Graduate Student Brown Bag Seminar

Speakers:        Marium Yousuf, Ana Fernandez-Sirgo, Woody March-Steinman, Ilia Kuk

Title:               Summer Projects and Summer Internships

Speaker:  Marium Yousuf, Applied Math 4th Year Student
Title: A Decision-Flow Take on Neural Causality
Abstract: A Decision-Flow (DF) framework is a way to sample sequences of states or decisions from a target distribution. It builds on ideas from Markov Decision Processes, adjusting the transition dynamics of a prior process to match the desired behavior. I’ll share some work-in-progress using the DF framework as a tool for causal discovery in neural spiking data and discuss how this kind of guided sampling can help uncover patterns and dependencies in complex systems like brain activity.

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Speaker: Ana Isabel Fernandez Sirgo, Applied Math 5th Year Student
Title: Rainfall and rill simulations on reburned hillslopes: field data for WEPP Model calibration.
Abstract: Wildfire intervals are becoming shorter, and the intensity of fires is increasing, leading to more frequent reburns. However, there have been no studies on erosion rates in reburned hillslopes in the U.S. To address this gap, we conducted rainfall and rill simulations at two sites: one affected by reburns (in 2018 and 2025) and another that experienced a single burn (in 2018). We gathered runoff and sediment data to eventually be able to calibrate the WEPP Model, the primary tool used for calculating erosion rates.

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Speaker: Woody March-Steinman, Applied Math 5th Year Student
Title:  Some Computational Biology Tools
Abstract: Let’s journey through Thailand, Chicago, and Tucson in search of effective mathematical biology! We’ll take a look at some workshop and conference offerings, as well as a peek into some packages I’ve been working on for live cell imaging this summer involving machine learning and stochastic modeling, including a method for event labeling from time series data and a toolkit to segment and analyze features in 2D colonic organoid images.

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Speaker: Ilia Kuk, Applied Math 4th Year Student 
Title: Shor's algorithm on a nonlinear acoustic metastructure
Abstract: We show how Shor's algorithm can be implemented in a classical system using nonlinear acoustic waves. The metastructure is designed to perform quantum-like gate operations, demonstrating integer factorization through controlled sound wave interactions.