I go to UChicago; that place is sort of like an eerie mystery box that nobody ever goes to or talks about. I didn't even find out about it's existence until my 3rd year here. My one friend who's been in there described the experience as really bizarre; it left him half convinced that its actually a front for some sort of Israeli money laundering operation.

They have some very prominent machine learning folks there and I went to the Machine Learning Summer School they hosted a few years back. Seemed legitimate enough to me!

Please encourage him to blog on it and post to HN. Sounds entertaining.