Mathematical Sciences Foundry

  The last five years have seen AI-driven breakthroughs in research-level mathematics, prompting excitement and discussion about the future of mathematics research. On Monday, May 4 th , Helen Jenne (Whitman ’13, Data Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) will give an overview of these developments, from AI’s role in rigorously verifying proofs to its use in discovering interesting mathematical constructions and formulating conjectures. AI for mathematics extends well beyond prompting a GPT to prove a theorem; in fact, the field has seen many success stories from smaller, targeted models. The first half of the talk will provide a survey of the current landscape, and the second half will discuss recent work applying an LLM-based approach called evolutionary program synthesis to the challenge of finding combinatorial bijections. Most examples will be drawn from graph theory and combinatorics, but no prior background in these subjects will be assumed. This...

You've used ChatGPT. You've probably been amazed, and maybe a little unsettled, by what it can do. But what is actually happening when you hit send? On Monday, April 13, 4pm, Olin 301 , Todd Hendry (Whitman '00, Partner Software Engineer at Microsoft) pulls back the curtain on large language models, explaining how they are trained on vast corpora of text, what "learning" actually means mathematically, and why building and evaluating these systems at scale is harder than it looks. We will touch on the core ideas, including transformers, loss functions, and reinforcement learning from human feedback, without requiring anything beyond calculus and curiosity. Todd will share what it is like to work at the intersection of Microsoft and OpenAI, along with the kinds of problems that researchers and engineers are actively working on.         Bio:  Todd Hendry is a Partner Software Engineer at Microsoft, where he works on large language model training and eva...

      On Monday, December 8 , Ben Vernasco, Research Scientist & Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology at Whitman College will discuss how Earth’s biodiversity is currently being transformed by the dramatic changes humans are imposing on the natural world. Passive acoustic monitoring is an emerging field of study that combines simple technologies, rapidly developing neural networks, and quantitative methodologies to measure soundscapes across broad geographic areas and document such changes in ecosystems around the world. In this talk, Professor Vernasco will share his collaborative efforts that combine passive acoustic monitoring, neural networks, remote sensing, and Bayesian hierarchical models to provide an unprecedented level of detail about the bird communities of the Blue Mountains. He will highlight how two ecologically contrasting woodpeckers—one thriving in dense, fire-suppressed forests and the other dependent on large, fire-maintained pines—reveal the lega...

    On Monday, September 29 , Nathaniel Larson '19 will share how he generally applies math to his data consulting work and then delve into his work experience in one branch of mathematics: knowledge graphs and how they can be used to identify fraud, improve knowledge base searching algorithms, and solve other business problems. A mathematical foundation in graphs and graph theory can help us understand why graph databases are efficient ways to store and retrieve complex interrelated data, and how certain patterns--like between-ness, centrality, modularity and more--help us to identify commonalities between groups or find anomalies. Learn more about how data science works in the business world, and how Whitties learning math in a liberal arts setting may be well-positioned for a career in tech consulting. Bio:   Nathaniel has worked for over 6 years with Slalom Consulting, a global technology consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. He speciali...

The film Counted Out shows us the power of math in our society, our economy, and our democracy. At 7:00pm on March 31st in Maxey Hall on the Whitman College Campus in Walla Walla, WA, the Whitman College Department of Mathematics & Statistics will take part in Counted Out’s worldwide movement to re-imagine math with a free screening of the award winning film Counted Out. In our current information economy, math is everywhere. The people we date, the news we see, the influence of our votes, the candidates who win elections, the education we have access to, the jobs we get — all of it is underwritten by an invisible layer of math that few of us understand, or even notice. But whether we know it or not, our numeric literacy — whether we can speak the language of math — is a critical determinant of social and economic power. Counted Out shows what’s at risk if we keep the status quo. Do we want an America in which most of us don’t see ourselves “math people”? Where math proficiency go...

  On Monday, March 3 at 4 pm in Olin 201 Madeleine Sherry ’24 will talk about her experience going to a math conference as an undergrad at Whitman, the importance of networking in developing ideas, finding potential career paths, and creating connections, as well as my insight into grad school life and the application/decision process. There will be plenty of time to answer questions, so hopefully, this session will be helpful to any students interested in pursuing further education or getting ready for what comes next after graduation! Bio:  Madeleine Sherry ’24 is currently a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in statistics at Oregon State University. Madeleine majored in Mathematics and minored in German Studies and Data Science during her time at Whitman College. She was also a part of the women’s lacrosse team and served as the captain of the team her senior year.  Beyond athletics, Madeleine was a Delta Gamma sorority member and was part of Whitman's Pa...

  On Monday, February 24 at 4pm in Olin 201 Benjamin Seashore Hobson ’23 will talk about communicating statistically, as he does in his job as a player development analyst with the New York Mets. Benji works with the rest of the Mets analytics team to perform data-driven research to find opportunities for improvement for players within the Mets organization and then collaborates with coaches and player development leadership to incorporate those findings into individual player plans. He will share examples of how he shares statistical insights with coaches and players with a broad range of statistics and data knowledge levels. Benji will also discuss how his time at Whitman prepared him to both perform data analysis and communicate with a diverse set of teammates.   Bio:  Benjamin Seashore Hobson ’23 is currently a player development analyst for the New York Mets. He majored in Mathematics and minored in Gender Studies and Hispanic Studies during his time at Whitman Coll...

  On M onday, February 10 at 4pm in Olin 201 Dr. Andrés Aragoneses will talk about how chaos is a relatively recent field of research that merges topics as diverse as mathematics, biology, physics, astronomy, economics, and geology. It encompasses phenomena ranging from avalanches in piles of sand to population dynamics, virus propagation, soccer strategies, stock market fluctuations, laser oscillations, and the dynamics of particles in Saturn’s rings. Chaos is not randomness, though it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between the two. In this presentation, he will explore how chaos can be simulated, the physical systems in which it can be found, how mathematical techniques can be developed to characterize and unveil hidden symmetries in chaotic behaviour, and how universality patterns can be discovered within chaos.   BIO: Andrés Aragoneses conducts experimental research in photonics and complex dynamics. In his experimental setups, known as Photonic Neurons, he ind...

  On M onday, February 3 at 4pm in Olin 201 Dr. Matt Petersen will talk about how in 1842 the Orientalist G.H.F. Nesselmann identified three stages in the progressive development of algebra: 1) Rhetorical algebra, in which problems are stated and solved in words. 2) Syncopated algebra, in which abbreviations are used in the place of words. Finally, 3) at the highest level, a fully symbolic algebra, in which words are entirely replaced with symbols and general numeric claims can be formed. There are numerous problems with this eurocentric history of mathematics (though it remains popular) but one of the most critical is that it treats algebra itself as an unproblematic object, and thus blinds us to deep differences in the discipline called algebra, whether the algebra is written in words (as was standard in Islamic mathematical texts), in abbreviations (as in Diophantus,or Tartaglia), or in a fully syncopated algebra, as was used for calculations by Islamic mathematicians from the M...

Catherine Lewis M onday, December 9 at 4pm in Olin 201 Abstract: Actuary is a consistently top-ranked job with no graduate school requirements! If that got your attention, join me for a discussion on the role of actuaries in health insurance. I will share my career trajectory and provide insights into the world of actuarial science. Through examples and case studies, I will illustrate the importance of actuarial science in shaping healthcare decision-making. Whether you're a student considering a career in actuarial science or a just interested in learning more about careers that use math, this talk is sure to provide you with valuable free pizza.   BIO: Catherine Lewis '08 is currently a Senior Actuary at Cambia Health Solutions. After completing a double major in Applied Mathematics and Physics-Astronomy from Whitman College, she worked in various actuarial roles at Cambia Health Solutions and Milliman. With expertise in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid lines of business, Cat...

Monday, December 2 at 4pm in Olin 201.  Malcolm Gabbard, almost-PhD, graduate student at Kansas State University will talk about topics in low-dimensional topology.  Topology is a large field of mathematics which centers around creating spaces from sets and then considering deformations of these spaces. In this talk we will introduce some foundational definitions and results you would find in an introduction to topology class. With this foundation we will build up to modern questions in low-dimensional topology. In particular, we will learn what knots in the 4th dimension are, how we can visualize them, and why we should care. Math-interested students should find this talk accessible. BIO:  Malcolm Gabbard is a PhD student in his 6th year at Kansas State University studying low-dimensional topology and knot theory. His research centers around symmetries of 2-dimensional surfaces in 4-dimensional manifolds, as well as tabulation of knot invariants. Malcolm was an unde...

Monday, November 4 at 4pm in Olin 201. Ximena Catepillán, PhD, professor emerita of Millersville University will talk about computations among Maya calendars. Mesoamerican calendars were many and complex. A good number of studies have been done to decipher them. By the arrival of Hernan Cortes in 1519 in what current day Mexico is, there were 21 calendars in use while 4 of them were extinct. Using astronomical observations, the Maya developed an elaborate system of calendars, among them the Tzolkin Calendar, the Haab Calendar, the Round Calendar, and the Long Count. Which operations did the Maya use to perform their calendrical computations? While they used a vigesimal system to write the numbers, this system was never used in connection with days. No inscriptions use vigesimal numbers but rather quasi-vigesimal numbers. In spoken numbers, a mix of decimal and vigesimal notation appears.  They also needed to divide to do some of the calendar conversions. Ximena will illustrate cale...

Monday October 21 at 4pm in Olin 201. Emilie Purvine, of the Pacific Northwest National Lab will talk about how mathematical structures and concepts can be great models of real-world data. For example, differential equations have a long history of success in applied mathematics to model dynamics found in rivers and oceans, the atmosphere, and molecular systems (just to name a few!). Network science is an area of applied math that uses graph structures to model relational systems like social, collaboration, and transportation networks. Graphs, however, are limited to modeling pairwise relationships among entities. Hypergraphs and topological spaces provide alternate models of relational systems that allow for arbitrary sized and structured relationships. In this talk, Dr. Purvine will introduce the mathematical concepts of graphs, hypergraphs, and topology and show how they are used to model real-world data from a variety of applications including biological systems, chemi...

Monday May 8 at 4pm in Olin 201. An interdisciplinary approach only requires an open mind and a sprinkle of serendipity. This talk will be a brief overview of my journey through STEM and how I was able to approach biological problems by starting with faint recollections from my mathematics training. Each problem required me to learn new concepts in biology and relearn mathematics to solve a problem. In this talk I will discuss three vignettes on how I applied mathematics to solve a protein geometry problem, to simplify a complex network based on gene-to-gene relationships, and to determine the processes that underlie the decay of biological molecules. All three stories share a central theme: learn as you go and be open to ideas! Bio: Matthew Tien is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Whitman College. His research interests center on finding novel gene-regulatory systems in bacteria and engineering microbes for bioremediation efforts. Matthew was an undergraduate at the University of ...

Monday April 24 at 4pm in Olin 201. Riley Foreman '15 will talk about business analytics, as part of her role within Hippo . Riley partners with various business units to solve highly analytical and operational problems. She will be sharing one of her recent analyses that helped inform the day-to-day activities of Hippo's new Account Management team and efforts to retain customers within the Hippo Agency. Riley will also discuss how her liberal arts and mathematics background helps her navigate the highly-regulated and complex insurance industry and understand how other areas of the company, such as the actuarial team, affects overall strategy and operations.   Bio: Riley Foreman '15 is currently the manager of business operations and finance at Hippo Insurance. After completing a combined degree in Economics-Mathematics from Whitman College, she began her career in ESPN's Stats & Info Group as a Production Researcher, providing stats-driven storylines to b...

Monday April 10 at 4pm in Olin 201. Brooke Taylor will discuss a career path in Business Intelligence, a technical role combining mathematics and computer science to deliver key insights to organizations on trends, drivers, and areas of opportunity through working with data. She will walk through the skills required in the role and how her experiences at Whitman and in internships played a role in her success, provide examples of business problems she has worked on at Amazon, and also outline similar roles and how they differ (e.g. Data Science, Business/Data Analyst, Data Engineer).   Bio: Brooke graduated from Whitman in 2018, majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Computer Science and Physics. She is currently a Senior Business Intelligence Engineer at Amazon, and over the past five years has worked on business problems in Alexa, Customer Service, and Supply Chain. While she began her Amazon journey out in Boston, she is now back in the Seattle area living with two...

Monday March 27 at 4pm in Olin 201. Speaker: Dr. Elly Farnell. Support vector machines are one of many techniques within the realm of classification problems in machine learning – given labeled training data that contains multiple classes (e.g. pictures of cats and dogs with associated labels), we define an algorithm to determine which class a novel data point belongs to (in the cats and dogs example, we’d like our algorithm to be able to tell us whether a new picture contains a cat or a dog). I’ll talk about theoretical results related to support vector machines that we recently published in Foundations of Data Science, which use a classical theorem from topology to characterize when a linear classifier is optimal. I’ll also talk about some of the work I do at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and will highlight how a particular type of function called a convolution has played a particularly useful role. Finally, as someone who has transitioned from academia to a data science c...

Monday February 27 at 4pm in Olin 201. Dr. Rick Archibald will discuss pathways to careers in applied mathematics at the Department of Energy (DOE). This talk is part of the Computational Research Leadership Council (CRLC) Seminar Series 2022-2023. This presentation will highlight different applied mathematical research that is supported at the laboratory complex at the Department of Energy (DOE). It will focus on data analytics and provide information on various programs designed to foster engagement with the DOE.  BIO: Dr. Archibald received his Ph.D. in Mathematics, from Arizona State University in 2002. He works in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory .  Dr. Archibald 's research interests lie in data reconstruction and analysis, high-order edge detection, large scale optimization, time integration, and uncertainty quantification.  

Monday February 13 at 4pm in Olin 201. Whitney Griggs, a Caltech MD-PhD candidate and Josephine de Karman Fellow, will discuss ways to apply the mathematical sciences in biomedical career paths, with a focus on computational and translational neuroscience. Using interactive case studies, he will discuss his own journey from learning mathematical reasoning at Whitman to applying these mathematical skills to the design of ultrasonic brain-computer interfaces. Whitney will highlight several key aspects of this project, including converting radiofrequency data into ultrasound images, implementing real-time neural decoders, and using Euclidean transformations to stabilize the neural decoder across multiple months.   BIO:   Whitney is currently a 6th year MD-PhD candidate in the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program. Since 2001, he has been interested in brain-computer interfaces, and, after 22 years of fortuitous events, he is now pursuing a PhD where he investigates way...

  Monday February 6 at 4pm in Olin 201. Our own Andy Fry will talk about tropical mathematics. Tropical mathematics replaces addition ( a+b ) with taking the minimum (min{ a,b }) and multiplication ( ab ) with addition ( a+b ). When we do this, lines and curves transform ( tropicalize ) into piecewise-linear objects. A strength of tropical geometry is that it allows us to look at a "linear" skeleton of a potentially complicated geometric object, reducing algebro-geometric questions to those of combinatorics. A strong trend in modern algebraic geometry is the study of  moduli (parameter) spaces . Broadly, a moduli space parameterizes geometric objects, and we can define algebraic moduli spaces and tropical moduli spaces independently. My research investigates tropicalization questions involving moduli spaces of curves, that is, which algebraic moduli spaces "tropicalize" to their tropical counterparts. In this talk, I will introduce tropical mathemati...