February 22 – 26, 2016

February 22 – 26, 2016

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Monday, February 22

Seminar: Biology Seminar RNS 410 4:00 PM Interim Adventures!

0216 Interim adventures

MSCS Colloquium: Measuring the Shape of Data with Topology
Lori Ziegelmeier, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College
Data of various kinds is being collected at an enormous rate, and in many different forms. Often, the data is equipped with a notion of distance that reflects similarity in some sense. Using this distance measure, certain topological features–e.g. the number of connected components, loops, and trapped volumes–can be ascertained and provide insight into the structure of these complex data sets. In this talk, I will introduce a fundamental tool of topological data analysis, namely persistent homology. Then, we will explore examples of using this tool in the applications of (1) detecting chemical plumes in hyperspectral movies and (2) developing a new representation of this topological information.
3:30 – 4:30, RNS 310; the conversation with snacks and cookies starts at 3:15pm.

MSCS hosting Google visits
Ethics at Google – Google engineers, Ken Shrum and Maggie Wanek 15′.
Computing ethics is a top story in the news again, this time about a San Bernadino cell phone.  But in fact, we all provide personal data about ourselves just about any time we use networked computing.  Data in the cloud enables ever-improving services ranging from better search and social-media features to automated language translation, sound analysis, and image recognition;  it could also expose quite individual information about ourselves.  How does Google tailoring results to individuals while at the same time respecting their privacy?  And how do these issues relate to St. Olaf’s CS curriculum?
7:00 p.m., RNS 203

Tuesday, February 23

MSCS Hosting Google visit: Technical Development for Software Engineers
Google engineers, Ken Shrum and Maggie Wanek 15′.
Getting a job offer as a software engineer occurs at a specific time, but a person’s technical development for that career begins years before.  This talk will focus on steps you can take to prepare yourself for engineer positions at a company like Google, including the foundation of St. Olaf’s liberal-arts CS courses, complementing academics with internship experiences along the way, and awareness of what technical interviewers expect you to know and the kinds of questions they might ask.
7:00 p.m., RNS 203.

Wednesday, February 24

No Seminars

Thursday, February 25

No Seminars

Friday, February 26

Chemistry Seminar: Understand flavor release using this one weird trick
Maggie Jilek, M.S. Doctoral Candidate, Flavor Research & Education Center, University of Minnesota
3:00 p.m., RNS 390