Applied mathematics

Keith Julien, world-renowned CU applied mathematician, passes away at 58

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 21:37:23 +0000

Keith Julien, world-renowned CU applied mathematician, passes away at 58 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/30/2024 - 15:37

Longtime leader in his department and university made significant contributions to his discipline and also helped engineer the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences

Keith Julien, professor and chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, died unexpectedly April 14 at Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver after a short illness.

Famous for his disarming laugh, clear-eyed judgment and potent intellect, Julien was a world-renowned scholar; an insightful and inventive researcher; an energetic, generous and productive collaborator; an engaging and effective teacher and mentor; a visionary administrator for the Department of Applied Mathematics; and a devoted husband, loving father and cherished friend.

Julien’s 33-year affiliation with CU Boulder began in 1991 as a postdoctoral research associate in JILA, where he served from 1991-94. After an advanced study postdoctoral fellowship from 1994-96 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics in 1997 as an instructor.

Keith Julien (left, with his wife, Susan) came to CU Boulder in 1991 as a postdoctoral research associate in JILA.

He moved up the ranks in the department, becoming an assistant professor in 1998 and earning tenure and a promotion to associate professor in 2003; he was named a full professor in 2008. Julien was elected department chair in 2015, a role in which he served until his passing.

Julien was an exceptional mentor, a leader on campus and an internationally recognized scholar who touched the lives of countless students, collaborators, colleagues and peers. His sudden passing is a shock to the department, the university and the wider academic community, his colleagues said.

Julien advised 12 PhD students and eight postdoctoral scholars, several of whom have become prominent scientific researchers. He inspired and skillfully bolstered the careers of applied math faculty and colleagues around the world.

Born June 12, 1965, Julien grew up in London, England, the second of four children of first-generation immigrant parents from Grenada. In addition to his studies, he was a vigorous and exceptional student athlete, accomplished in both soccer and cricket.

He also enjoyed music and played the electric bass. His academic trajectory took shape when he received his BSc degree in mathematics and physics with first-class honors from King’s College, University of London, in 1986.

Julien then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he received his Part III Certificate of Advanced Studies in 1987, on the basis of which he was accepted into the Cambridge doctoral program. He was awarded the J.T. Knight Prize in 1988 and received his PhD in applied mathematics and theoretical physics in 1991 for a dissertation titled “Strong Spatial Resonances in Convection,” studying under reknowned mathematician and physicist M.R.E. Proctor.

A visionary leader

Julien’s visionary leadership has left an indelible imprint on the Department of Applied Mathematics and the university. First, he substantially influenced the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2022 with a new system that strengthens the authority of the three deans of division, an idea originally articulated in the Cumalat-Julien Academic Futures White Paper (2018).

Keith Julien as a young scholar (left) and at a surprise birthday party in 2015.

Second, he played a major role in the development of multiple new or pending degrees, including the BA and BS in statistics and data science, the BS in applied mathematics and the professional MS in applied mathematics.

Third, for over a decade, Julien relentlessly worked to unify departmental space so that APPM PhD students would no longer be scattered through different buildings on campus, as they have been since 1989.

Even before serving as chair of applied mathematics, Julien led a committee to develop a plan for new facilities, which culminated in the CU Board of Regents’ approving on April 11 to construct a new shared Chemistry and Applied Mathematics facility; the approval came just three days before Julien’s passing. This new facility represents a major milestone for the department, with construction scheduled to begin this fall, and occupancy planned for late 2026.

Research focused on fluid dynamical phenomena

Julien’s applied mathematics research has had major influence on the understanding of fundamental geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamical phenomena. He is recognized as a world expert in the instability, dynamics, evolution and simulation of important fluid processes, including rapidly rotating convection, magneto convection, fluid turbulence and the coherent structures that spontaneously appear in these flows.

Julien authored more than 80 research papers, which appeared in leading international journals, and his work is cited more than 4,000 times, according to Google Scholar.

Keith Julien (left) with William Barham and Bobby Braun (right), former dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

One of his most consequential contributions to the field of geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics is the development of reduced or simplified partial differential equations valid in the limit of rapid rotation. Many important flows are strongly affected by rotation, such as thermal convection in the ocean, which regulates overturning rates that bear on climate change; convective flows in the outer core of the Earth, responsible for Earth's magnetic field; and flows in the Sun’s turbulent outer layer, which is an important region for solar magnetic activity, such as solar flares and coronal-mass ejections.

In a seminal series of papers, Julien pioneered the development of multi-scale asymptotic methods and fast numerical algorithms to derive and simulate a reduced set of equations that approximate the governing Navier-Stokes equations for rapidly rotating convection. This enabled the exploration of extreme parameter regimes that are otherwise inaccessible to either state-of-the-art high performance computing hardware or laboratory investigation.

These developments led to the discovery of the spontaneous emergence of large-scale structures such as vortices and jets in turbulent rapidly rotating convection, predictions that were subsequently confirmed by direct numerical simulations of the full equations, albeit under much more modest conditions.

These advances attracted, in turn, a number of groups to this research area, in both experiment and theory, all motivated by Julien’s pioneering work. Together with many collaborators, Julien extended these ideas to the study of accretion disks in astrophysics, convection in a strong magnetic field, shear-flow instability, wind-driven circulation and, more recently, to ocean mixing by the doubly diffusive salt-finger instability.

Taken together, these applications demonstrate that highly anisotropic but fully three-dimensional turbulence is susceptible to instabilities generating large-scale coherent structures resembling those present in geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamical systems.

Keith Julien was father to sons Simon and Theodore and enjoyed coaching their soccer teams.

Recognized widely by his peers

Julien received multiple awards recognizing his achievements, including CU’s Creative Research and Creative Works Junior Faculty Development Award in 1998 and Faculty Fellowship Award in 2004.

In 2017, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 2022 he was awarded the Kirk Distinguished Fellowship at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge. In 2024, Julien was slated to be a principal lecturer for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Program, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Through the years, Julien tirelessly served the scientific community. He co-directed two NCAR/IMAGe Theme-of-the-Year Programs for Geophysical Turbulent Phenomena in 2008 and Rotating Stratified Flows in 2012.

He served on the Committee of Visitors for External Evaluation of the Division of Ocean Sciences for the National Science Foundation in 2015 and 2019. In 2014, he co-organized a 14-week program on the mathematics of turbulence at the NSF Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), UCLA, and since 2014 he served as an associate editor for the journal Nonlinearity.

In the summer of 2018, Julien co-organized an international workshop on rotating convection at the Lorentz Center, Netherlands, and he was serving as the lead organizer of a planned 2025 IPAM, UCLA workshop titled “Rotating Turbulence: Interplay and Separability of Bulk and Boundary Dynamics.”

He also served numerous times on scientific panels for NSF and NASA, and as principal investigator and/or co-principal investigator on research grants in the mathematical sciences, atmospheric sciences, solar physics and oceanic sciences.

Julien is survived by his loving wife, Susan; sons, Simon and Theodore; father, O’Neill, and mother, Agnes; older brother Kelvin; younger sisters, Sandra and Sherma; and a wide circle of friends.

Keith Julien’s colleagues and friends collaborated in the writing of this obituary.

Longtime leader in his department and university made significant contributions to his discipline and also helped engineer the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Crunching numbers isn’t enough; you also have to explain results

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 15:31:59 +0000

Crunching numbers isn’t enough; you also have to explain results Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/19/2023 - 08:31

Rachel Sauer

CU Boulder researcher Eric Vance recently won the W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting, in recognition of his work to help statisticians and data scientists become better communicators

The skills of statistics and data science are broad and varied, requiring those who use them not only to ask the right questions and capture the right data, but to process and analyze it and then convey what they discovered.

�鶹��Ժ of statistics and data science are taught methods and modeling, they’re taught to code and to troubleshoot, “but how do we teach students in statistics and data science to become more effective collaborators?” asks Eric Vance, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of applied mathematics.

“The thing about modern statistics is that almost anybody can upload an Excel spreadsheet to a statistical software program, do some stuff and get answers. You can have people who understand data, who understand methods and the appropriate conditions to use those methods. But what we want is to grow the number of well-trained data scientists who understand that the context of data matters and who also have that drive to see their work put into action for the benefit of society and know how to collaborate to make that happen.”

Eric Vance (center), a CU Boulder associate professor of applied mathematics, is a Fulbright fellow in Indonesia for the 2023-24 academic year. He’s working with colleagues at IPB University to develop a course in effective statistics and data science collaboration

For most of his career, Vance has recognized that it’s not enough to be good at statistics and data science—students entering these fields must also learn communication and project-management skills to become effective collaborators. He has designed curricula and academic programs that promote this goal, work that recently was recognized with the American Statistical Association’s W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting.

The award recognizes individuals who have “demonstrated excellence in statistical consulting or developed and contributed new methods, software or ways of thinking that improve statistical practice in general.”

As the youngest winner by at least 15 years, Vance is in the middle rather than at the close of his career, “which is good because there’s still a lot I want to do to translate my framework for collaboration into different languages and cultures, and to build it up across disciplines.”

Doing good with data

Since the beginning of Vance’s academic career, which started as director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis at Virginia Tech, “I noticed that my students were really good in statistical methods, but only some of them were really good in the non-technical skills, the communication skills,” he says.

“Part of my job was also to teach statistical consulting, so I started to think about what are the key aspects that a student needs to know, that a student can learn to become an effective, collaborative statistician?”

Good data scientists have a deep store of quantitative skills, he says, and many enter the field because they want to work with real data and pursue projects that help society and benefit humanity. Plus, in this hyper-plugged-in world, data are everywhere—powerful data in huge datasets with the potential to have sweeping effects. The demand for people who can analyze data properly and leverage them appropriately is growing.

“But what I noticed is kind of holding statisticians and scientists back is not technical skills—it’s not that they don’t know the latest analysis technique—but it’s that they don’t have the communication skills,” Vance says. “That became my focus: What is it that a student or a data scientist needs to know to effectively unlock the technical skills to do the most good?”

At CU Boulder, Vance established and directs the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), housed in the Department of Applied Mathematics, to teach students “to become effective interdisciplinary collaborators who can apply statistical analysis and data science to enable and accelerate research on campus and making data-driven business decisions and policy interventions in the community.”

Vance explains that often statisticians and data scientists are not the ones collecting the data they analyze, so “if we want to develop new methods, we need to have data, and who has data? Everybody else. Domain experts are everywhere around world, so statistics and data science should be collaborative disciplines, and students should learn to work with a chemist or a biologist or an English professor or an elected official to help them think about what kind of data they have, help them collect high-quality data and transform into policy and action.”

More than just good with data

Vance and his colleagues have built LISA into the center of the global LISA 2020 Global Network of statics labs that aim to strengthen local capacity in statistical analysis and data science and to transform academic evidence into action for development.

You can’t just be good with data anymore; you have to be able to communicate why it matters.”

The LISA 2020 Global Network comprises 35 statistics labs in 10 countries, including Nigeria, Brazil and Pakistan. Vance is now a Fulbright fellow in Indonesia, where he’s working with colleagues at IPB University to develop a course in effective statistics and data science collaboration and establish a new statistics and data science collaboration center.

Several years ago, Vance and research colleague Heather Smith developed the ASCCR framework—which stands for attitude, structure, content, communication and relationship—to support this model of statistics and data science education that incorporates collaboration skills. Vance’s work in Indonesia is also exploring how to adapt ASCCR within different cultural contexts.

“We want statistics and data science students around the world to have the skills to collaborate and communicate with domain experts,” Vance says. “Maybe it’s a researcher around campus, maybe a local policy maker, maybe a local businessperson—anybody who has data and wants to be able to do something with the data, make a decision based on the data or come to some conclusion.

“We want students to become people who can talk with a domain expert to understand what the problem is, what the data are, how they were collected, the provenance of the data, and then figure out what that the domain expert actually wants to do with the data. That means understanding the workflow of collaboration before actually analyzing the data and coming up with some statistical results. Then they need to translate those results to answer the original research question or come up with a conclusion and recommendations for action. You can’t just be good with data anymore; you have to be able to communicate why it matters.”

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Researchers strive to help models learn from ‘noisy’ data

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 22:13:43 +0000

Researchers strive to help models learn from ‘noisy’ data Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/23/2023 - 16:13

CU Boulder’s Bortz group, in applied math, wins $1.88 million National Institutes of Health grant to study methods for learning models directly from data

David Bortz, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of applied mathematics, has received a $1.88 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award to support research on computational methods for data-driven modeling in the biomedical sciences.

Data-driven discovery methods are a recently developed class of machine learning algorithms that can reveal “governing model equations” directly from data. They leverage more than 70 years of advances in computational mathematics and mathematical modeling to bypass many of the current challenges modelers face.

Unfortunately, the first generation of these methods has not dealt well with the types of intrinsic noise and measurement errors commonly found in biomedical data.

CU Boulder researcher David Bortz recently received a $1.88 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award.

With this grant, Bortz and his group will develop robust methods and use them to study important questions in two biomedical applications. The first area involves a collaboration with Xuedong Liu, a CU Boulder professor of biochemisty, to help understand what biochemical and biomechanical communication between cells drives collective motion during wound healing.

The second area builds on Bortz's work on the Colorado COVID-19 modeling team. The collaboration with Beth Carlton, a CU Anschutz associate professor of environmental and occupational health, will develop a framework for rapid analysis of infectious disease data to infer time varying infection rates as well as forecast likely hospitalization needs in different regions of the state.

The analysis methods are all built on the Weak form Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (WSINDy) algorithm created by Bortz and Dan Messenger, a former PhD student and now postdoctoral researcher in the group. WSINDy learns a noise-filtered version of the equations that is both robust to large, biomedically relevant levels of noise and scientifically interpretable.

"The proposed research and methods supported by this grant completely bypasses the traditional mathematical model development/simulation/validation/refinement loop, focusing directly on the process of model creation itself," says Bortz.

He notes that WSINDy has already found success in a wide range of applications. For example, Messenger and Bortz, in collaboration with Liu, recently published a paper showing how it can be used to learn the biomechanical models that cells use during collective migration. There is also forthcoming work by April Tran, a PhD student in the group, that applies WSINDy to discover noise robust and fast surrogate models for use when a full model is computationally prohibitive.

"We are excited and grateful to the Division of Biophysics, Biomedical Technology and Computational Biosciences for funding this work and look forward to advancing methods for data-driven modeling, discovering novel therapeutic targets for enhanced wound healing and providing public health officials with the most accurate disease prevalence forecasts," says Bortz.

According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), "The goal of MIRA is to increase the efficiency of NIGMS funding by providing investigators with greater stability and flexibility, thereby enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs."

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CU Boulder’s Bortz group, in applied math, wins $1.88 million National Institutes of Health grant to study methods for learning models directly from noisy data.

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CU Boulder grad student named 2023 fellow by sustainable energy group

Anonymous — Tue, 02 May 2023 23:43:14 +0000

CU Boulder grad student named 2023 fellow by sustainable energy group Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/02/2023 - 17:43

Lipari-DiLeonardo named a Rudd Mayer Fellow by Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy

Serena Lipari-DiLeonardo, a University of Colorado Boulder graduate student of applied mathematics and atmospheric science, has been selected as a 2023 Rudd Mayer Fellow by Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE).

Each year, WRISE awards this fellowship on a competitive basis to current college students or recent graduates who identify as women or other marginalized genders and who are interested in expanding their knowledge and engaging in the renewable field. Fellowship selection is based on commitment to renewable energy development, academic achievement, potential for future contributions to the U.S. renewable energy community and financial need.

Serena Lipari-DiLeonardo's research and interests explore the climatology of downslope windstorms in the Front Range, and plans to assess occurrences of extreme winds in future climate simulations.

The fellowship—which honors wind industry pioneer Rudd Mayer of Boulder, who passed away in 2002—aims to further diversify the wind energy workforce and the greater renewable energy workforce.

“This year’s fellows are incredibly driven, and I’m excited to see them continue their extraordinary work and impact in the industry,” said Doseke Akporiaye, WRISE executive director.

“Clean energy is at a pivotal moment, and now more than ever, we need diverse representation and leadership in this space. If we wish to see the systemic changes that are critical to ushering in this new era of renewables, we have to be deliberate in creating opportunities to advance equitable workforce development. I’m pleased that WRISE can do its part by providing these students with the tools and access to further their careers in this space.”

The fellowship will cover the cost to attend the annual CLEANPOWER Conference and Exhibition in May in New Orleans; this year’s fellowship also will have a virtual professional development component through June.

“Winning the WRISE Fellowship is a humbling honor, particularly because of individuals like Rudd Mayer, who have continuously inspired me through their dedication to environmental issues and nonprofit work,” Lipari-DiLeonardo said.

“I am excited for the opportunity to attend the CLEANPOWER conference and to join a community of passionate individuals who share my commitment to renewable energy and creating a sustainable future.”

Ms. Lipari-DiLeonardo gives 200 percent to all of her many activities—carrying out rigorous analysis of observations of downslope windstorms, serving as a statistical expert on multiple other projects, and thoughtfully mentoring junior scientists. Working with her has been a delight. I’m grateful that WRISE is recognizing her passion and skills with the Rudd Mayer fellowship.”

Julie Lundquist, associate professor the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU Boulder and Lipari-DiLeonardo’s research group leader, said Lipari-DiLeonardo is deserving of the recognition from WRISE.

“Ms. Lipari-DiLeonardo gives 200 percent to all of her many activities—carrying out rigorous analysis of observations of downslope windstorms, serving as a statistical expert on multiple other projects, and thoughtfully mentoring junior scientists. Working with her has been a delight. I’m grateful that WRISE is recognizing her passion and skills with the Rudd Mayer fellowship,” Lundquist said.

Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy, formerly called Women of Wind Energy, was founded in 2005 to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and equitable energy future by igniting the collective power of community. WRISE has local chapters across the United States and Canada; national programming that includes the annual luncheon, leadership forum and fellowships, a speakers’ bureau, and a webinar series; plus a growing grassroots network of more than 15,000 participants.

Serena Lipari-DiLeonardo named a Rudd Mayer Fellow by Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy.

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Applied mathematician wins high honor

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 17:06:02 +0000

Applied mathematician wins high honor Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/25/2023 - 11:06

James Meiss named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which recognizes those who made ‘outstanding contributions’ to the field

James Meiss, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been named a 2023 fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the group announced on March 30.

SIAM fellowships are reserved for those who have made “outstanding contributions” to the fields of industrial and applied mathematics. He was cited for his “contributions to the understanding of the onset of chaos and transport in Hamiltonian and volume-preserving dynamical systems.”

Meiss focuses on the transition to chaotic behavior in deterministic dynamical systems, often those in the Hamiltonian form that is ubiquitous in physics. Though chaos (the so-called butterfly effect—sensitive dependence on initial conditions) can result in motion that has some characteristics of randomness, his research has shown that remnants of the regularity characteristic of integrable (or symmetric) systems persist into the chaotic regime, resulting in non-uniform transport that can slow the escape of particles in plasma-confinement devices, impede the mixing of dye in a stirred fluid, and enhance the lifetime of bodies in the asteroid belt.

James Meiss received a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley, in Physics, 1980. Meiss has been teaching Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder since 1989.

Mathematically his work helps explain the geometrical distinction between “canonical” (symplectic) systems—described by the momenta and coordinates of Newton’s equations and those that are merely “conservative” (incompressible or volume preserving).

Meiss joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1989 after nine years at the University of Texas Austin in the Institute for Fusion Studies. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in1980.

In addition to 136 Journal articles and 47 articles in conference proceedings, he is the author of two textbooks, Plasma Confinement, with R. Hazeltine, and Differential Dynamical Systems published by SIAM and used as a text for graduate classes in applied mathematics.

Meiss said his first exposure to the worldwide applied mathematics community was through the SIAM Dynamical Systems conference in 1992, fondly called the “Snowbird” meeting.

“I was amazed at how welcoming this group was to a broad spectrum of interests, including mine—of course. I ended up co-organizing the next Snowbird meeting, becoming involved in the formation of the new Dynamical Systems Activity group (through what is now called DSWeb), and was one of the founding editors for the new SIAM Journal of Dynamical Systems in 2002,” Meiss said, adding:

“I still view SIAM as my home scientific community and am extremely pleased and honored that I was selected to be a fellow by my colleagues in this group.”

Meiss is the 11^th faculty member at CU Boulder to be named a SIAM fellow. Previous SIAM fellows from CU Boulder are James Curry, Mark J. Ablowitz, Gregory Beylkin, Richard Byrd, Xiao-Chuan Cai, Bengt Fornberg, Steve McCormick, Max Donald Gunzburger, Thomas A. Manteuffel and Bobby Schnabel.

He was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1990, won the College of Engineering Student Leadership Council Outstanding Faculty Award in 2012, and was a Simons Visiting Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in 2018.

James Meiss named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which recognizes those who made ‘outstanding contributions’ to the field.

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A CU statistician’s global mission help students tackle real-world problems

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 22:51:21 +0000

A CU statistician’s global mission help students tackle real-world problems Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/06/2023 - 16:51

Jaxon Parker

Fulbright project to launch a new statistics course in Indonesia to provide interdisciplinary training and help students make data-driven decisions in everyday life

Data is an increasingly important facet of today’s interconnected world, but not every country can employ data for the benefit of its communities. A mathematician’s Fulbright Scholar project will create a new course in Indonesia designed to train students to solve local issues with data.

Eric Vance, an associate professor in applied mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), which trains students in data science through collaborations with researchers, policymakers and business owners.

For the past 13 years, Eric Vance has been the director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), first at Virginia Tech, and now, at the University of Colorado Boulder. In his work with LISA, Eric trains statisticians and data scientists to move between theory and practice.

“Being able to understand and reason with statistics, such as to debunk misinformation, is necessary to be a responsible citizen,” Vance says. “Because so many researchers, policymakers and businesses use data, they need to collaborate with statisticians so they can make good decisions and get the most out of their data.”

Vance has worked on and supervised numerous interdisciplinary projects using data at CU Boulder, such as a data humanities class, a study linking cardiovascular disease and hearing loss and a digital map of precolonial Africa.

But Vance also has worked on a global vision of data analysis and interdisciplinary training through LISA 2020, a network of 35 “stat labs,” or statistics and data science collaboration laboratories that span across Africa, South America and South Asia.

“I saw this model where my students were getting great experience working on real projects, and the researchers and policymakers they were working with benefited tremendously. We were seeing positive impacts for society,” Vance says. “I realized that this was a fantastic model that was not just relevant in the United States, but it was relevant worldwide and especially in developing countries.”

Now, Vance has set his sights on a new stat lab being developed by IPB University in Indonesia, where he plans on living with his family for a year while on sabbatical. His work there is supported by the Fulbright Scholars Program, the U.S. government’s flagship program of international educational and cultural exchange.

“IPB is the premier statistics and data science program in Indonesia,” Vance says. “They were really keen on implementing this vision of a stat lab to both educate their students in real applications of data science and enable research and responsible data-driven decisions in their community.”

Each of the stat labs in the LISA 2020 network are individually run, but they share a core framework that emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration. With a Fulbright award, Vance intends to study the growth of IPB’s stat lab and share its projects’ outcomes with the world.

“I’m excited to be able to witness and document the birth of a new stat lab,” Vance says. “I’m very curious as to what are the universal aspects of this teaching method and what are the aspects that are dependent on cultural and national contexts.”

Although Vance will not directly lead or teach IPB’s stat lab, he will regularly meet with and advise both faculty and students over the lab’s first year to see how his ideas of teaching collaborative data science will be put into practice.

�鶹��Ժ are going to be exposed to a variety of problems and see how statistics and data science are applied in lots of different projects beyond the ones that they are personally involved with. They may work with a biology student one month and then the next be working with a local government official who is trying to best allocate their budget.”

“�鶹��Ժ are going to be exposed to a variety of problems and see how statistics and data science are applied in lots of different projects beyond the ones that they are personally involved with,” Vance says. “They may work with a biology student one month and then the next be working with a local government official who is trying to best allocate their budget.”

Through his observation, Vance also hopes to learn new ideas from IPB’s emergent collaborative laboratory.

“By translating what I know from the U.S. into Indonesian culture, I’m going to learn more about what will work in the U.S.,” Vance says.

Vance’s research on IPB’s stat lab will be conducted from September to May 2024, which will likely be submitted to Statistics Education Research Journal.

Along with working to understand the stat lab’s development and the challenges it may face, Vance also looks forward to experiencing life in a new country with his family.

“It will be a challenge to move my whole family to Indonesia for a year,” Vance says. He has a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter with his wife, Marina, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at CU Boulder, who also was awarded by Fulbright for a project in Indonesia.

“We’ll have to figure out how to navigate living in a new culture, in a new country. And not just be there as travelers, but to set down some roots so that we really feel like we’re part of the community,” Vance says. “Personally, I’m most excited about trying new foods and completely changing my diet.”

Fulbright project to launch a new statistics course in Indonesia to provide interdisciplinary training and help students make data-driven decisions in everyday life.

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Cross-campus open house will feature interdisciplinary climate change research, kick off U.N. Summit events

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 22:51:46 +0000

Cross-campus open house will feature interdisciplinary climate change research, kick off U.N. Summit events Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/10/2022 - 15:51

The College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Leeds School of Business are teaming up to highlight CU Boulder-led research to address climate change from 3-5 p.m. on Nov. 30 in the Olson Atrium of the Rustandy Building.

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CU Boulder joins national effort to advance nuclear fusion research

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 20:52:50 +0000

CU Boulder joins national effort to advance nuclear fusion research Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/19/2022 - 14:52

As part of $15 million DOE project, applied mathematicians aim to employ new, novel methods to improve physics models needed to better understand and sustain fusion

Two applied mathematicians at the University of Colorado Boulder are part of a new multi-university effort to lay the groundwork to realize an elusive goal: using nuclear fusion to generate clean energy.

The project, led by Michigan State University (MSU) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), aims to develop new mathematical and computational tools to improve physics models that are needed to better understand and sustain fusion.

David Bortz, CU Boulder professor of applied mathematics, and Stephen Becker, associate professor of applied mathematics, are collaborating with researchers at eight other institutions. The $15 million investment from the U.S. Department of Energy is launching a Mathematical Multifaceted Integrated Capability Center (or MMICC) at MSU.

David Bortz (left) and Stephen Becker (right) are two of the applied mathematicians involved with the new center.

“MMICCs enable applied mathematics researchers, working in large, collaborative teams, to take a broader view of a problem,” Barbara Helland, DOE associate director of science for advanced scientific computing research, said in a prepared statement.

“As a result of this holistic view, the researchers devise solutions by building fundamental, multidisciplinary mathematical capabilities considering existing and emerging computing capabilities.”

“We’re going to be pushing the boundaries of what can be done mathematically and computationally,” said Andrew Christlieb, who will direct the MMICC and is a professor in MSU’s Department of Mathematics and the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering.

“We have this lofty goal of taking a bird’s-eye view, looking down on all these different pieces and understanding how they fit together to solve big problems,” Christlieb said.

Bortz's research interests are focused on computational methodologies for data-driven modeling and inverse problems at the intersection of applied math and statistics. He noted that the center’s goal is to develop a holistic mathematical and computational framework that can accurately predict plasma dynamics.

“The reason this is such a challenging problem is that plasmas are known to exhibit behaviors on extremely short and long time and space scales,” Bortz said. On this project, his group will work to discover accurate equations for each scale, by extending the Weak form Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (WSINDy) method recently developed by Dan Messenger, a CU Boulder research associate, and Bortz.

Bortz noted that the governing equations of plasmas are well known, but a full simulation can require, for example, more than tens of trillions of particles or more, “which is still challenging (even) on modern supercomputers.” The plan is to extend WSINDy to learn, on each relevant scale, the correct simplified equations that can be easily solved on a laptop.

“The hope is that this will allow plasma physicists to rapidly investigate and optimize fusion-reactor designs,” Bortz said.

Becker and his team are experts in a new subfield that relates numerical computing with randomization. These new techniques show how to subsample datasets in novel ways that retain nearly the full information content and can be used for reducing the computational burden in other algorithms, such as the reduced-order models developed by Bortz and other collaborators.

This is a wonderful opportunity for CU Applied Mathematics to demonstrate its interdisciplinary reach in the sciences through the continual development of modern techniques germane to real-world problems."

These techniques mix statistics, probability, linear algebra and high-performance computing, Becker noted.

Keith Julien, chair of the CU Boulder Department of Applied Mathematics, hailed the project and his colleagues: “This is a wonderful opportunity for CU Applied Mathematics to demonstrate its interdisciplinary reach in the sciences through the continual development of modern techniques germane to real-world problems. Congratulations to Drs. Becker and Bortz, who will be leading the charge to train next-generation applied mathematicians here at CU.”

In addition to researchers from Michigan State and CU Boulder, the team includes collaborators from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, the University of Delaware, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and the University of Washington.

The MMICC devoted to foundational research on fusion is one of four centers that the DOE established with $56 million in funding for projects in fundamental mathematics research on problems that require the integration of multiple mathematical topic areas.

The centers supported by this funding opportunity will enable 5-year, multi-institutional collaborations for cross-cutting mathematics.

Other projects include fundamental research on digital twins led by the University of Texas; a consistent approach for sparse data structures for DOE applications led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and physics-informed intelligence for causal reasoning led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

See Michigan State University's coverage of the collaboration at this link.

As part of $15 million DOE project, applied mathematicians aim to employ new, novel methods to improve physics models needed to better understand and sustain fusion.

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Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:03:14 +0000

Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/13/2022 - 13:03

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at CU Boulder wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award

An interdisciplinary team from two colleges and the libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder has won a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the organization announced today.

The project, called “Integrating Humanities and Data Science Education,” aims to provide an example of how the humanities can help equip 21st century learners with the intellectual resources they will need to inhabit a world being remade by data.

The winning team that has won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities includes: top row, from left, Jane Garrity, Eric Vance, Rachael Deagman-Simonetta and David Glimp; bottom row, from left, Vilja Hulden, Henry Lovejoy, Brett Melbourne and Nathan Pieplow.

They’ll do this by designing eight courses that promote experiential learning, as well as opportunities to foster engagement with humanistic questions in the context of a quantitative inquiry. Additionally, they’ll work with CU Boulder’s Center for Teaching and Learning to cultivate local and national conversations about best practices for teaching data science and the humanities.

The winning team includes faculty from the College of Media, Communications & Information (CMCI) and from the Center for Research Data & Digital Scholarship (CRDDS), which is a collaboration between the libraries and Research Computing. Additionally, the team includes faculty affiliated with the ASSETT (Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) Innovation Incubator.

The winning team includes Project Director Jane Garrity (English), Project Co-Director Robin Burke (CMCI lead), Project Co-Director (STEM lead) Eric Vance (applied math), and co-PIs Rachael Deagman-Simonetta (English), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara (CRDDS), David Glimp (English), Vilja Hulden (history), Thea Lindquist (CRDDS), Henry Lovejoy (history), Brett Melbourne (ecology and evolutionary biology) and Nathan Pieplow (Program for Writing & Rhetoric).

This work builds off a previous grant, which created the introductory course Interdisciplinary Data Science for All (AHUM 1825), launched by Garrity, Vance, Glimp, Hulden, Melbourne and Pieplow in 2021. This course allowed students to learn how to analyze not just numbers, but also their human contexts and consequences; how to prevent intentional or unintentional misuse of data science; and how to communicate the findings of data analysis effectively.

That set of competencies is called “data acumen.”

The course provided majors in science, technology, engineering and math with qualitative reasoning skills that are traditionally taught in the humanities; future humanities majors with an on-ramp to further study of data science in courses developed via the newly funded NEH grant; and all students with critical, statistical and computational skills they can apply in future courses and in the workforce.

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at CU Boulder wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award.

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Applied mathematician gains top recognition

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 18:07:27 +0000

Applied mathematician gains top recognition Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/31/2022 - 12:07

James Curry named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which recognizes those who made ‘outstanding contributions’ to the field

James Curry, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been named a 2022 fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the group announced today.

SIAM fellowships are reserved for those who have made “outstanding contributions” to the fields of industrial and applied mathematics. He was cited for his "pioneering work in computational dynamics and for mentorship of young researchers, particularly in the African American community."

Curry focuses on problems at the interface of numerical methods, matrix theory and applied mathematics. He is also committed to workforce and mathematics education and the next generation of students.

During Curry’s tenure, first as associate director of the Program in Applied Mathematics and then as chair of the department, he introduced computational projects and labs into third- and fourth-semester lower division applied mathematics courses.

James Curry is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“More than 1,000 students each semester now learn from hands-on interactive projects that are designed and developed by undergraduate and graduate students in applied mathematics and engineering,” Curry states.

For the past 25 years, Curry has worked with methods for solving systems of non-linear equations. “This has led to the infusion of computational tools methods and strategies in various of my own classes and classes that are central to the Department of Applied Mathematics,” he said.

Curry said he was “absolutely speechless” when he received the notice from SIAM. He said the ubiquity of the applications of mathematics and computer sciences gives students many advantages “and definitely encourages the development of critical thinking skills!”

He said applied math and computer science offer increasingly more advantages as fields such as data sciences emerge in the “complex ecosystem that is part of the future.”

To Curry, this means students should further develop their communication, computational and mathematical skills. He concluded with an exhortation: “Do more math!”

Keith Molenar, acting dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science, said Curry’s being named a SIAM fellow is “wonderful recognition of Professor Curry’s distinguished career in research, teaching, university and professional service.”

Molenar noted that SIAM is the pre-eminent professional society in the United States and world in applied mathematics, and the distinction of being named a SIAM fellow is reserved for its most highly accomplished members. “The College of Engineering and Applied Sciences is delighted to congratulate Professor Curry on this well-deserved honor.”

James W.C. White, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, concurred, citing Curry’s exemplary teaching, research and service to the university. “Professor Curry has been a source of pride for the university for many years, and it is gratifying to see further recognition of his talents and deep commitment to the students.”

Curry joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1978. He earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976 after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in math from UC-Berkeley.

Professor Curry has been a source of pride for the university for many years, and it is gratifying to see further recognition of his talents and deep commitment to the students.”

Among the awards Curry has won are the Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Excellence Award in 1992, the Student Organization for Alumni Relations Teaching Award in 1993, and, twice, the Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Professor Award.

He was named a CU President’s Teaching Scholar in 1993 and held the J. R. Woodhull/Logicon Teaching Professorship in the College of Engineering and Applied Science from 1999-2012.

Some of the previous SIAM fellows from CU Boulder include Mark J. Ablowitz, Gregory Beylkin, Richard Byrd, Xiao-Chuan Cai and Bengt Fornberg.

Through publications, research and community, SIAM’s mission is to build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology.

James Curry named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which recognizes those who made ‘outstanding contributions’ to the field.

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