A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Supercomputers and Big Data
Thursday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Meyer Science Center, Lecture Hall, room 145
Speaker: Dr. Pete Beckman of Argonne National Laboratory
Join Dr. Pete Beckman of Argonne National Laboratory in this general audience lecture on how supercomputers and big data are changing our lives. Computer simulation and modeling are being used to inform key climate-related policy questions for our nation, understand brain aneurysms, design more fuel efficient jet engines, and explore the influence of dark energy in the universe. The presentation will include an overview of computing, from simple computers, Moore's law, and physics-based games such as Angry Birds to the design of one of the world's fastest computers, Mira, recently installed at Argonne National Laboratory. We will also look into the future of big data, with things like Watson, the Jeopardy! winning computer, augmented reality, self-driving cars, and the quantified self.
Dr. Beckman, a leader in the development of high-performance supercomputers, is a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, Director of Exascale Technology and Computing Institute, and Co-Director of Northwestern-Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering.
2013 ACCA Mathematics Lecture Series
Tuesday, April 9 from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Meyer Science Center, Room 145
Speaker: Melanie Matchett Wood, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin
While a high school student, Melanie became the first female American to make the U.S. International Math Olympiad Team. At Duke University, she won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Fulbright fellowship, and a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, became the first American woman to be named a Putnam Fellow, and also pursued her interest in theater. Melanie received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 2009 under the supervision of Manjul Bhargava, and was a Szego Assistant Professor at Stanford University from 2009-2011. Melanie is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an American Institute of Mathematics Five-Year Fellow. Her research is in number theory and algebraic geometry.
Lecture Titles and Abstracts
5:00 "The Chemistry of Primes"
We are familiar with the prime numbers as those integers which cannot be factored into smaller integers, but if we consider systems of numbers larger than the integers, the primes may indeed factor in those larger systems. We discuss various questions mathematicians ask about how primes may factor in larger systems, talk about both classical results and current research on the topic, and give a sense of the kind of tools needed to tackle these questions.
6:00 Pizza Dinner
7:00 "Amongst enough chaos, can we find order?"
Suppose we are given a large grid of points colored either red or blue. Can we always find a rectangle with all four vertices colored the same color? If that's too easy, then can we always find a square with all of its vertices the same color? This is a hard question, and it turns out the way to solve it starts by making the question even more general (so harder!). Given a big enough grid, colored in some chaotic manner that we have no control over with finitely many colors, when can we find a monochromatic version of some structure?
Homecoming Department Breakfast
Saturday, October 8 from 8:30 - 10:00 a.m.
Science Center, Room 184
All department graduates, their spouses, and especially their children (future department majors) are invited to our annual Department Homecoming Continental Breakfast. Between now and homecoming, please contact your Math and CS major classmates. Tell them to meet you at the department breakfast. We want to see all of you. Please register for homecoming and our department breakfast at the alumni website >>.
Broadcasting in the Digital Age – Where Radio & Computers Meet
Tuesday, September 20th
3:30-4:30 p.m.
Science Center - Room 184
Presenter: Charles Jacobson - BS Wheaton ’80 (Applied Mathematics and Computer Science), MS Univ. of Minnesota ‘82 (Computer Science) Missionary since 1986 with HCJB Global, a worldwide media and healthcare ministry. Currently Manager of Engineering & Development at the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Indiana
Summary: Radio technology (i.e. wireless) is without a doubt changing the way, not to mention where, we do computing. So how is computing changing the way we do radio? This seminar is a survey of the key computational technologies that are transforming traditional analog media, with a particular focus on radio broadcasting. Topics include sampling, perceptual coding, forward error correction, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and digital signal processing. We will also explore the place of broadcast technologies in an ever-connected, on-demand media landscape.