Heidelberg Laureate Forum: the hidden paradise I had been looking for

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Heidelberg Laureate Forum is, without exception, the best academic event I have ever attended. Heidelberg itself is a sanctuary of scholarship with the charm of a classical German town (it even escaped the bombs of the Second World War) — so much so that I can’t bring myself to post about it on rednote. If too many people find out, 20,000 will apply next year, the acceptance rate will drop below one percent, and it won’t be fun anymore. So I’m only sharing it with friends here — consider this my recommendation.

The HLF is a forum for young researchers in mathematics and computer science. Each year about 200 of them attend — undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and early-career scientists — half from computer science, half from mathematics. Their research is wonderfully diverse, and not that many of them work on AI, which made me marvel that there are still mathematicians and computer scientists who don’t do AI, haha (probably because my own AI concentration is far too high).

Of course, AI came up again and again this year, because people feel a strong sense of urgency about it. Some researchers have joined the AI journey (like this year’s Fields Medallist Jacob, who joined OpenAI and founded Maisi), while others are still holding out.

More than 20 laureates of the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize, the Turing Award, the Abel Prize and the ACM Prize in Computing were there: I finally met people who had only existed in my textbooks, the pioneers and founding figures of computer science and mathematics. You can have long heart-to-heart conversations with them, or say hello and take photos at all kinds of events. My strongest impression from talking to them: they are real, living people with no airs at all, and they gave me a lot to think about philosophically (since I couldn’t follow the mathematics).

Still, the happiest part was being social with a crowd of young people — singing, dancing, having fun together. During research hours we may all be nerds, but once the party starts everyone unleashes a second personality: high energy, full of charisma, playing to their heart’s content.

The young researchers came from more than 60 countries — very much a global village. The organiser, the HLFF, planned every part of the week with great care, balancing science and socialising beautifully, and took us to Heidelberg’s sights, its castle and estates, and all sorts of good food. In a way, this is the hidden paradise I had been searching for all along.

The idea of looking for a “hidden paradise” first came to me in 2020, at a research poster competition at KAUST. Despite my clumsy spoken English, I felt that kind of atmosphere for the first time: a global village, where people could talk about anything under the sun and be curious about endless horizons and countless other people. You could talk tech, or fall back on anime and rap. Later, DBA took this kind of social life to its peak; then it went into a steep decline and stopped abruptly, and I gradually turned into a research introvert.

Some will ask: what is the point of going to something like this?

What is the point, anyway?

Pausing your research for a week, going to an unfamiliar country to be a “social terrorist” (Chinese internet slang for someone fearlessly outgoing), meeting a crowd of different people and stepping into different identities — it is like living your life one more time.

The existence of a paradise like this is the point in itself.

Oh, and all of this was funded by the HLFF. I also received the Abbe Grant issued by the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung. Of course, those are the least important part. If I have the chance and the time, I’ll be back!

Heidelberg | Yuchen Li

Heidelberg Laureate Forum: the hidden paradise I had been looking for