Student Chapter Funding for 2016-17

SIAM awarded over $64,000 to over 120 chapters for events and activities taking place throughout the 2016-2017 academic year. Many of SIAM’s Student Chapters organize regular meetings or seminars; invited speakers from industry, labs, and academia; programming workshops; field trips; professional development; and other interesting activities. Below are a few exciting events our chapters held in fall 2016 or plan to do in spring 2017. For information about obtaining funding for your chapter, go to www.siam.org/students/chapters/funding.php.

In October, Vellore Institute of Technology, India, held a workshop on artificial neural networks, an emerging topic in bio-medical engineering and medicine. The workshop covered the creation of these networks and the real world applications. VIT also held a talent show (VIT’s Got Talent) in early February, giving their members an artistic outlet and building community.

The University of Hamburg chapter, Germany, visited the offices of freiheit.com in October. After being shown around by a chapter alumnus who now works for the company, they had the opportunity to learn about freiheit’s history, culture, and expertise. 

In the fall, Hamburg chapter also hosted their Workshop on Industrial and Applied Mathematics 2016 (WIAM16) in conjunction with the 5th Symposium of German SIAM Student Chapters. WIAM16 aimed to facilitate cooperation between applied mathematicians and scientists in related disciplines. The workshop featured an introductory panel called “Does academia prepare us for jobs in the industry?”, as well as numerous sessions of talks, and networking and social events.

Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Chile, chapter organized the National Meeting of Mathematical Engineering (ENIM 2016), which aimed to bring together students and the academic community and industry. The program included several plenary talks; a poster contest; workshops on EDP numerical analysis (using MATLAB), spatial statistics (R), machine learning (Python), and optimization and control (MATLAB); mini-courses on similar topics; and a 7-on-7 football tournament.

NUI Galway held a “Careers in Mathematical Science” event in October, where representatives from Avaya, Vhi, Valeo, St. Joseph’s Patrician College, and Cisco offered advice on the opportunities for mathematicians in their industries. They will also host the 6th National Student Chapter Conference of the UKIE Section in May.

Chinese Academy of Sciences chapter has planned to host talks on support vector machines, fluid computation, and SDN routing problems, among other topics. They also hold an annual meeting, featuring invited lectures from various fields.

Colorado School of Mines runs an annual Integra-Bowl, in which AP calculus students from local high schools participate in a calculus contest.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute has hosted MATLAB and LaTeX workshops, as well as talks on modeling transport of RNA molecules in frog egg cells, data streams and adaptive estimation, and the basics of control theory.

Old Dominion University plans to host their annual math awareness conference in April, featuring 3-4 hour long lectures, and around 75 short talks.

McMaster University chapter offers free consulting services to undergraduate and graduate students.

SIAM encourages the formation of chapters at institutions around the world. For information on starting a chapter at your institution, go to www.siam.org/students/chapters/start.php