Talking BIG Jobs: BIG Jobs Live Interview Series (Past)
A live interview series with mathematicians working in business, industry, and government co-produced by SIAM and the AMS.
Explore careers in business, industry, government, entrepreneurship, and non-profits (BIG) in this web series. Listen to previous conversations, linked below, that are designed for graduate students and mathematicians interested in BIG careers in business, industry, government, entrepreneurship and nonprofits. Back to BIG Career Preparation Initiative.
Video coming soon!
Dr. Carla Cotwright-Williams serves as a Technical Director within the Department of Defense (DoD). While at the Pentagon, she served as the first Chief of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) - the DoD’s new Center of Excellence for AI. Prior to working with the DoD, she began her public service in Academia - serving over 10 years in research and teaching. She has conducted research with both NASA and the U.S. Navy. In 2012, she was awarded the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Congressional Fellowship.
Dr. Helen Moore is an applied mathematician who works in the biopharma industry. Her original training was in differential geometry, and she worked on this for several years after her PhD. A chance encounter at a gathering for postdocs while she was at Stanford University led to collaboration work that soon become her major focus: mathematical modeling of diseases and therapies. Eleven years after her PhD, she took the leap to continue this work in the biopharma industry. Dr. Moore has worked at Genentech, Certara, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AstraZeneca. She is currently the Director of Applied Mathematics at a company called Applied BioMath, which provides math modeling support for companies developing therapies for cancer, Alzheimer’s, rheumatoid arthritis, rare diseases, and many other areas of need.
Dr. Stephanie Fitchett is a mathematician and statistician who has worked in academia, government, and industry. An undergraduate abstract algebra class and an encouraging mentor led Steph to graduate school, and she spent her early career as a faculty member in the mathematical sciences, largely in an interdisciplinary honors college. She studied statistics during a sabbatical and eventually left academia for a position as a statistician at Sandia National Laboratories, where she consulted on a wide variety of projects across the Labs. More recently, she has worked as a statistician at a small environmental consulting firm, and currently as a data scientist at Transamerica, an insurance company. Steph earned degrees (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska and an M.S. in Statistics from Colorado State University.
Dr. Sumanth Swaminathan, Co-founder and CEO, Iterex Therapeutics Dr. Swaminathan's initial foray into industrial mathematics was an appointment as technology consultant at W.L. Gore & associates (2012). Here, he led a team of interdisciplinary PhDs in leveraging predictive models to optimize technology operation and development. Following this, he completed a fellowship at the Data Incubator NYC and moved onto a role as Chief Data Scientist at Revon Systems Inc. This role focused on the development, testing, and deployment of triage prediction models for identifying at-home flare-ups of chronic lung and heart disease, which led to Dr. Swaminathan's current role as cofounder and CEO of Iterex Therapeutics. Here, Sumanth is responsible for innovating company products and developing/executing company business strategy. Dr. Swaminathan earned his BSE in chemical engineering from University of Delaware (2005) and PhD in applied mathematics from Northwestern University (2009).
- Our work is funded in part by a generous gift from Philippe and Claire-Lise Tondeur
- Philippe Tondeur has long worked to connect rising mathematicians with BIG career opportunities and we are pleased to use his support in conjunction with SIAM, MAA, ASA, and other participants of the BIG Math Network which coordinates these Tondeur-supported activities.