Data are prevalent in all aspects of society today. Data-driven decision making is important in education, business, politics, psychology, and many more disciplines. In this talk, I will discuss three different data types and research that surrounds them. How can data be visualized affectively? What are statistical techniques for analyzing different data types? How do the analysis techniques vary depending on the research questions one is interested in answering? Through this, I will introduce my different areas of research and also discuss my pathway as an academic.
 

Getting your PhD in 2017?  There are things you should be doing NOW to plan for your career. In this workshop, we will talk about every aspect of the successful academic job search.  This will include

1.  Writing a CV, Teaching statement, Research statement, and cover letter
2.  Choosing and cultivating letter writers
3.  Finding job listings
4.  Interviewing and negotiating job offers
5.  Meeting those early deadlines (and what you need to do by mid-August)

The focus will be on the search for academic jobs, but some resources regarding the non-academic job search may also be mentioned.

All are welcome, including post-docs and students that are still more than one year away from finishing.  If you plan to take the job search seriously, there are plenty of things to start thinking about now that will make you a better job candidate when you finish.

A sequence of functions $f = (f_i)$ ($-\infty < i < \infty$) on a surface $S$ is said to be equi-areal (or sometimes, equi-Poisson) if it satisfies the relations $$ df_{i-1}\wedge df_i = df_i\wedge df_{i+1}\ (\not=0) $$ for all $i$. In other words, the successive pairs $(f_i,f_{i+1})$ are local coordinates on $S$ that induce the same area form on $S$, independent of $i$.

One says that $f$ is $n$-periodic if $f_i = f_{i+n}$ for all $i$. The $n$-periodic equi-areal sequences for low values of $n$ turn out to have close connections with interesting problems in both dynamical systems and in the theory of cluster algebras.

In this talk, I will explain what is known about the classification (up to a natural notion of equivalence) of such sequences and their surprising relationships with differential geometry, cluster algebras, and the theory of overdetermined differential equations.

I will review some of the background of integrable systems and explain how
Chuu-Lian and I started to work together. This will be part mathematics
and part how we began working together.