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A Day in the Classroom: Junior faculty carry torch article
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Ecosystem Informatics
Oregon State University
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Corvallis, OR 97331
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Junior Faculty Carry Torch
Ecosystem Informatics
Oregon State University
 It is a brisk fall morning in Corvallis, Oregon as 13 students meander into the classroom which is more designed as a conference room with its wide tables and chairs facing each other. One gets the sense of egalitarianism. Students are waking up amid various cups of coffee, tea, and soda but it seems the shortage of caffeine is not responsible for their reticence. These are undoubtedly a group of introverts from various departments who normally would not mix. Although there are only 5 students on fellowship for the incoming class (now in its fourth year), graduate students at Oregon State University can now get a minor in Ecosystem Informatics and that is exactly what the 8 other students are exploring.
Xiaoli Fern, Computer Science, Yevgeniy Kovchegov and Vrushali
Bokil, Mathematics, Matt Betts, Forestry, and Weng-Keen Wong,
Computer Science are co-teaching the Concepts in Ecosystem
Informatics class along with Julia Jones, Director of the Ecosystem
Informatics IGERT program. Four of these five young faculty have
been hired with provost funding from the university.
The first hire, Yevgeniy Kovchegov, received his Ph.D. in
mathematics from Stanford University and works in the field of
probability and stochastic processes. His research interests
include interacting particle systems, coupling methods, mixing
times, random walks in random environments, edge-reinforced
processes, percolation, and other statistical mechanical models.
Xiaoli Fern, Ph.D. in computer engineering from Purdue University
came on board next with her interests lying in machine learning and
data mining. Vrushali Bokil, Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of
Houston, was the next hire. She works in the field of applied
mathematics and numerical analysis. Her research interests include
statistical inference and optimization techniques. The final hire
was Matt Betts who holds a Ph.D. in forestry and environmental
management from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His
interests include tropic cascades in forest ecosystems, species
occurrence modeling, and population viability modeling. Weng-Keen
Wong, Ph.D. computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, held
the fort down while Xiaoli was off on maternity leave last spring.
Like Xiaoli, his research areas are in data mining and machine
learning and so well aligned with the Ecosystem Informatics
program, that he continues to be engaged in it.
Vrushali sits down. "This is a really good class with great
discussions going on", she offers without any solicitation. Matt
Betts, seated at the helm of the table, begins the discussion on
species data. Uran Chu, IGERT fellow in statistics, states that he
is confident of his regression results but a bit uncertain of his
classification techniques of migratory or non-migratory birds and
wonders if there is classifications of uncertainty for this. At
first this draws a chuckle but then morphs into an
interesting question. There is a palpable shift in energy as
the students begin to come alive.
- Written by K. Hoffman and J. Jones
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