Event Report

This semester, there are a lot of great opportunities for you to present research, network with potential employers, and learn from other students and professors. Here are four events you won’t want to miss.

On February 29, 2020, CPMS will be hosting the annual BYU Student Research Conference (SRC). The SRC is a half-day affair treating attendees to cutting-edge ideas in math and science, exciting door prizes, and—to top it all off—a pizza feast fit to feed over 600 hungry student researchers and faculty.

Learn about Eve (short for Emotive Adversarial Ensembles), a socialbot run on the Alexa platform and created by a team of ten BYU computer science students

Dr. Franklin (Lynn) Orr spoke at the 10th Annual Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen lecture on October 19, 2017. His topic was “The Global Energy Transformation: Where Do We Stand?”

In the summer of 2014, BYU alum Linda Furuto sailed across the equator in a canoe. The canoe—a traditional Polynesian voyaging vessel named Hōkūle‘a—was manned by 13 crew members and navigated entirely using the wind, stars, and God’s other creations for guidance.

The 13- and 14-year-olds at Biochem Camp, a new camp for young scientists put on by the Chemistry Department, got to see something new during their three days of experiments: the chemicals in their own bodies.

Members of the Applied Math in Europe study abroad recently returned from an international experience involving eight countries and 11 company visits over the course of three weeks.

The 42nd Annual Summer Institute of Applied Statistics (SAIS) was held June 21-22 in the Department of Statistics on BYU campus. Dr. Robert B. Gramacy, from Virginia Tech, Department of Statistics, presented methods for spatially varying data in a wide variety of fields such as physics, national security, engineering and life sciences. Dr. Gramacy concentrated on modern statistical methods that are faster and more economical in terms of computation both to implement and to apply. During his presentation, Dr. Gramacy showed examples of the newer techniques that allow statisticians to ethically and efficiently evaluate information. The presentation covered statistical techniques at the interface between mathematical modeling via computer simulation, computer model meta-modeling, calibration of computer models to data from field experiments, and model-based sequential design and optimization under uncertainty. Practical examples of experiments from the physical and engineering sciences were illustrated and discussed.

Astronomical processes and changes occur slowly on a timescale of years, decades, and millennia. That was not the case at BYU’s fast-moving Astrofest, the annual Department of Physics and Astronomy event that brings elementary school children to the stars for an afternoon.

Summer had just begun, but teenage girls from across Utah County spent May 30 and 31 on the fourth floor of the Eyring Science Center soldering wires together.

Click. Clink. Clack. In one lab, elementary students crushed spinach leaves with mortars and pestles to extract the green chlorophyll; in another lab, high school students stirred precipitates in small beakers.

The BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences held its commencement exercises on April 28, 2017, in the Wilkinson Student Center Ballroom. Three hundred and twenty-five graduates participated in the ceremony.

Parents pushing strollers, runners donning short shorts, BYU basketball players dressed as Batman, and countless others all gathered at the starting line of the annual Rex Lee Run on March 11, 2017.

Dr. R. Graham Cooks presented the ninth annual Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Lecture at BYU with two presentations on mass spectrometry.

For a thousand years, Hittite chariots rolled through the Middle East, injecting the empire’s influence into what is now present-day Turkey and Syria. The Hittite Empire’s success can be largely attributed to one thing—metal resources.

Biochemistry graduate student Diana Saavedra won the People’s Choice Award for the 3MT university-wide competition on March 9, 2017, in the BYU Varsity Theatre.

Hordes of pie-loving students gathered in front of the Wilkinson Student Center on March 14 to celebrate the day that shares its name with the world’s most famous number—3.14… .

Female students filled the Hinckley Center Assembly Hall for the Women’s Career Conversations luncheon, where they heard from fellow women who have succeeded in STEM careers.