Northern and Central California Section of SIAM Holds Inaugural Conference

The first annual meeting of the Northern and Central California (NCC) Section of SIAM took place in October 2024 at the University of California (UC), Merced. Nearly 200 students and researchers from academic institutions, industry, and the national laboratories participated in this three-day event. Although most attendees came from Northern California and the Central Valley, students from as far as Colorado and Texas traveled to present their research at the meeting.

The 1st SIAM Northern and Central California Sectional Conference (NCC24) commenced with a plenary talk by Michael Mahoney of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), who discussed paradigms for scientific machine learning foundation models. On the second day, Rob Schreiber of Cerebras Systems spoke about wafer-scale computing and its corresponding impact on scientific computing at the hardware, architecture, and algorithmic levels. The final day featured a plenary address by Mariel Vazquez of UC Davis, who described the role of knot theory in geometrical and topological models of nucleic acids.

NCC24 boasted 10 minisymposia that explored a variety of topics, such as fluid dynamics, numerical analysis, optimization, inverse problems, scientific and high-performance computing, uncertainty quantification, and scientific machine learning. Presenters included graduate students and faculty members from a variety of universities across the country, the national laboratories, research centers like Ames Research Center and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and companies such as Amazon and Volcano Platforms. 

The conference program incorporated two evening poster sessions with a total of 66 posters from 10 undergraduate students, 44 graduate students, and 12 nonstudent researchers; after the sessions, judges conferred outstanding poster awards in each category. The NCC24 poster prize recipients were undergraduate students Rodrigo Flores of UC Merced and Oscar Thompson of California State University (CSU), East Bay; graduate students Nicholas Rondoni of UC Santa Cruz and Scott West and Jacqueline Alvarez of UC Merced; and Prabhat Kumar of LBNL. The judges also awarded honorable mentions to undergraduate students He (Amber) Wei of UC Berkeley, Elijah Valverde of San Francisco State University, and Adrian Kisieu of UC Merced; graduate students Michael Kielstra of UC Berkeley and Elsie Cortes of UC Merced; and non-student researchers Joy Bahr-Mueller of Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Elizabeth Glista of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Additionally, four panel discussions connected undergraduate students, graduate students, and early-career researchers with the greater scientific community. Each session addressed a different topic: career opportunities for undergraduates, the transition from student to researcher (e.g., preparing for internships and postdoctoral positions), industry and laboratory careers, and the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in science. “It was fantastic to meet so many students, researchers, and faculty from across the state,” Stefan Wild, a panelist from LBNL, said. “Our panel was especially interactive — there was a clear appetite for the topic and awesome questions from everyone.” Panelists spanned academia, industry, and the national laboratories and included Shima Alizadeh of Amazon Web Services, Kenny Chowdhary of NVIDIA, Marta D’Elia of Atomic Machines, Jessica De Silva of CSU Stanislaus, Habib Najm and Cosmin Safta of SNL, Andy Nonaka and Stefan Wild of LBNL, Noémi Petra and Joshua Viers of UC Merced, Jon Wilkening of UC Berkeley, and SIAM President Carol Woodward of LLNL.

The NCC Section of SIAM was established and recognized by SIAM in 2024. Its primary goal is to provide ongoing opportunities for mathematicians in academia, industry, the national laboratories, and government to come together and form strong social and professional networks. This section also strives to provide undergraduate and graduate students, early-career researchers, and regular SIAM members with the chance to connect and take part in the many offerings of both the SIAM community and the regional academic, laboratory, and industry communities. “NCC24 brought world-class, high-quality research presentations and discussions to the region,” Anh Thai Nhan of Santa Clara University said. “This is particularly meaningful for faculty members who are from primarily undergraduate institutions and don’t have major research funding.”

The importance of establishing local research communities cannot be overstated. “The meeting filled a critical need for applied mathematicians in our region from numerous institutions and companies to share current work and challenges,” Woodward said. “It was fantastic to meet so many people working on related topics, all within an easy drive from each other.”

The officers of the NCC Section of SIAM—Petra (chair), D’Elia (vice chair), Safta (secretary), and Esmond Ng of LBNL (treasurer)—served as NCC24 Organizing Committee co-chairs. The Technical Program Committee included Alizadeh, Najm, Wild, Wilkening, Woodward, Javier Arsuaga of UC Davis, Mario Bencomo of CSU Fresno, Robert Bassett of the Naval Postgraduate School, Marcella Gomez of UC Santa Cruz, Gianluca Iaccarino of Stanford University, and Franziska Weber of UC Berkeley. Onsite arrangements and logistics were coordinated by the Local Organizing Committee—UC Merced faculty members Roummel Marcia, Boaz Ilan, Changho Kim, Erica Rutter, and Shilpa Khatri—with help from the UC Merced SIAM Student Chapter. 

Information about upcoming activities and opportunities for involvement with the NCC Section of SIAM is available on the section’s website. 

Acknowledgments: NCC24 was made possible by funding support from SIAM; the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences grant 2433859; the Lopker family; and UC Merced’s Department of Applied Mathematics, School of Natural Sciences, and Graduate Division.