Awakening Elementary School System in University

Hearing those two names, Annie felt her breath catch.

’Faltins? Deligne?’

’So Chen Lin was already on the radar of these two titans?’

However, Chen Lin, the man at the center of it all, was completely clueless.

’Faltins? Deligne?’

’Who’re they?’

His knowledge of the academic mathematics community was basically limited to the long-dead names from textbooks, like Newton, Euler, and Gauss.

As for the living legends, aside from names like Qiu Chengtong and Terence Tao, he had only learned about them after hearing them mentioned and then looking them up on a search engine.

So when Schultz mentioned these two names, he truly drew a blank.

However, when he caught a glimpse of Annie’s shocked expression out of the corner of his eye, he immediately understood.

’No need to ask. They must be another two heavyweight titans.’

So, Chen Lin quickly composed himself, put on a serious and solemn expression, and gave a thoughtful nod.

"Thank you for the heads-up. It’s an honor to have the attention of these two esteemed figures.

I will be sure to prepare diligently for my presentation tomorrow. I’ll do my best so that if there’s an online Q&A, I won’t be met with awkward silence."

Schultz couldn’t help but chuckle at his deadpan humor.

"Haha, with your level of skill, I’m sure you’ll be just fine!"

Schultz patted Chen Lin on the shoulder, then glanced at the time and made his excuses to leave.

"Alright, I’ll let you be. My mind is buzzing with all your wonderful conjectures. I need to get back to my hotel and sort through them! See you tomorrow!"

With that, the young Fields Medal laureate clutched his briefcase and left the lounge with a spring in his step, like a child with a new toy.

Watching Schultz’s retreating figure, Chen Lin couldn’t help but chuckle and shake his head.

He ignored Annie, who was still petrified beside him, and instead lifted his phone to check the time.

9:50 AM.

There were still ten minutes until the next presentation.

He turned to Shen Yan beside him and asked quietly, "Is there a session at ten that you want to see?"

At his question, Shen Yan took out her phone and opened her notes app. She had clearly done her homework.

She scrolled through the screen for a moment before looking up. "There’s one in the Yanbei breakout venue. The topic is related to artificial intelligence algorithms. The speaker is Professor Ankur Moitra from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

’MIT?’

Almost subconsciously, Chen Lin and Shen Yan both turned to look at the young blonde woman beside them, who was still completely spaced out.

Startled by their synchronized stares, Annie finally managed to snap out of the massive, worldview-shattering shock she’d been in.

She blinked her big, beautiful sea-blue eyes and asked blankly, "What’s wrong? Why... why are you looking at me like that?"

Chen Lin didn’t say anything. He just took out his phone, deftly opened the conference’s official webpage, and found the schedule for the ten o’clock sessions.

He quickly found Professor Moitra’s profile page, turned the phone screen toward Annie, and pointed to the picture of a middle-aged San man with deep brown skin and a scholarly air. "This man," he asked tentatively,

"Don’t tell me this is your advisor, is he?"

"Yes, that’s..."

Annie nodded subconsciously. Halfway through her sentence, she shot up from the sofa like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on, letting out a short, sharp shriek.

"Ah! My advisor’s lecture! Oh my God, I almost forgot!"

...

「Five minutes later, Breakout Hall 3.」

Chen Lin, Shen Yan, and Annie stood at the back entrance of the lecture hall. Looking at the sea of people before them, they all felt their scalps tingle with shock.

This time, forget about the prime seats in the front rows—even the most remote corners of the back row were already packed.

Even more incredibly, the aisles on both sides of the hall had been filled with rows of simple plastic stools, squeezed in wherever there was a gap, and these were also completely full.

A steady stream of people was still trying to squeeze in through the doorway, making the scene comparable to a subway at peak rush hour.

’Jeez...’

Chen Lin couldn’t help but marvel.

This turnout was more than double the size of the crowd for Schultz’s talk.

It just went to show how incredibly hot the field of artificial intelligence was. With the added prestige of the MIT brand name, it was only logical that it would attract such a large audience.

𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The conference venues, however, were all assigned in advance.

An important presentation was also about to begin in the main auditorium at the same time, so no matter how many people showed up here, they just had to find a way to squeeze into this room.

"My advisor is pretty well-known in academic circles,"

Annie explained, standing on her tiptoes to search for her advisor in the crowd.

"He may not be as dazzling as Professor Terence Tao or Professor Schulz, but getting a tenured position in the MIT Department of Mathematics within fifteen years of earning his doctorate, while also serving as the director of our school’s Center for Statistics and Data Science... that’s already incredibly impressive!"

That much was true.

Even a layman like Chen Lin, who knew little about the academic world, understood that getting tenure at a place like MIT—reputed to be the top science and technology institution on Blue Star—while also heading a major research center, meant this person was absolutely among the elite few at the very top of the scientific pecking order.

The three of them had just found seats when a refined-looking, middle-aged San man in a dark gray suit walked unhurriedly onto the stage, laptop in hand.

It was Professor Moitra.

Like Schultz, he dispensed with any unnecessary pleasantries. After setting up his equipment, he began his presentation.

Data Geometry and Training Dynamics in Large Model Training

It had to be said, Annie’s advisor really knew his stuff.

The entire presentation was packed with substance, and his logic was crystal clear.

He cleverly analogized the incredibly complex training process of large models to a "gradient flow" within a parameter space. Then, from a purely geometric perspective, he explained in simple yet profound terms how the geometric properties of this "gradient flow" affect core metrics like the model’s convergence and generalization ability.

Chen Lin and Shen Yan were both listening with rapt attention.

Chen Lin, in particular, found his eyes growing brighter the more he listened.

’This Professor Moitra is the real deal!’

The presentation was concise and hit right at the core of the issue, explaining an extremely complex, cutting-edge problem with perfect clarity.

What surprised and delighted Chen Lin the most was that when Professor Moitra presented the pure mathematical theory, he had thoughtfully included corresponding pseudocode for large model training on his slides.

For Chen Lin, who was teaching himself about large AI models, this code was an absolute godsend!

He didn’t hesitate to pull out his phone and snap a flurry of pictures of those slides, planning to study them carefully later.