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Career: Real Estate Development by Adam Baff
"I work for a company that invests in the development of apartments and industrial buildings. My company evaluates approximately 30 different investment opportunities a week and we absolutely use math to evaluate projects. The more risky the investment, the higher the return we would need to achieve. In most cases for a project to make sense, our firm will need to earn a 16% compounded return for each year of the investment and we need to earn back approximately 150% - 175% of the money we invested. So if we invested $10,000, we would need to get back $15,000 - $17,500. In order to evaluate a project, you have to thoroughly understand the math behind 100% of the costs and 100% of the revenues."
Career: Mathematical Biology by Casey Diekman
Did you know that math can be used to figure out how the human body works and to help cure diseases? Mathematics can also explain why zebras have stripes and leopards have spots, as well as strategies for saving endangered species. These are all examples of problems that you could work on if you choose to become a mathematical biologist.
As a middle schooler, math and biology might seem like very different subjects. Perhaps the first use of math you will see in biology is when you use statistics to summarize data collected in a biological experiment. Sometimes in an experiment you cannot directly measure the biological variable you are interested in but can measure some other variable that is related to it. Then you can often solve an algebraic equation to determine the value of the variable of interest. Once you learn calculus, you can use differential equations to build models of how biological systems change over time.
In my job as a math professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, I teach classes and do research in mathematical biology. My main research focus is to understand how the human body generates daily rhythms such as the sleep-wake cycle. You may not realize this, but inside your brain is a clock! This circadian (from the Latin circa diem or “about a day”) clock keeps track of the time of day and helps prepare your body for what is coming next. For example, the circadian clock ensures that the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin is released at night and wake-promoting hormones such as cortisol are released in the morning.
Although we have learned a lot about circadian rhythms over the past few decades, there are still many things we do not know. In my research, I build mathematical models of the circadian clock based on data from experimental collaborators. I then analyze and perform computer simulations of these models to make predictions about how the clock works. Then my collaborators can conduct more experiments to test these predictions and validate the models. Once validated, the models can be used to help optimize the treatment of diseases that are affected by circadian rhythms.
This is just one example of how math can be used to better understand a biological system. If you are interested in learning more about mathematical biology as a career path, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My email address can be found on my website (https://web.njit.edu/~diekman).
Math Experience by Sreedhar Kona
"Growing up in a remote rural town in India with a high school Math teacher for a dad, Math was all around me. Math was made fun at a very early age. My father would introduce math concepts in a playful way, while at the dinner table or before bedtime or while traveling with him somewhere. For high school, I went to a boarding school (overnight train journey away) on a merit scholarship which required a decent level of math proficiency. After high school, I went to one of the premier engineering schools in India to study civil engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay or IIT Bombay. The admissions process for the IIT system has an extremely rigorous entrance examination that used to test in three things and three things only - Math, Physics and Chemistry. Aspiring students basically live and breathe these three subjects in their 11th and 12th grades and in some cases even earlier (Back in early 90s, the admissions rate was 0.5% of the total students taking the entrance examination). Again, Math proved to be my strength and gave me an edge. College involved another 3 courses of math including advanced calculus and then studying Numerical methods as part of the civil engineering curriculum. Yeah, a lot of Math in my life :-)
Of course I did some math and statistics when I went to business school, but it wasn't as rigorous as my engineering Math.
I have to admit, I have not been able to keep my association with higher order Math through my career. My career in Finance doesn't quite require a very high level of Math proficiency, but I have to say, the rigor of Math that I had seen as a student, always keeps me in good stead. Being good at Math is always a confidence booster and makes you very comfortable with numbers.
I have taught middle school to high school math at various stages in my life but not in the past 15 years. I hope I can help Rithvik and Rishant (and hopefully their friends too) with their Math endeavors, although I will need to brush up a little bit."
Career: Auditor by Cindy Chen
"My name is Cindy. I work at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I am an auditor, who determines if our Bank (1) make wise use of time and money, (2) follows the “rules” and (3) operates with integrity. Some fun facts of my job:
1. An auditor needs to be present whenever there is a transaction in the gold vault. That’s right, there is a gold vault seven floors beneath the Bank building, even below the New York Subway! I was in the gold vault last month to observe how gold bars were weighed, using one of the six biggest scales in the world! When we measure a gold bar, the staff needs to figure out how many 10 kg, 5kg, even 0.1g weights are going onto the scale to accurately measure the weight.
2. An auditor gets to talk to everyone in the Bank, including the President of the Bank! We learn new things everyday! We try to understand how people are doing their jobs and check their work, just like how teachers are checking your homework. We make recommendations about their work to make them work more efficiently so they could go home earlier to their kids .
3. An auditor needs to be present when there is a cash transaction. When Puerto Rico got flooded last year, they were in desperate need for cash. Our Bank arranged a military plane to transport cash in with an auditor there to make sure cash is properly counted."
Career: Pharmaceutical Statistician by Peggy Wong
What does a statistician do?
‘Statistics is a science, not a branch of mathematics but uses mathematical models as essential tools’ – John Tukey
A statistician provides a framework for taking data, condensing and communicating that information to others. The use of statistics can be used in many different fields; statistics is used in finance, sports, government, health and market research.
I work in the health sector and participate in creating drugs that will help patients. Statisticians in drug development play a part in many different parts of the drug development. Some of us help identify the key chemical or biological agent to develop into the drug. We also help diagnose problems on the manufacturing line by using statistics to determine how long a drug can sit on a shelf or by making sure the drug works the same regardless of where you might buy the drug. Statisticians also use math models to help figure out if the drug is working in the experiment. For example, we may calculate the percentage of patients who get better when taking the drug compared to patients who are not taking the drug. Refer to the example figure below where many patients were summarized in a pie chart. Other statisticians help the sales force determine where the drug may sell better based on the competition. New Jersey is home to 14 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck & Co., Novo Nordisk and Bayer Healthcare
(source: http://www.nj.gov/njbusiness/industry/pharmaceutical/).
For more information on pharmaceutical statistician, check out the following website:
For more information on how statistics is applied broadly, check out the following website.
http://www.amstat.org/ASA/What-is-Statistics.aspx?hkey=6f7536a3-2229-49e4-b4f1-3fade70b5e55
Prevalence and Impact of Baseline NS5A Resistance-Associated Variants (RAVs) on the Efficacy of Elbasvir/Grazoprevir (EBR/GZR) Against GT1a Infection - 16 Weeks vs 12 weeks. Presented at AASLD 2016 Nov 13-17 San Francisco Jacobson, et al.
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