This panel will feature a selection of mathematicians working in industry, business and government. Issues to be addressed by the panelists include the nature of their work, how they found their jobs, useful aspects of their graduate training, and desirable skills. Formal panel presentations will be followed by a question and answer period and then a period for informal interaction.

Moderator: Ruth J. Williams, University of California, San Diego

Panelists:
Steve Altschuler, Microsoft
Lani Wu, Microsoft
Arnon Levy, J. P. Morgan Securities
Jerome Braunstein, GDE Systems
Richard Clayton, National Security Agency
Jill Mesirov, IBM

Biosketches for panelists:

Steve Altschuler, Microsoft
Steve Altschuler received his Ph.D. in mathematics from UC San Diego in 1990. He is currently the Architect for an Advanced Technology project within Microsoft involving statistical measurement and modeling of WEB and application usage. A partial list of topic areas that Steve has been involved with in the previous 3 years at Microsoft include video compression, text to speech synthesis, acoustic ray tracing, cryptography, and symbolic signal processing. In his previous career in academics, Steve held positions at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minnesota, the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications in Australia, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and Princeton University.

Lani Wu, Microsoft
Lani Wu received her Ph.D. in mathematics from UC San Diego in 1990. While at Microsoft, she has concentrated her efforts on learning tools and techniques to write production quality software. As a Software Development Engineer, Lani has contributed to a number of efforts including statistical measurement and modeling of WEB and application usage, the integration of natural language and speech recognition, video compression, and hand writing recognition. In her previous career in academics, Lani held positions at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications in Australia and Princeton University.

Arnon Levy, J. P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Arnon Levy is currently a Vice President at J. P. Morgan Securities Incorporated. He is part of the interest rate derivatives team in the Derivatives Research group, which he joined in 1994. Prior to joining J. P. Morgan he was a visiting researcher at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Arnon receieved his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1992.

Jerome Braunstein, GDE Systems Inc.
Jerome Braunstein received his B.S. degree from MIT in 1989 with a major in mathematics and a minor in Science, Technology, and Society. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics at UCSD in 1993 with a dissertation on numerical optimization. Jerome started work two months later for GDE Systems where he is currently a senior engineer.

Richard Clayton, National Security Agency
Richard Clayton received a B.S. in mathematics from Florida State University in 1982; his graduate work in mathematics was done at the University of California Los Angeles, where he received his Ph.D. in 1987. His thesis advisor was Basil Gordon and his topic was in combinatorics. He was a research instructor at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1991 before going to the NSA in 1991.

Jill P. Mesirov, IBM
Jill P. Mesirov is Manager of Computational Science and Biology in the Scientific and Technical Systems and Solutions organization of IBM. She is also Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Boston University. Her main research interest is the study and development of parallel algorithms which arise in science, engineering, and business applications, with a focus on computational biology. Mesirov received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Brandeis University in 1974.
Before joining IBM in 1995, Mesirov was Director of Research at Thinking Machines Corporation for ten years. She has also held positions as lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, research mathematician at IDA's Center for Communications Research in Princeton, and Associate Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society.

In addition to the above panelists, Carol Robinson, from the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center (NPRDC) in San Diego will attend the panel session and be available for discussion afterwards concerning careers for mathematicians at NPRDC. Carol Robinson is a Supervisory Research Psychologist with the NPRDC which is located in Point Loma, San Diego. She has been with the Center for 15 years. For further information about careers at NPRDC, click here.