October 31 – November 4

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.

Monday, October 31, 3:30 p.m. in RNS 310
Speakers:
Jesus Caballero ’18 Raspberry Pi for teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing
Eric Oseid ’17 Visualizing Parallel Computation on the Raspberry Pi
Luke Zimmerman ’18 Updating OpenGL in the Software Design Course
Justin Pacholec ’18 A HiPerCiC App for Learning to Hear with Cochlear Implants
Lucas Heilman ’19 The Quiz Game: A HiPerCiC App for Interactive Learning
Joe Peterson ’18 Counting Medical Terms using WebMapReduce

Tuesday, Nov 1

No Seminar

Wednesday, Nov 2

Wed. Nov. 2, 4:30 p.m. in RNS 150
Psychology Department Allport Award Speaker
Prof. Dave Jewett ’88, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
“Drugs and Eating: The search for better medications for obesity”

Food serves many physiological, psychological, and social functions.  My interest in examining relations between food and drugs was influenced by professors at St. Olaf and has continued ever since.  I have “followed in the footsteps” of my mentors and in turn, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring ~180 undergraduate students in collaborative research examining the relationships among drugs, the brain, and eating and other behaviors.  More recently, I’ve developed interests in Clinical Neuroscience and Health Psychology and applications related to normal and disordered eating. In this talk, I’ll use the biopsychosocial model to discuss the multiple influences on eating and related behaviors and share some of the work that students and I have done trying to understand the psychology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and food science associated with eating, “hunger”, motivation, and body type.  In addition, I’ll share some lessons I have learned along my career path including those learned at St. Olaf.


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.