Tim Wheeler on Algorithms for Optimization in Julia; Jane Herriman on NumFOCUS

We're happy to have Tim Wheeler talk to us on how Julia is used in his new book "Algorithms for Optimization". Tim is an engineer working on flying autonomous cars at Kitty Hawk. He got his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford, and co-authored Algorithms for Optimization with his mentor, Prof. Mykel Kochenderfer. Jane Herriman will also talk at the start of the event on NumFOCUS [2], which sponsors Julia and other science-focused open source software projects.

Tim's abstract: "Algorithms for Optimization is a full-length optimization textbook that has Julia between the pages and under the hood. Forget pseudocode - because we are using Julia, every code block is real, executable code. Figures are automatically generated during compilation using Julia. Even CI testing is achieved using Julia. This talk covers what makes Julia a great language for authoring textbooks, how we wrote ours, and why you might be interested in these techniques too."

Tim will also discuss POMDPs.jl [3], a Julia package for sequential decision making. Julia allows for a unique package structure that caters to problem authors, solver authors, and users simultaneously, while addressing a wide variety of sequential decision making problem forms.

This event is hosted by the BNY Mellon Innovation Center, who will also provide food for the event; thank you!

We'll eat at 6pm, and start the presentations at 6:30.

[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/algorithms-optimization
[2] https://numfocus.org/community/mission
[3] https://github.com/JuliaPOMDP/POMDPs.jl