The NCSU SIAM student chapter will be hosting a Mathematics in Industry seminar on April 29 at 2PM. Our speakers will be Andrea Klaiber-Langen and Vakhtang Putkaradze from ATCO.

Title: The Role of PhDs in Industry

Abstract: Congratulations, you are graduating with a PhD! You have done fantastic work in your thesis and are ready to take on the world. What is going to happen now? Should you go to industry or academia? You probably heard a lot about both job choices. In this lecture, the speakers, Andrea Klaiber-Langen and Vakhtang Putkaradze, VPs of Transformation in ATCO, will present some insights related to the role of PhDs in industry from their own experience in the ATCO transformation team. Most of the lecture will be dedicated to a free discussion which, we hope, will dispel some myths and misunderstandings about what the employment in industry is like. The speakers will also share thoughts on what a good way to prepare for a successful career will be for those who are interested in this choice.

The SIAM student chapter is hosting a machine learning workshop that will be led by Dylan Bates at 2 PM on April 22, 2021.

Title: Machine Learning: My First Neural Networks

Abstract: Machine learning has blown up in popularity in the past decade, with applications from healthcare to self-driving cars, being used to create art, play video games, and act as customer service representatives. One of the most common and useful tools for these applications are neural networks: universal function approximators. This interactive workshop is meant for people with little or no machine learning experience, and is split into three parts: classification, convolutions, and autoencoders, and will cover all of the necessary mathematical background to get your first neural networks up and running. We will be using the popular MNIST dataset as a starting point for your own future research with machine learning tools. Consider this an ad for Dr. Flores and Dr. Tran’s Applications of Machine Learning class in the Fall.

No experience with AI is required, but it helps if you’ve used Python before, and a background in calculus and linear algebra is helpful.

Slides and Interactive Code: https://github.com/dwgb93/SIAM-Neural-Nets

The SIAM student chapter is hosting a Mathematics in Industry seminar at 2 PM on April 15, 2021. Our speaker is Dustin Kapraun.

Abstract: Dustin Kapraun attained degrees in mathematics (B.S., 1998), physics (M.S., 2002), and applied mathematics (Ph.D., 2014), all from North Carolina State University. After finishing the Ph.D., he completed two postdoctoral research appointments at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Center for Computational Toxicology, during which he developed physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models for human pregnancy and data mining methods for identifying prevalent combinations of chemicals in humans. In 2017, Dr. Kapraun joined the EPA National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) as a Physical Scientist specializing in PBPK modeling for chemical risk assessment applications. He currently works at the EPA Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA), where he continues to develop and apply PBPK and other mathematical and statistical models to support chemical risk assessments and serves as a Co-Chair of the CPHEA Pharmacokinetics Workgroup (PKWG). Dr. Kapraun still has a passion for education, which he satisfies by mentoring postdoctoral researchers in quantitative risk assessment methods and leading workshops and training sessions on PBPK modeling and related topics. In this talk, Dr. Kapraun will describe a variety of interesting problems he has encountered during his time at EPA and how he and his colleagues have applied mathematical and computational methods to generate solutions.