Category Archives: Uncategorized

SIAM Talk 11/2/23 ! The Transition to Chaos: The Orbit Diagram and The Mandelbrot Set

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENTS

The Transition to Chaos: The Orbit Diagram and the Mandelbrot Set (A video presentation) with Robert Devaney

On November 2nd, 2023 in Room N718 FROM 1:00-2:00 PM.

In this video presentation, Dr. Devaney explores and explains two of the most fascinating images in the study of dynamical systems: the orbit (or bifurcation) diagram, and the Mandelbrot set. Because both of these images result from iterations of quadratic functions, the level of mathematical sophistication required to understand the presentation is minimal. The main goal of the presentation is to describe the relationship between these two images, how they are generated, and what they mean mathematically. Devaney also describes several important related concepts in dynamical systems theory, including period doubling bifurcations, Feignbaum’s number, Sarkovskii’s theorem and the role of critical orbits. Refreshments will be served.

SIAM Talk Today 4/27/23 !!

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENT A TALK BY

Dr. K. Andrew Parker

On Thursday, April 27th, 2023, virtually via Zoom from 1:00-2:00 PM

Zoom Credentials

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82359583249?pwd=R3MybEcrVHUxd012UjdHbWhoYkpnZz09

Meeting ID: 823 5958 3249 Passcode: 168179

“From Lab to Laptop: Cutting-Edge AI Research Made Accessible.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving fields in computer science today. Recent advancements in large language models and other AI technologies have led to breakthroughs in areas such as natural language processing, image recognition, and robotics. However, most of this research has traditionally been conducted on powerful server farms and specialized hardware, limiting accessibility to a small group of experts. In this talk, we will explore recent developments in AI that make it possible to run cutting-edge algorithms on a desktop computer or mobile device. We will discuss the challenges involved in adapting AI models to consumer hardware, including the need for efficient memory usage and reduced power consumption. We will also demonstrate how these advancements are opening new opportunities for researchers, entrepreneurs, and everyday users alike. Attendees will come away from this talk with a better understanding of the latest advancements in AI and how they can be leveraged on consumer hardware to create innovative new products and services. We will also discuss the ethical considerations and potential pitfalls of democratizing AI, ensuring that attendees leave with a comprehensive understanding of this exciting and rapidly evolving field.

Dr. K. Andrew Parker is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the New York City College of Technology. Their current work involves blending learning, technology, and entertainment to aid in the transfer of knowledge between STEM disciplines, funded by the US Department of Education. They are also an executive board member of The Webwork Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to open-source software development in the field of online STEM assessment.

SIAM Talk Today! Room: A105

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENTS A TALK BY

 Dr. Joaquin Carbonara

On Thursday, February 23rd, 2023 in person from 1:00-2:00 PM

Room: A105

The talk is on:

“The Secret Life of Data: Storytelling about of How Data Science is Changing the Way we do Mathematics, Science, Information Intelligence, and Connecting Areas as Never Before”

About the Speaker:

“I grew up in the Venezuelan Andes in an isolated and remote town as the first child of an immigrant Italian classical musician father, married to a talented cook and seamstress (read between the lines: food and music! Cool! but why in the Andean cloud forest?). Early on I debated the meaning of truth and made it into a life purpose before becoming a teenager (what else would you do in the Andean cloud forest with no TV or internet?). Trained as a musician at home from the time I was 3 years old (not a choice in my household), I later became part of El Sistema (Jose Antonio Abreu’s monumental project using music as venue for social justice and inclusion; check out El Sistema’s 12000-musician orchestra recently featured in YouTube, El Sistema’s superstar Gustavo Dudamel’s career and more). Turbulent times in Venezuela and my life during the late 70’s led me to believe that Mathematics could be a reliable tool to search for truth. After finishing High School, I left Venezuela and went to San Diego, CA, where I got a Bachelor’s in Math (SDSU) and a PhD in Combinatorial Mathematics (UCSD). Currently I am the founder and chair of a successful Data Science and Analytics MS at SUNY Buffalo State. After a lifetime in the pursuit of truth, publishing papers where I applied math to different fields, and teaching 1000’s of student at the college level, I welcomed the refreshing discovery that Data Science, Storytelling and Data Scientists provide the environment I have been looking for all along. In this presentation I will explore the secret life of data (i.e., how data is still not fully understood and what it has to offer) and advocate the premise that the most urgent purpose of Mathematics, Science and the Scientific Method should not be the search for truth, but rather the search for Algorithmic Strategies for Decision Making supported by math, digital data and human cognitive expertise (read between the lines: Data Science ).”

Take aways for the audience will be graduate school opportunities in Data Science for entrepreneurial minded undergraduates, entrepreneurial and research problems that can be understood by new-comers and experienced researchers combining discrete mathematics and Machine Learning, references in the field of Data Science, foresight about how Mathematics will evolve, and more.

The Secret Life of Data

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENTS A TALK BY

 Dr. Joaquin Carbonara

On Thursday, February 23rd, 2023 in person from 1:00-2:00 PM

Room: TBA

The talk is on:

“The Secret Life of Data: Storytelling about of How Data Science is Changing the Way we do Mathematics, Science, Information Intelligence, and Connecting Areas as Never Before”

About the Speaker:

“I grew up in the Venezuelan Andes in an isolated and remote town as the first child of an immigrant Italian classical musician father, married to a talented cook and seamstress (read between the lines: food and music! Cool! but why in the Andean cloud forest?). Early on I debated the meaning of truth and made it into a life purpose before becoming a teenager (what else would you do in the Andean cloud forest with no TV or internet?). Trained as a musician at home from the time I was 3 years old (not a choice in my household), I later became part of El Sistema (Jose Antonio Abreu’s monumental project using music as venue for social justice and inclusion; check out El Sistema’s 12000-musician orchestra recently featured in YouTube, El Sistema’s superstar Gustavo Dudamel’s career and more). Turbulent times in Venezuela and my life during the late 70’s led me to believe that Mathematics could be a reliable tool to search for truth. After finishing High School, I left Venezuela and went to San Diego, CA, where I got a Bachelor’s in Math (SDSU) and a PhD in Combinatorial Mathematics (UCSD). Currently I am the founder and chair of a successful Data Science and Analytics MS at SUNY Buffalo State. After a lifetime in the pursuit of truth, publishing papers where I applied math to different fields, and teaching 1000’s of student at the college level, I welcomed the refreshing discovery that Data Science, Storytelling and Data Scientists provide the environment I have been looking for all along. In this presentation I will explore the secret life of data (i.e., how data is still not fully understood and what it has to offer) and advocate the premise that the most urgent purpose of Mathematics, Science and the Scientific Method should not be the search for truth, but rather the search for Algorithmic Strategies for Decision Making supported by math, digital data and human cognitive expertise (read between the lines: Data Science ).”

Take aways for the audience will be graduate school opportunities in Data Science for entrepreneurial minded undergraduates, entrepreneurial and research problems that can be understood by new-comers and experienced researchers combining discrete mathematics and Machine Learning, references in the field of Data Science, foresight about how Mathematics will evolve, and more.

Break Through Tech Info Session!

Are you interested in the fields of Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence?

Break Through Tech AI is a free, 18-month extracurricular program hosted at Cornell Tech that helps college women (trans and cis), nonbinary, and other underrepresented groups in tech gain the skills they need to get jobs in the fastest-growing areas of tech: data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Applications for the 2023-24 cohort will open in January. Join the Break Through Tech AI team to learn more about this unique program and hear key details about the application process. Applications for the 2023-24 cohort will open in January. Join the Break Through Tech AI team to learn more about this unique program and hear key details about the application process.

REGISTRATION LINK: https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkdOqvpj0sGdUWmAse1gQVosl6s3iJUtVh

REGISTRATION LINK: https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkdOqvpj0sGdUWmAse1gQVosl6s3iJUtVh

Using Machine Leaning and Math in LiDAR 3D point clouds

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER & MATH CLUB OF CITY TECH JOINTLY PRESENT A TALK BY

Dr. Francis Patricia Medina

On Thursday, October 13th, 2022 Virtually via Zoom FROM 1:00-2:00 PM.

Meeting ID: 586 526 2264 and Passcode: SIAM2022
The talk is on
“Using Machine Leaning and Math in LiDAR 3D point clouds”

LiDAR point clouds contain measurements of complicated natural scenes and the classes are comprised of natural features. We present a preliminary comparison study for the classification of 3D point cloud LiDAR data that includes several types of feature engineering. We also include experiments with several dimension reduction strategies and introduce the product coefficients which might have different patterns for different classes. We’ll compute the product coefficients on a simple example to get further understanding of how they can represent a measure. The idea is that we can see the connections between mathematical tools from areas on mathematics such as measure theory and machine learning in the sciences.

Dr. F. Patricia Medina is an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics at City Tech. Dr. Medina holds a PhD in Mathematics from Oregon State University, two masters in Mathematics and a postdoc in machine learning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She also was visiting postdoctoral scholar in ICERM, Brown University. Before coming to City Tech, Dr. Medina was an assistant professor in Computer Science at Yeshiva University. Dr. Medina’s background includes Banach space theory, measure theory, machine learning, numerical analysis and applied functional analysis. She has several publications on machine learning and the mathematical analysis of methane models and has made several presentations on her research. Her grants include Azure computing from Microsoft and Google Explore.
She co-organized the AMS-AWM Session on Mathematical and Computational Research in Data Science (AWM Sponsored) at the Join Mathematics Meeting (the largest mathematics meeting in the world). She was also part of the 2017 and 2019 ICERM research collaboration workshops at Brown University, launching the Women in Data Science and Mathematics (WiSDM) Research Network.

Ethical Tech Startups: Principles For Success

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENTS A TALK BY
Dr. Ronald Michael Baecker
Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and
Bell Chair in Human-Computer Interaction Founder, Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab and
Knowledge Media Design institute Co-founder, Dynamic Graphics Project,
University of Toronto

On Thursday, November 10th, 2022 Virtually via Zoom FROM 1:00-2:00 PM.
Meeting ID: 586 526 2264 and Passcode: SIAM2022
The talk is on
“Ethical Tech Startups: Principles For Success”

As of 2020, 14 of the world’s 50 wealthiest billionaires made their money in technology. Microsoft alone has created over 10,000 millionaires. Unicorns are privately held startup companies worth over $1 billion. Approximately 2000 unicorns have emerged since 2015. Of the 50 with the greatest valuation, at least 39 are digital tech firms or companies leveraging software.

Although many digital tech products now cause much evil, you can create ethical tech startups — both “ethical tech” startups and ethical “tech startups”. Based on my experience creating 5 software startups and 36 years of learning and teaching technical entrepreneurship, I will explain the two senses of the phrase “ethical tech startup” and  outline 7 principles for success:

  1. Seek solutions that solve important problems or that leverage opportunities created by new technologies.
  2. Develop competitive advantage through proprietary technology and distinctive competence.
  3. Validate your strategy and products by user experience design at every stage from idea to shipping product.
  4. Think about your strengths; leverage them in creating an identity and communicate this to customers.
  5. Design your business model and go-to-market strategy; devote significant resources to digital marketing.
  6. Plan and project your finances carefully with a forecasting model; raise funds expeditiously but vigorously.
  7. Hire only the best; motivate and guide them with inspirational leadership by a capable management team.

I shall illustrate these principles using examples of successful ethical tech ventures. I will highlight examples of ethical and unethical behavior throughout the presentation.

“How Image Morphing and Image Compression are related to Linear Algebra”

THE SIAM STUDENT CHAPTER OF CITY TECH PRESENTS A TALK BY
Dr. Tanvir Prince
On September 15th, 2022 Virtually via Zoom FROM 1:00-2:00 PM.
Meeting ID: 586 526 2264 and Passcode: SIAM2022
The talk is on

“How Image Morphing and Image Compression are related to Linear Algebra”

Mathematics is full of theories and applications. Students sometimes may have the misconception that you can only learn about application once you learn some advanced mathematics. But, on the contrary, some elementary introductory mathematics can have critical applications. Without image morphing and compression, we cannot imagine websites, Facebook, YouTube, and movie industries, to name a few, but it has applications in many other fields. I will explain it all in straightforward language. Introductory knowledge of linear algebra may be helpful but not required.

Dr. Tanvir Prince has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Stony Brook University and is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Hostos Community College, City University of New York. He is interested in such areas as Topological Quantum Field Theory and Recreational Mathematics. He has recently become very interested in Mathematics Education. He has presented at numerous international and national conferences. He regularly publishes articles on pure mathematics and mathematics education in various peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Prince is also collaborating on projects that expose community college students to mathematical research early in their academic careers. His other interests include traveling SIAM Talk Fall 2022 1and cooking.