Invited Talk
Saturday| October 31st| 10:40 am to 12 noon
FROM PROGRAMMING IN MATLAB
TO PROGRAMMING MATLAB
Dr. Andrew Thaler
of MathWorks - the maker of MatLab and Simulink
Abstract
One of the most challenging questions a mathematics graduate student must ask is, “Should I continue in academia or go into industry?” I asked myself that question. I also asked relatives, my friends, other graduate students, my advisors, etc. If I took a survey of their responses, I probably would have ended up with 50% suggesting academia and 50% suggesting industry. I followed their advice and took an industrial postdoc position where I worked 50% of the time in academia and 50% of the time in industry. Ultimately, I chose to go into industry. I am now a software engineer on the MATLAB indexing team, where I am responsible for ensuring indexing operations are correct, consistent, and fast. In this talk, I will present examples of how scientists and engineers are using MathWorks products to solve challenging real-world problems. I will also tell you the story about how I made the transition from academia to industry, from programming in MATLAB to programming MATLAB.
Biographical Sketch
Andy received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Utah in 2014. In his dissertation, he made extensive use of MATLAB while studying electrical impedance tomography and cloaking due to anomalous localized resonance. He then accepted an industrial postdoctoral position at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota. While there, he continued his work on cloaking; he also worked on oil exploration algorithms in collaboration with scientists from Schlumberger-Doll Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2016, he began his position as a software engineer at MathWorks in Natick, Massachusetts.