AI + Data for Science (AIDa4Sci)

Quarto website for the Stanford seminar series AI + Data for Science (EE 292R / PSYCH 292R / STATS 282), Wednesdays 4:30–5:30 pm in CoDA E160.

Local preview and build

quarto preview   # live-reloading local server
quarto render    # builds the site into _site/

Publishing

Pushing to main builds and deploys the site via GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/publish.yml). Nothing is committed to a gh-pages branch — the built site is uploaded straight to Pages.

One-time setup: in the repository's Settings → Pages, set Source to GitHub Actions. Until that is done the deploy step fails.

Because this repository is private inside an enterprise organization, Pages defaults to private visibility — it is then served from a randomized *.pages.github.io hostname and requires a GitHub login with organization membership. Set the Pages visibility to Public in the same settings page, or external speakers cannot reach the schedule.

The workflow also runs on a schedule, Thursdays at 08:00 UTC. That is deliberate: the home page's "Up next" card is resolved against the build date, so without a periodic rebuild the site would keep advertising a seminar that already happened. The weekly run rolls the card over the morning after each Wednesday seminar. You can also trigger a rebuild by hand from the Actions tab.

Pointing a stanford.edu address at it

Until a stanford.edu host is wired up, the live address is https://stanford-developers.github.io/aida4sci/, and website.site-url in _quarto.yml matches it.

Ask NetDB for a DNS CNAME record, not a redirect. The record wanted is

aida4sci.stanford.edu.   IN   CNAME   stanford-developers.github.io.

A first attempt produced a host pointed at Stanford's link service (stanford.dns.bl.ink), which answered with a 307 to the github.io URL. That is a forwarder, not a custom domain: the address bar still showed the github.io URL, GitHub could not issue a certificate for the name, and adding a CNAME file under it would have failed domain verification and unpublished the site. If NetDB will not put a CNAME at that name, the fallback is A records to GitHub's Pages addresses — 185.199.108.153, 185.199.109.153, 185.199.110.153, 185.199.111.153 — but the CNAME is preferred, since it survives GitHub renumbering those.

Once dig +short aida4sci.stanford.edu answers with stanford-developers.github.io:

1. Add a file named CNAME at the repository root containing just the hostname, and list it under project.resources in _quarto.yml so it is copied into _site/ on every render.
2. Set the domain under Settings → Pages (or gh api -X PUT repos/stanford-developers/aida4sci/pages -f cname=aida4sci.stanford.edu).
3. Wait for GitHub to provision the certificate, then tick Enforce HTTPS.
4. Set website.site-url in _quarto.yml to https://aida4sci.stanford.edu/ — it feeds the sitemap and the link previews shown by search engines and chat apps. GitHub will then redirect the old github.io URL to the new one.

"Up next" on the home page

The home page shows the next seminar automatically — there is nothing to update by hand. ejs/upnext.ejs reads the same quarter YAML file as the schedule and picks the next confirmed speaker whose date has not passed. If the nearest dates are still unbooked it falls back to the next scheduled date and says the speaker is not announced yet; once the whole quarter is past, the block disappears rather than showing something stale.

Adding a speaker

1. Open the current quarter's data file, e.g. speakers/fall-2026.yml.
2. Replace the tba: true entry for the chosen date with a filled-in block — copy the example in speakers/_template.yml. Fields you omit (url, photo, bio, …) are simply not shown.
3. Drop a square-ish photo into images/speakers/ (e.g. images/speakers/jane-doe.jpg) and reference it in the photo field. If there is no photo, omit the field and a neutral placeholder is used.
4. quarto render.

Starting a new quarter

1. Create speakers/<quarter>.yml (e.g. speakers/2027-winter.yml) with one entry per seminar Wednesday.
2. Point the listing in schedule.qmd at the new file and update its title.
3. Archive the finished quarter: create past/<quarter>.qmd with the same listing front matter pointing at the old YAML file, and link it from past.qmd.

Structure

• _quarto.yml — site config (navbar, footer, theme)
• styles.scss — Stanford-cardinal styling, talk-card layout
• speakers/*.yml — one file per quarter; the single source of truth for the schedule
• ejs/speaker.ejs — template that renders each talk card
• images/ — logo, page mastheads, speaker photos; see images/README.md for the art direction and how to regenerate them
• tools/ — the generators that produce the artwork and bundle the fonts. The mastheads and logo are generated, not hand-drawn: change the parameters and re-run rather than editing SVG by hand
• fonts/ + fonts.css — bundled webfonts, so the site needs no CDN
• js/convergence.js — the home page's live hero animation