A Physicist’s Journey from Chaos Theory to Disinformation Research

To kick things off, Chloe Kwon and Kevin Horecka will be telling you briefly, but enthusiastically, about Data in the News! What models, discoveries, and tools were in the news during the month of September and October? Come to the event and find out!

Then, for our main event, we'll hear from Dr. Steve Kramer. Dr. Kramer is a computational physicist, longtime data science entrepreneur, and now a senior research scientist at Yonder (formerly New Knowledge), an information authenticity startup in Austin. Drawing from his Ph.D. in physics, Steve applied techniques from chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics to create a patented dynamic anomaly technology to find the "unknown unknowns" in time-dependent data sets with no machine learning required. In this talk, Steve will discuss his data science work in network graph analysis, natural language processing, anomaly detection, bot/cyborg detection, and disinformation research.

We welcome inputs from interested Data Science enthusiasts and professionals on these ideas, techniques, and their implementation as well as any other questions or comments. Our goal is to make this event fun and informative!

Agenda:

6:30 - Door opens / drinks / meet the speaker and members
7:00 - 7:15 - Data in the News
7:15 - 8:00 - Talk + Q&A
8:00 - 8:30 - Discussion / Come talk to the speaker!

The event is free, and everyone is welcome. Free drinks (beer and not-beer)/food will be provided.