Alumni

Alumni Updates

Lingqun Liu wrote:

I am working as a SAS programmer/Analyst at the Kidney Epidemiology and Cost Center (KECC), at the University of Michigan. KECC carries out research in Epidemiology, Public Policy, Economics, Outcomes Research relating to End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), kidney dialysis and organ transplantation. KECC maintains a comprehensive historical database of more than 1 million ESRD patients drawn primarily from Medicare data. As a programmer/Analyst, my responsibilities include: Development and maintenance of the KECC databases using SAS and Oracle; Development and production of facility-specific reports in paper, CD and web formats; Preparation of analysis files involving the combination of data from many sources; Support of statistical analysis.

Logical thinking, programming skills and statistics knowledge are the essential requirements of my current job. The joint program, Mathematics and Computer Science, I attended at EMU is really helpful. I miss my time at EMU. All my teachers gave great lectures and my class fellows and I worked very hard practicing our knowledge and skills. I'd like to say thanks to Professor Kathy Chu, Kenneth Shiskowski, Matthew Evett, Hartmut Höft, Paul Howard, Jiuqiang Liu, William Sverdlik, Elsa Valeroso Poh and all others who
did your best to offer us wonderful classes.

Shawn Rafalski is in graduate school and wrote to Dr.Dave Folk:

Yes, finally after telling you weeks ago that I would reply in a few days, here I am replying. Needless to say, life is just busy, but I’d like to give you an update on my life/career.

I’m currently doing research and still taking a few classes (lie algebras, geometric group theory), my research is 3-manifolds, specifically orbifolds, and my advisor is Ian Agol. The semester here is finally winding down, so I’ll actually have time to do research--I’m such a terrible multi-tasker. right now I run the computer lab maple discussion section for a few sections of multivariable calc, and it's fun but I much prefer teaching. Hopefully in the fall I’ll be able to request my own calc III course. I can't wait to use play-dough!!

The highlight of my summer is a month-long MSRI graduate program in June/July on "ricci flow and the geometrization of 3-manifolds". It's based on the work of this Russian mathematician Perelman of whom I’m sure you've heard, and I’m really looking forward to it. The program is at MSRI, and I’ve never been to Berkeley before and people tell me I won't want to come back. I figure that I’ll be missing Andrea a great deal after just a week, though, so I do plan on buying a round-trip ticket. The program is going to take a lot of prep on my part--I have to learn more Reimannian geometry and differential equations than I ever thought I’d need, and that's just to keep up!

Chicago is fun, especially now that it's warming up, but I have to say that I’m really hoping I can find work or a postdoc on the west coast somewhere. I could use a few years of palm trees. Maybe that's just midwest winter fatigue talking, but I went to the AMS regional meeting in Santa Barbara a week ago and there's just something really great about milder weather and lots of sun all year round.

My wife Andrea is working on the UIC campus now as web director for the College of Applied Health Sciences (it was pointed out to me recently that no one really knows what pure health sciences are), and she's loving the job far more than her previous one at the Univ of Chicago. She jokingly tells me to take as long as I want to finish here, but I hope to be done in two or so years. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.