Mid-Hudson Valley TechMeet

Mid-Hudson Valley TechMeet 2026

The Mid-Hudson Valley TechMeet is a showcase of college student technology projects. All posters are presented by college students, and educators, researchers, and industry professionals from across the Hudson Valley join them to exchange ideas and build connections that strengthen our region's technology ecosystem. Join us for an afternoon of technology, innovation, networking, and community engagement.

The TechMeet is a poster session designed to give college students an opportunity to showcase their work, exchange ideas with peers, and connect with faculty, researchers, and industry professionals.

Abstract Submission

Thank you to the college students across the Hudson Valley who submitted abstracts for the 3rd Annual TechMeet.

Abstract submission is now closed. Join us on November 13 to see the posters!

Event Registration

All participants must register to attend MHV TechMeet 2026. Registration is free and open to students, faculty, and industry professionals. Students presenting posters must also complete the Event Registration form.

The registration form collects your contact information, affiliation, and participation preferences (presenting, networking, dietary needs). If you submitted an abstract, your abstract ID will be linked to your registration. You will also provide the name spelling for your certificate of participation.

Register to Attend

If you have difficulty with the form, email mhvtechmeet@gmail.com.

Call for Judges

We are seeking volunteer judges and mentors from industry, academia, and research to evaluate student poster presentations and provide constructive feedback. Judges play a vital role in recognizing student achievement and inspiring the next generation of Hudson Valley technologists.

Judges are assigned 3–5 posters based on their technical background and availability. Judging takes place during the poster session (2:00 – 4:00 PM). Judges should plan to spend approximately 2 hours evaluating student posters and providing feedback. Completing the judges form also registers you for the event — no separate registration is needed.

Areas of expertise sought

AI / Machine Learning · Software Engineering · Cybersecurity · Data Science · Hardware / EDA · Robotics / IoT · Cloud Computing · Quantum Computing · Business / Entrepreneurship

Volunteer to Judge

Questions? Email mhvtechmeet@gmail.com.

Venue

Bridge for Laboratory Sciences Building
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

View Building on Campus Map

Attendees can park in the South Lot. Please avoid any areas marked as reserved.

Event Schedule

Invited Speaker

Slava Pestov

Compiler Developer, Apple Inc.

Talk: "Swift: A High-Level Systems Language"

Abstract

While the field of programming language design and implementation is as old as computing itself, it is far from being a solved problem. With this talk, I will highlight some recent developments and hope to get you interested in making your own contribution!

Traditionally, programmers faced a choice between high-level and low-level languages. High-level languages give up some performance to gain safety and expressivity, while low-level languages offer precise control over execution at the cost of making it more difficult to write correct code. In the last decade or so, a new crop of "high-level systems" languages have emerged—with Swift being one example—to try to bridge this gap between high and low-level programming. To achieve their goals, these languages go beyond the topics covered in a typical compilers course.

I will focus on two topics in my talk. First up, to support various developer tools, we must be able to answer questions about parts of the user’s program without compiling the whole thing. This requires a re-think of the classic "pipeline" of parsing, analysis, and code generation. Second of all, instead of relying on runtime checks to enforce safety, high-level systems languages have the compiler prove various properties about the user's code at compile time. The art of balancing type annotation burden with convenience brings us directly to key concepts from theoretical computer science, such as decidability, and NP-hardness.

About the speaker

Slava Pestov is a compiler developer at Apple, where he has spent over a decade as one of the most active contributors to the Swift compiler. His work spans the type checker, Swift's stable ABI, library evolution, and a new generics implementation based on term rewriting — the Requirement Machine. He is also the author of Compiling Swift Generics, a book on the Swift generics implementation.

Before Apple, Slava led the development of the Factor programming language and worked at Google on firmware and Linux device drivers for data center storage. He is also the original author of jEdit, one of the earliest programmer's text editors with a plugin package manager.

Speaker Homepage  ·  GitHub  ·  Mastodon

Submitted Posters

Accepted posters will be posted here following the abstract review process. Poster titles, presenters, institutions, and categories will be published by November 6, 2026.

Steering Committee — MHV TechMeet 2026