Math lecture gave ideas for collaborations

Paolo Bientinesi

ImageHenrik Bjelkstål

The Department of Computing Science is celebrating its 30th anniversary as a department by, among other things, highlighting its own research through popular science breakfast lectures, ‘Breakfast Talks in Computing Science.’ These are intended for the general public as well as for staff and students at the university.

Paolo Bientinesi, Professor of Computing Science specialising in High Performance Computing and Director of the High Performance Computing Centre North (HPC2N) was the first speaker. He sees the breakfast lectures as a good initiative.

‘Our department has been expanding rapidly and in all sorts of directions. These talks provide an opportunity to learn more about each other's interests, strengths and experiences,’ he says.

Under the title ‘Can We Trust Programming Languages to Compute Efficiently?’, he talked about the problem of how different programming languages handle mathematical computations. The starting point of the lecture was how to solve linear algebra problems with different approaches. Paolo explained and reasoned about the problem to an audience of around 40 people.

An interested and diverse audience

Paolo reflected on his breakfast talk and shared his impressions of the audience.

‘The room was completely full, which is always a nice feeling. I saw doctoral students from many different research groups, master students, as well as several senior professors,‘ said Paolo. He appreciated the broad mix of audience members, only a few of whom were familiar with the topic.

After the talk, he received very positive feedback. ‘Many people appreciated the historical perspective, and the fact that the overall content of my lecture was clear even with little knowledge of numerical linear algebra,’ he added. 

Hemamshu Ratnakaram, Doctoral student at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

ImageHenrik Bjelkstål

Mathematical modelling in biological research

One of the listeners was Hemamshu Ratnakaram, a doctoral student at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. As a biologist, he is researching how the outer protective layer of plants affects their growth and development. The information he obtains from his research is then processed using a number of computational methods for further analysis. He found the talk interesting and has gained a broader view of how different computer systems handle complex mathematical calculations in different ways.

‘Even though I have some mathematical background, I can't exactly understand the limitations of our mathematical models and that's where a collaboration with the Computing Science department is interesting,’ says Hemamshu.

As he gets further into his research, he is interested in connecting with experts in the Department of Computing Science and HPC2N.

 ‘With researchers like Paolo Bientinesi and his deep knowledge of complex calculations and processing of large data sets, a collaboration can provide better results and understanding of the research I am doing,’ he says.

Interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities

As team leader and director of HPC2N, Paolo Bientinesi strongly believes that talks like this can lead to collaborations between departments and across faculties.

’ Both HPC2N and my research group act as support for other researchers. We don't discover new medicines or materials ourselves; we are the ones who enable others to solve mathematical operations correctly and efficiently on a variety of computational platforms,’ he said.

He emphasised that these types of non-technical talks should allow researchers in other departments to see what they can gain from collaboration.