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.