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.
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
Panelists
Venue
George Sherman Union, Metcalf Hall, 775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215
Student Organizers
Gabriel Franco
Boston University
Zhengyang Shan
Boston University
Divya Appapogu
Boston University
Themistoklis Nikas
Boston University
Micah Benson
Boston UniversitySenior Program Committee
Aaron Mueller
Boston University
Mark Crovella
Boston University
Tamar Rott Shaham
MIT
