Annual Report 2008.pdf - SAMSI

6. Education and Outreach Program
The SAMSI Education and Outreach (E&O) Program encompasses a variety of activities that
have achieved national stature for both their scientific and pedagogical content. The annual
activities include two-day Undergraduate Outreach Days held in November and March, a weeklong
Under-graduate Workshop (UGS) held in May, and the ten-day Industrial Mathematical and
Statistical Modeling (IMSM) Workshop for Graduate Students that is held at the end of July.
6.1 Undergraduate Outreach Days:
The two outreach workshops are held annually to expose undergraduates from programs around
the country to topics and research directions associated with concurrent SAMSI programs. One
goal of these workshops is to illustrate the application and synergy between mathematics and
statistics which goes far beyond that which students have seen in coursework. The overall
objective is to broaden the perspective of students with regard to both future graduate studies and
career choices.
6.1.1 Risk Analysis, Extreme Events and Decision Theory: November 9-10, 2007
The November outreach workshop focused on topics from the SAMSI Program on Risk
Analysis, Extreme Events and Decision Theory. The students were provided with an overview of
SAMSI by Ralph Smith (SAMSI-NCSU) after which program leaders, participants, postdocs and
students gave a variety of presentations and tutorials. Richard Smith (UNC) started the Friday
morning session with an overview presentation summarizing the “Statistics of Extremes.” This
was followed by an overview presentation by SAMSI Postdoc Elaine Spiller on “Models of
Volcano Avalanches.” Postdoc Guang Cheng and SAMSI Grad Fellow Evangelos Evangelou
then provided background for the afternoon’s tutorial session, led by Dipak Dey (U Conn), on
“Bayesian Modeling Geared toward Extreme Events.” This session was supported by visiting
Graduate Fellows Sourish Das and Elijah Gaioni and SAMSI Postdocs Jayanta Pal and Vered
Madar. Ralph Smith led an open discussion focused on graduate school and career options
related to the program that concluded the afternoon program. During dinner on Friday, members
of the directorate and program interacted with students to further discuss career opportunities in
the field. The workshop concluded on Saturday with presentations by David Banks (Duke), Jesus
Rios (SAMSI Postdoc), Betsy Enstrom (SAMSI Grad Fellow), and Mike Porter (SAMSI
Postdoc) on game theoretic concepts in Risk Analysis. Details regarding the workshop can be
obtained at the website http://www.samsi.info/workshops/2007ug-workshop200711.shtml. There
were 24 student participants which included 9 females, 5 African Americans, and 1 Hispanic.
6.1.2 Random Media and Environmental Sensor Networks: February 29 - March 1, 2008
The second workshop focused on topics from the SAMSI Programs on Random Media and Environmental
Sensor Networks. The Friday morning session focused on level set methods and
Voronoi tesselations and applications. Kazi Ito (North Carolina State University) provided
overview presentations that were followed by hands-on tutorial sessions led by SAMSI Graduate
Fellows Martin Heller, Zhonghua Qiao and Qin Zhang. The afternoon session was dedicated to
Sensor Network applications. Kenji Yamamoto (Northern Arizona University) started the session
with an introductory presentation on “Wireless Sensor Networks.” This was followed by tutorials
led by David Bell (SAMSI Grad Fellow), Michael Porter (SAMSI Postdoc) and Paul Flikemma
(Northern Arizona University). Saturday’s presentations focused on theory and applications