Recent Alumni

Sarah Tymochko  

I am currently a Hedrick Adjunct Assistant Professor in the mathematics department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I am teaching applied math classes aimed at third and fourth year undergraduates as well as working on several research projects. My research is very applied and interdisciplinary, ranging in topics from analyzing ecological interaction networks, to modeling how opinions change over time, to studying spatial distributions of community resources such as parks. Being a graduate student in CMSE gave me a lot of experience working in an interdisciplinary setting which has been a huge help in both my research and teaching at UCLA. My collaborators are often in other fields outside of mathematics and my students come from a variety of majors, so being able to communicate mathematical concepts to individuals with any academic background has been crucial. CMSE provided me with so many opportunities to learn and grow as a student and I am excited to continue using the skills as I continue my career in academia.

 

William (Bill) Sands

Currently, I'm a Peter O'Donnell Jr. Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Oden Institute at UT Austin, where my work is being supervised by Professors Bob Moser and George Biros. I've been 

developing finite element methods to simulate radiation transport with applications to inductively coupled plasma torches. Additionally, I've been working on ways to leverage heterogeneous computing platforms in these codes through a new Python task orchestration system designed by students at UT. The CMSE program facilitated my growth in a variety of ways. As a graduate student, I tried to pick up as many skills as I could from the many talented faculty members in the CMSE community, and I utilize many of these techniques on a regular basis. It gave me a chance to learn about novel discretizati

ons, next-generation computing systems, and the many intricacies of plasma physics. Career-wis

e, the community provided me with invaluable networking experiences through workshops and conferences, as well as an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. These opportunities had an immense impact on my personal and scientific growth and I am profoundly grateful to those who have supported me.