This Week in Science at St. Olaf

Monday, Nov 7

 Spatial Data. What is it and what can we do with it?
Lindsay Shand, University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign.
3:30 pm in RNS 210 (Note: change in location)

In this talk, I will give an overview of spatial analysis and its application to environmental and disease data. I will introduce some common questions researchers want to address with such data and present some more complex spatial problems that I deal with in my research.  Cookies and conversation.

Tuesday, Nov 8

No Seminar

Wednesday, Nov 9

St. Olaf & Carleton Joint Physics Poster Session
3:30 pm Fourth Floor Atrium at St. Olaf College

Thursday, Nov 10

Chemistry Seminar:“Proteomics: An approach to study complex Biological systems”
Pawel Ciborowski, Ph.D., 
3:15 pm, RNS 150

Math Club: 7:30 PM 6th floor lounge RMS

Math Club is showing the film The Man Who Knew Infinity on Thursday, November 10th at 7:30 pm in the 6th-floor lounge of RMS. The movie is a biographical drama about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a real-life mathematician who after growing up poor in Madras, India, gained admittance to Cambridge University during WWI and ultimately made major contributions to the mathematical field. One of the movie’s producers, Ken Ono, will be speaking at Math Across the Cannon this spring, so this is a great opportunity to see the movie before hearing Ken speak. There will also be popcorn and s’mores to roast, and assorted beverages!

Friday, Nov 11

RIVET: Software for Topological Data Analysis
Matthew Wright
3:40 pm in RNS 204

Persistent homology is a recently-developed tool for using topology to analyze the structure of complex data. At a basic level, persistent homology is sensitive to outliers in the data. However, a variant called multidimensional persistent homology is robust in the presence of outliers, but is much more difficult to compute and visualize. In this talk, I will describe current work with Michael Lesnick (Princeton University) to efficiently compute and visualize multidimensional persistent homology. This work has produced in the Rank Invariant Visualization and Exploration Tool (RIVET) and offers many directions for research projects.  Cookies and Conversation

Biology Seminar : This week TBD – stay tuned to your email. We will update you when we can.

Monday, Oct 31

Seminar: What is summer research like in Computer Science?  Six CS majors from last summer’s team at St. Olaf will presenting their projects this week, ranging from analyzing the terminology used in medical articles, to using Raspberry Pis for teaching parallel computing, to helping deaf people learn how to hear.

Tuesday, Nov 1

No Seminar

Wednesday, Nov 2

No Seminar

Thursday, Nov 3

Seminar:The Chemistry of Cannabis (A joint Chemistry and Biology Seminar)
Gary Starr, Chief Medical Officer,Co-Founder of Leafline Labs
Ken Ouren, University of Minnesota  College of Pharmacy Class of 2018. Alum ’14
3:15, RNS 150

Friday, Nov 4

Seminar: Barcodes: Discerning the Shape of Data
Matthew Wright, Visiting Assistant Professor in Mathematics
Friday, Nov 4, 3:40 pm in RNS 204

In recent years, the mathematical field of topology has been applied to the analysis of complex data. Persistent homology is one of the most popular and well-studied tools in topological data analysis. Persistent homology associates with complex data easily-visualized algebraic objects called barcodes, which provide information about the structure of the data. Persistent homology has been applied to data arising from computer graphics, biology, neuroscience, signal processing, and more. I will give an introduction to persistent homology, explaining what it is, what it can do, and how it is computed. This talk is the first of a two-part series; the second talk on November 11 will focus on a current project to develop software for computing a specific type of persistent homology.

Monday, Sept 26

Biology Seminar:  Nature Walk in the Natural Lands!
Meet outside the Hustad Science Library at 4:00PM. We’ll bring the granola bars, you bring the water for a tour of the Natural Lands!

MSCS Colloquium: Subfractals and subshifts
Liz Sattler, Visiting Assistant Professor at Carleton College
Fractals provide some of the most beautiful and interesting examples in mathematics.  In this talk, we will introduce some of the most popular examples of fractals, including the Cantor set, Sierpinski’s triangle, and the Koch snowflake.  We will carefully discuss the strong connection between fractals and infinite strings on a finite alphabet (symbolic space).  We will take special interest in subfractals, defined by a specific type of subset of the symbolic space.  Finally, we will explore methods to distinguish two fractals and discuss why our usual methods (length, area, volume) will not be helpful.
3:30pm, RNS 310 (3:15pm cookies and conversation)

Tuesday, Sept 27

No Seminars

Wednesday, Sept 28

No Seminars

Thursday, Sept 29

Seminar: Joint Chemistry & Physics Seminar – Materials Chemistry!
Miles Arthur White; Iowa State University
3:15 pm, RNS 150

Seminar: Dual degree program in Engineering info session (St. Olaf / Washington University)
11:30 a.m. Regents 210

Friday, Sept 30

MSCS Seminar: On differing Numbers of Different Differences
Peter Blanchard, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, St. Olaf College
Arithmetic progressions have been part of the mathematical landscape almost forever.  We will discuss a small amount of history around arithmetic progressions before using alternative characterizations to show why they are so special.
3:30pm, RNS 204 

Monday, Sept 19

Seminar: Biology – Trojan Horses? How Parasites Pilot White Blood Cells Into the Brain.
Lisa Drewry – St. Olaf Grad (2012) and Graduate student at Washington University, St. Louis

RNS 410 at 4:00 PM

MSCS Colloquium:The German Tank Problem and Statistical Simulation
Bob Eisinger, Visiting Assistant Professor of Statistics, St Olaf College
During WWII the Allies were interested in determining the production of German       armaments, such as tanks, trucks and rockets. Using clever statistical and mathematical tools, scientists were able to estimate the production of these armaments more accurately than data obtained from industry, interrogation, or spying. We’ll use the German Tank Problem to explore estimation, statistical simulation and the dangers of using serial numbers.
3:30, RNS 310

Tuesday, Sept 20

Seminar: No Seminar

Wednesday, Sept 21

Seminar: No Seminar

Thursday, Sept 22

Seminar: Chemistry – Pharmacotherapy: A Primer
Layne Moore, M.D., M.P.H., Mayo Health Systems Faribault
3:15-4:15, RNS 410

Friday, Sept 23

Biology Club Waffle Social – 3:00-4:30 PM see poster for details.

Physics Colloquium  Speaker Nate Eigenfeld ’11, UC Boulder, Mech Eng.  RNS 210, 3:15-4:15

Monday, Sept 12

Seminar: Biology Meet and Greet your Professors! 4pm 4th floor NW Atrium

Tuesday, Sept 13

Seminar: Title
Speaker name and title
Time, Room

Wednesday, Sept 14

Seminar: The Annual Physics Faculty Demo!
Come see your favorite physics professors offer some of their favorite demonstrations and hear about our colloquium schedule for the fall!
3:30-4:30 pm, RNS 210

Thursday, Sept 15

Seminar: Chemistry Meet and Greet and liquid nitrogen ice cream social

3:30-4:30PM RNS 4th floor atrium

Friday, Sept 16

Seminar: Title
Speaker name and title
Time, Room