.

We will show how to build custom agents with Microsoft Agent Framework. Attendees will learn how to build and custom host agents when Microsoft Foundry is not a viable option.

FREE event [https://www.ccad.edu/chroma](https://www.ccad.edu/chroma) Friday, May 15, 3–7 p.m. CCAD campus, 60 Cleveland Ave, Columbus, OH Join Columbus College of Art & Design for *2025* *Chroma: Best of CCAD*, our annual campuswide exhibition showcasing outstanding student work from across the college’s academic programs. This faculty-juried show features select work from CCAD students of all class years, and is a can’t-miss end-of-year campus celebration recognizing their tremendous achievements. It’ll be a night of fun and entertainment, with interactive games, animation and film screenings, art symposiums, poetry and prose readings, and more (along with some of the best local food trucks). *Chroma* is free and open to all. Many exhibitions including... **Game Art & Design:** **DSB, first floor, Welcome Center lobby and Room 115**

**Improving Office in Franklinton** Physical location: Improving Office 330 Rush Alley Suite #150 Columbus, OH 43215 Schedule: 6:00 p.m.: Socialize, eat, and drink. Improving will be providing pizza and beverages. 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Main meeting and presentation(s). Topic: This month John Lairson will share a notebook describing the Alpaca (Paper) Trading API and discuss different algorithms for evaluating stock trades. We meet on the last Monday of each Month. Presentations are given by members and friends of this group. If you would like to do a presentation (small or large) on a python topic, please contact Central OH Python at centralohpython@gmail.com

Practical AI for Power BI Developers A year ago, “agentic AI” was mostly hype for Power BI teams. Today, it deserves your undivided attention. For Power BI pros, there is now a real opportunity to reduce repetitive development work, accelerate delivery, and help developers do more, but only when strong DataOps practices are in place to make AI workflows effective. This session is a no-nonsense introduction to effective AI patterns for Power BI and Fabric development. Along the way, we will make sense of the growing pile of terminology, including skills, plugins, hooks, and MCP. You will see examples of how modern AI tooling can help with development tasks across Power BI and Fabric, along with the prerequisites, guardrails, and DataOps principles needed to use it responsibly. Whether you're burned out on AI hype or already using Copilot CLI daily, this session will show you the foundations that are finally making AI-assisted development genuinely useful.

Central Ohio Radio Enthusiasts—CORE—is an informal community for anyone enthusiastic or curious about radio—whether you're new to radio and want to learn or you've been tinkering for years and want to share. Ham radio operators, GMRS users, Meshtastic fans, software-defined radio nerds, makers, and technical and non-technical folks are all welcome. No experience required or expected. This month we have **Radio Signal Analysis Using SDRs and OpenWebRX+** with **Scott McCrory**. Details are are [core.radio](https://core.radio/).