We tend to meet as needed before or after CMOR colloquia and grad seminars. The CMOR colloquia occur every Monday at 3pm (DH 1064) and the grad seminars occur every Wednesday at 12:15pm (also DH 1064). Many of the below speakers are presented at the CMOR department seminar. The following is a calendar with upcoming activities and speakers, of interest for SIAM members. New events are added regularly. More activities can be found at Rice Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
Upcoming Events
Make sure to check back in the fall to see what the chapter has planned!
Recent Past Events
Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
SIAM Pub Night
Friday, September 9 at Valhalla
Join SIAM for the first Pub Night of the Fall 2022 semester!
Fall 2021 – Spring 2022
Special Lecture: The Art of Giving Great Talks, by University Professor Dr. Richard Tapia
March 25 4pm in the McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall.
Giving excellent talks greatly promotes professional success. In this presentation the speaker will discuss issues associated with giving talks including what to do and what not to do. Many examples and stories will be shared from the speakers past experiences. Co-sponsored by Rice SIAM, Rice AWM, and Rice Graduate Education for Minorities (RGEM), the talk will be followed by a reception featuring Rice University’s very own Mariachi!
SIAM Spring BBQ
March 11 4-8pm at Rice Graduate Commons.
Texas Women in Math Symposium at Rice University
Rice AWM receives Association for Women in Mathematics Student Chapter Award for Scientific Excellence
February 5-6 in Dual Delivery on Rice Campus and via Zoom.
Organizing Committee: Sara Edelman-Munoz (Math), Rachael Alfant (CAAM), Bilyana Tzolova (CAAM), Jaihee Choi (Stat), Dr. Shelley Harvey (Math), Dr. Jesse Chan (CAAM).
The Texas Women in Math Symposium (TWIMS) is a weekend conference that takes place at a different institution in Texas each year. The next TWIMS will take place in person at Rice University on February 5-6 2022. The ongoing goal of this conference series is to highlight the research and accomplishments of several outstanding late career female mathematicians, as well as provide an opportunity for early career mathematicians to present their work and build a professional network.
TWIMS 2022 will feature two plenary lectures from Dr. Pallavi Dani, an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at Louisiana State University and Dr. Cristina Villalobos, a Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
More information can be found here.
SIAM Fall BBQ
November 20 5-9pm at Rice Graduate Commons.
SIAM Game Night
October 15 5-9pm at RMC.
SIAM Journal Club: Machine learning and deep learning for solving math-based problems
September 24 2-2:50pm at Duncan Hall.
Speaker: Boqian Shen
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
SIAM Mid-Summer BBQ
July 2 5:30pm at the Rice Graduate Commons.
SIAM End-of-Semester BBQ
May 30 5pm at the Rice Graduate Commons.
CAAM Major Panel
April 21 6-7pm on Zoom.
Panelists: Angela Lin (CAAM) and Arisa Sadeghpour (CAAM).
Moderators: Rachael Alfant (CAAM) and Bilyana Tzolova (CAAM).
The undergraduate panelists will discuss their experiences in the CAAM major and will answer some common questions about the CAAM major/minor as well as questions from the attendees. The event is open to all students and we especially encourage first year students or students new to the major to attend.
SIAM Spring BBQ
April 18 1pm at Hermann Park.
Now that Rice’s Covid cases have significantly declined, and most of us have been at least partially vaccinated, we’ll be hosting a SIAM barbecue this Sunday (4/18) at Hermann Park! We’ll start grilling at 1pm in the park by Fannin & Cambridge.
Addressing the Gender Gap in Mathematics: Amanda Glazer, UC Berkeley Statistics
March 25 4-5pm on Zoom.
Women earned 42%, 43% and 28% of Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in mathematics and statistics in 2017-18. The gender gap in mathematics appears to worsen at elite private institutions. In Spring of 2016 The National Mathematics Survey was sent out to five institutions (Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale and Brown) to investigate undergraduate climate issues in math departments, in particular with regards to gender. The survey covered a wide range of topics including college academics, advising/research, study habits, mathematics department community, family background, and mentorship. The quantitative data from the survey indicated that the barrier to entry is much higher for women than men who intend to study mathematics, and the qualitative data illustrated a number of issues including gender stereotypes, pressure to represent and disrespect for intelligence. Amanda will present the main results from this survey as well as discuss recommendations and changes made in the Harvard mathematics department to address some of these issues. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Rice University Department of Mathematics, Rice AWM, and Rice SIAM.
SIAM Journal Club: Public Housing Allocation and other Examples of Community-Based Operations Research (CBOR) Applications
March 18 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Rachael Alfant
Community-Based Operations Research (CBOR) is a subfield of OR that focuses broadly on problems whose objectives concern welfare maximization, equity, and sustainability, rather than profit maximization or cost minimization. CBOR methods and models have the potential to greatly improve the quality of life of people, families, and communities facing a wide range of complex and localized social problems. In this talk, we cover in-depth an application of CBOR in public housing allocation which eliminates periods of housing vacancy and guarantees acceptable housing offers to those on the waitlist who don’t drop out of the system (see: Kaplan, E.H. (1988). A Public Housing Queue with Reneging and Task-Specific Servers). We also consider examples of CBOR applications in nonprofit management, education, and food distribution.
Proof Workshop
March 18 6-7pm on Zoom.
Presenters: Rachael Alfant (CAAM) and Bilyana Tzolova (CAAM).
The proof workshop will cover topics such as induction, how to write a basic proof, proof by contradiction, and other techniques which show up in all the core mathematics, computational and applied mathematics, and statistics classes beyond calculus. This workshop is co-sponsored by Rice SIAM and Rice AWM.
SIAM Plant Potting
March 1 12-2pm at the Rice Graduate Commons.
Christina has a ton of plant bulbs that need homes, so we’ll be hosting a flower potting session outside Valhalla on Monday (3/1), which is a “sprinkle day” so there are no classes! There will be banh mi and snacks, and you’ll get to keep the flowers. Needless to say, this is a socially distant, masked activity. Thanks again to Shell for sponsoring this event, hope to see you all there!
SIAM Journal Club: An Overview of: Owen, J.H. and Mehrotra, S (2001). On the value of binary expansions for general mixed-integer linear programs.
February 12 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Raul Garcia
In recent years methods using variable disjunctions to generate cuts have emerged as a powerful tool for solving mixed binary linear programs. One might then formulate a MILP as a mixed binary linear program and use disjunctive cuts in a branch-and-cut algorithm to solve this reformulation. On the contrary, this remodeling results in binary problems which are computationally more expensive and time consuming to solve.
SIAM Virtual Pub Night
February 11 7:30-8:30pm on Zoom.
Since we are unable to have a chapter barbecue this semester, we plan to host one or two virtual pub nights where we can all interact with each other over favorite beverages. We will be having two breakout room sessions over our favorite drinks, and afterwards we can continue chatting or play games, etc. Hope to see you all there!
Research Experiences for Undergraduate Students (REUs) Panel
January 28 6-7pm on Zoom.
Panelists: Sara Edelman-Munoz (Math), Caira Anderson (CAAM), Alejandro Diaz (CAAM).
Moderator: Rachael Alfant (CAAM).
The panelists will discuss their experiences at REUs for pure and applied math. Since applications for REUs are usually due in February or March, this is a great opportunity to come ask questions, learn more about the application process, and what undergraduate research entails! This panel is co-sponsored by Rice SIAM and Rice AWM.
SIAM Journal Club: An Introduction to Markov Decision Processes
November 18 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Seth Brown
We will be presenting an overview of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and their basic properties. This is a great talk for undergraduate students in particular, who have some or no background in MDPs! A survey paper for those interested in applications of MDPs is attached: White, D.J. (1993). A Survey of Application of Markov Decision Processes.
SIAM Game Night
November 6 7:30-8:30pm on Zoom.
We’ll be having a virtual SIAM game night on Friday (11/6) at 7:30pm (CST)! We’ll be playing Codenames and Among Us. Looking forward to seeing everybody then!
SIAM Journal Club: Data-Driven Model Reduction Using Loewner Framework
October 14 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Alejandro Diaz
Many problems in science and engineering require the numerical simulation of large-scale dynamical systems. For example, if one is designing the airfoil for a wind turbine, the airflow around the blades must be simulated to compute the lift and drag (outputs of the system) for a variety of input shapes to determine the optimal airfoil shape. Each simulation requires the computationally expensive solution of a large-scale dynamical system. The aim of model reduction is to systematically extract the relevant dynamics of the large-scale dynamical system to construct a small-scale, computationally inexpensive dynamical system that approximates the input-to-output behavior of the original system within a specified tolerance. In this talk, we will discuss the Loewner framework, a data-driven method for model reduction. We will derive the Loewner framework and discuss its relation to previous model reduction approaches. Lastly, we will look at some numerical examples.
Graduate School Applications and Experiences Panel
October 8 5-6pm on Zoom.
Panelists: Sara Edelman-Munoz (Math), Rachael Alfant (CAAM), Alex Manchester (Math), Alejandro Diaz (CAAM).
Moderator: Chanel Lee (CAAM).
Learn about the application process and the graduate school experience from current CAAM graduate students. This panel is co-sponsored by Rice SIAM and Rice AWM.
SIAM Virtual Pub Night
October 1 7:30-8:30pm on Zoom.
Since we are unable to have a chapter barbecue this semester, we plan to host one or two virtual pub nights where we can all interact with each other over favorite beverages. We will be having two breakout room sessions over our favorite drinks, and afterwards we can continue chatting or play games, etc. Hope to see you all there!
SIAM Journal Club: An Introduction to Nonnegative Matrix Factorizations
September 30 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Jonas Actor
If people would like to read up on the topic, here are a subset of articles related to NMF, each with a different focus within the scope of our CAAM community. All of the articles are attached as pdf’s.
If you’re interested in the problem statement and its variants: “Nonnegative matrix factorization: a comprehensive review”, X Wang and YJ Zhang, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2013.
If you’re interested in algorithms: “Projected gradient methods for nonnegative matrix factorization”, CJ Lin, Neural Computation, 2007.
Note: This paper was communicated to the journal editor by Dr. Yin Zhang, and directly cites Dr. Tapia’s famous paper with McCormick from 1972.
If you’re interested in active set methods and linear programming: “Nonnegative matrix factorization based on alternating nonnegativity constrained least squares and active set method”, H Kim and H Park, SIAM J Matrix Analysis and Applications, 2008.
If you’re interested in constrained optimization and proximal gradient methods: “Novel proximal gradient methods for nonnegative matrix factorization with sparsity constraint”, M Teboulle and Y Vaisbourd, SIAM J Imaging Sciences, 2020.
If you’re interested in graphs and graph clustering: “Symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization for graph clustering”, D Kuang, C Ding, and H Park, Proc 2012 SIAM Intl Conf on Data Mining, 2012.
If you’re interested in computational complexity: “On the complexity of nonnegative matrix factorization”, S Vavasis, SIAM JOptim., 2009.
SIAM Journal Club: How Elite Universities Perpetuate the Gender Gap in Mathematics
September 16 2:30-3:30pm on Zoom.
Speaker: Rachael Alfant
The National Mathematics Survey is a study conducted by Amanda Glazer to understand the gender gap in mathematics at the undergraduate level by looking at data from five elite private universities: Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, and Brown. Over the past several decades, the gender gap in college degree attainment has disappeared while the gender gap in mathematics degree attainment has remained static. Prestigious, private universities appear to have a larger gender gap in mathematics when compared with the national average. We explore possible causes of this disparity at elite private universities‘ mathematics departments, and offer solutions to begin closing the gap.
SIAM Game Night
September 11 7:30-8:30pm on Zoom.
We’ll be having a virtual SIAM game night on Friday (10/8) at 7:30pm (CST)! We’ll be playing Codenames and Among Us. Looking forward to seeing everybody then!