The 3rd New England Mechanistic Interpretability (NEMI) workshop

August 14, 2026, Boston University

About the Workshop

The New England Mechanistic Interpretability (NEMI) workshop aims to bring together academic and industry researchers from the New England and surrounding regions who are advancing the field of mechanistic interpretability in machine learning systems. The workshop will serve as a forum to share recent progress, challenges, and ideas in reverse-engineering, circuit analysis, and other techniques that seek to understand how models compute internally. NEMI seeks to foster a participatory and collaborative environment where researchers at all levels—including graduate students, early-career scientists, and established experts—can engage in discussion and feedback. We particularly encourage submissions from rising researchers currently enrolled in graduate programs at New England-based universities. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) interpretability of neural circuits, probe-based analysis, feature attribution methods, model simplification, actionable interp, and interp for science. The workshop will feature a dynamic program including invited keynote speakers, selected oral presentations, interactive poster sessions, and opportunities for open discussion.

To contact the conference organizers, please email nemiworkshop [at] gmail [dot] com.

2025 NEMI Photo

Registration

Registration for NEMI is now open! We aim to foster deeper connections between New England-based researchers and encourage anyone interested in mechanistic interpretability to join us regardless of experience level.
Registration deadline is July 27th, 2026.

Submission

We invite submissions for the NEMI 2026 workshop. We welcome submissions on all aspects of interpretability.
Submission deadline is August 1st, 2026

Livestream

Join Livestream (Passcode 533510)

Schedule

Time
Event
Venue
9:00 - 9:30 Breakfast & Registration GSU 219B and Stone Lobby
9:30 - 9:40 Opening Remarks GSU 219B
9:40 - 10:10 Keynote 1: Tom McGrath, "Mechanistic Explanations & Mechanistic Alignment" GSU 219B
10:10 - 10:20 Student Talk 1: Ann Huang, "One mechanism among many: traversing the space of functionally equivalent solutions" GSU 219B
10:20 - 10:30 Student Talk 2: Michael Hannah, "Interpreting Bayesian Inference in Language Models" GSU 219B
10:30 - 11:00 Keynote 2: Natalie Shapira, "Agents of Chaos and Genuine Alignment" GSU 219B
11:00 - 11:15 Coffee Break + Poster Session 1 Setup GSU 219A
11:15 - 12:30 Poster Session 1 GSU 219A
12:30 - 2:00 Lunch + Group photo + Themed Roundtables GSU 219B
2:00 - 2:30 Keynote 3: Belinda Li, "Consistency Is a Prerequisite for Interpretability" GSU 219B
2:30 - 2:40 Student Talk 3: Rohit Gandikota, "Gaze Heads: How VLMs Look at What They Describe" GSU 219B
2:40 - 2:50 Student Talk 4: Yoav Gur-Arieh, "Faithfulness Metrics Don't Measure Faithfulness: A Meta-Evaluation with Ground Truth" GSU 219B
2:50 - 3:20 Keynote 4: Stephen Casper, "Why I Don't Work on Mechanistic Interpretability (plus what I'd do if I were)" GSU 219B
3:20 - 3:35 Coffee Break + Poster Session 2 Setup GSU 219A
3:35 - 4:50 Poster Session 2 GSU 219A
4:50 - 5:40 Panel: "What can interpretability do for science, and vice versa?" GSU 219B
5:40 - 5:45 Closing Remarks GSU 219B
6:00+ Social (registration required) CDS 17th floor

Keynote Speakers

Tom McGrath

Tom McGrath

Goodfire
Natalie Shapira

Natalie Shapira

Northeastern
Belinda Li

Belinda Li

Anthropic & UChicago
Stephen Casper

Stephen Casper

Harvard University

Panelists

Ellie Pavlick

Ellie Pavlick

Brown University
Atticus Geiger

Atticus Geiger

Goodfire
Elizabeth Barnes

Elizabeth Barnes

Boston University
David Bau

David Bau

Northeastern University
Melanie Weber

Melanie Weber

Harvard University

Venue

George Sherman Union, Metcalf Hall, 775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215

Student Organizers

Organizer 1

Gabriel Franco

Boston University
Organizer 1

Zhengyang Shan

Boston University
Organizer 1

Divya Appapogu

Boston University
Organizer 1

Themistoklis Nikas

Boston University
Organizer 1

Micah Benson

Boston University

Senior Program Committee

Organizer 1

Aaron Mueller

Boston University
Organizer 1

Mark Crovella

Boston University
Organizer 1

Tamar Rott Shaham

MIT
Organizer 1

Naomi Saphra

Boston University

Sponsors

We thank our sponsors for their generous support!