Applied Math Careers Alumni Panel Discussion

Description

Three CAM Alumni who followed diverse career paths will share their experiences and answer questions. The discussion will be moderated by John Guckenheimer, Interim Director of CAM.

PANELISTS

Mark Myers ‘94, The Fulton Companies (Storrs, CT)
Mark is currently In-House Counsel for The Fulton Companies, an international firm that designs, manufacturers and services commercial and industrial heat transfer equipment. At Fulton, he is responsible for intellectual property development, mergers and acquisitions and commercial contracts. He is a licensed attorney and member of the Connecticut and New York state bars, and has been admitted to practice before the U.S. Federal District Court, U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Mark is also the principle attorney at the Law Office of Mark R. Myers, LLC whose sole focus is the representation of U.S. military veterans in their appeals before the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

Prior to his current responsibilities, Dr. Myers served as VP, Research & Advisory Services at NERAC, Inc., an intellectual property and business competitive intelligence consultancy firm. Before joining NERAC, Mark was a business development manager for United Technologies Corporation (UTC), leading product and technology merger and acquisition strategy and due diligence teams. He was part of the post-acquisition integration team following UTC’s acquisition of Chubb Ltd in 2004, and joined the newly-formed UTC Fire & Security Business Development and Strategy group to lead technology acquisition strategy efforts. In the far distant past, Mark was the Technical Fellow for Dynamics and Controls at the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), a Group Leader in UTRC’s Systems Engineering Department and software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While at CAM, he was advised by John Guckenheimer and worked on bifurcation theory.

Rick Wicklin ‘93, SAS (Raleigh, NC)
Rick earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell in 1993. His advisor was John Guckenheimer, and his research interests included the numerical and geometric investigation of discrete dynamical systems and oscillators near resonance. He was a postdoc and visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and The Geometry Center, where he was involved with several open-source software projects that explored the geometry and topology of dynamical systems. In 1997, he joined the Advanced Analytics R&D division at SAS. SAS is a leading provider of data analysis software.

Rick is currently a distinguished researcher in computational statistics at SAS. His areas of expertise include numerical analysis, matrix computations, optimization, statistical graphics, and modern methods in statistical data analysis. He writes software to support the SAS matrix language, which is similar to MATLAB. He has been an officer in the American Statistical Association and gives frequent presentations and tutorials at statistical conferences. He has written two award-winning books on statistical programming with SAS. He writes a popular blog about statistical programming, which has been cited in journals, books, Wikipedia, and news magazines. In 2014, he was awarded the SAS CEO Award of Excellence. 

Patrick Worfolk ‘93, Synaptics (San Jose, CA)
Patrick is currently the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Research at Synaptics, a global high-tech company focused on human interface technologies. The Corporate Research department includes teams for Exploratory Research, Computer Vision & Machine Learning, User Experience, Concept Prototyping, and Competitive Analysis. He joined the company in 2009 and held various management positions before taking the CTO role in 2014.

Prior to Synaptics, Dr. Worfolk spent twelve years leading technology development at several Silicon Valley high-tech startups in the wireless communications industry, including W5 Networks, TZero Technologies, and Caly Networks. Early in his career, he held academic and research positions at Brown University, the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and the University of Minnesota. Dr. Worfolk holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from MIT and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. His Ph.D. advisor was John Guckenheimer, and his research was in the area of dynamical systems and, specifically, the impact of symmetry on transitions to chaos. A common theme through his career in both academics and industry has been applying mathematical modeling, simulation and analysis to solve a range of diverse and interesting problems. This program was made possible in part by an Engaged Cornell grant.