The Division of Educational & Institutional Effectiveness is excited to host International Love Data Week at SBU, February 9-13, 2026!
Join us for a mix of 30-minute virtual sessions, an in-person kickoff on Monday, and a student-focused event on Wednesday celebrating data and data-informed decision-making.
Wrap up the week at the Love Data Week Open House on Friday, 2/13 with light refreshments, data-themed swag, photos with Wolfie, and time to connect with presenters.
Learn more and register on https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/oee/recognition/Love%20Data%20Week%202026%20Save%20the%20Date%20Placeholder.php
Qualitative data can be challenging to analyze and interpret effectively. In this workshop, SBU Libraries' Data Literacies Lead, Ahmad Pratama will show you how to extract meaningful insights from textual data, including understanding sentiment trends. Learn to explore qualitative data with Python using word clouds, basic natural language processing (NLP) techniques, and lexicon-based sentiment analysis with VADER.
RSVP via link: https://t.e2ma.net/click/t70ivh/5wwlu4oe/hy5q96
I will be holding an informal 2-week short optimization course, to try
to cover a few important proofs in the field. The goal will be depth
over breadth, with focus on:

 - convergence proofs for gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent
 - energy functions and continuous time optimization
 - estimate sequences and Nesterov acceleration

and, time permitting, additional topics like variance reduction,
quasi-Newton methods, and Frank-Wolfe methods. If we go super fast, we
can spend a few days at the end brainstorming interesting research
project ideas.

Details: NCS 220 6:15pm-7:45pm, Monday-Friday, Feb 7-Feb 18.

In person only, since I plan to use the whiteboard (but may be recorded)

More details will be uploaded here (notes, specific schedule):
https://sites.google.com/view/optimization-short-course/home
Abstract: The rapid growth of observational data presents unprecedented opportunities to enhance both the predictability and mechanistic understanding of Earth systems. However, fully harnessing big Earth data needs computational frameworks that bridge the gap between physics-based models and machine learning. In this talk, I will first demonstrate how AI methods can significantly improve the prediction of environmental systems. Despite their predictive accuracy, machine learning models often lack physical interpretability, limiting their ability for scientific inquiry. To address this, I will introduce the developed hybrid, differentiable modeling framework that unifies physical models with machine learning in an end-to-end trainable system. This framework autonomously learns from large observations while maintaining physical clarity. The machine learning components can be seamlessly embedded into physical backbones to assimilate multi-source data, support automatic parameterization, and represent uncertain processes. I will showcase applications of this framework in simulating and understanding the terrestrial water cycle and its interactions with ecosystems at continental and global scales. This talk will highlight how differentiable modeling not only improves the modeling ability in both data-rich and data-scarce scenarios, but also provides a systematic pathway to enhancing model structures, deciphering uncertain physical relations, and facilitating knowledge discovery in Earth system sciences.


IACS Seminar Speaker: Dapeng Feng, Stanford Univeristy

Location: IACS Seminar Room

You are cordially invited to attend the biweekly Brookhaven AI Mixer (BAM). BAM includes three short talks on AI research happening at BNL, followed by an open mixer over coffee and snacks for everyone to network and discuss all things AI. The first half hour will consist of presentations that will be available via ZOOM, and the second half hour will be for in person only networking.

Join us every other Tuesday at noon in CDSD's Training Room (building 725, 2nd floor) to learn about interesting AI methods and applications, engage with potential collaborators, prepare for pending FASST funding calls, and build a community of AI for Science at BNL.

Speakers

Kriti Chopra, Computing & Data Sciences (CDS)
Thomas Flynn, Computing & Data Sciences (CDS)
Wenjie Liao, Chemistry Division

Tuesday, January 7, 2025, 12:00 pm -- CDS, Bldg. 725, Training Room

Join ZoomGov Meeting: https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1615289117?pwd=Hqkbj9itxWrFnkhZ8rQXHPInO2gxdF.1

Meeting ID: 161 528 9117
Passcode: 991382

You are cordially invited to attend the biweekly Brookhaven AI Mixer (BAM). BAM includes one short talk on AI research happening at BNL, followed by an open mixer over coffee and snacks for everyone to network and discuss all things AI. The first half hour will consist of presentations that will be available via ZOOM, and the second half hour will be for in person only networking.

Join us every other Tuesday at noon in CDSD's Training Room (building 725, 2nd floor) to learn about interesting AI methods and applications, engage with potential collaborators, prepare for pending FASST funding calls, and build a community of AI for Science at BNL.

Machine Learning for Seismic Low Frequency Extrapolation

Abstract: The cycle skipping problem that plagues seismic inversion can be mitigated by utilizing low-frequency seismic data, which captures the kinematics of wave propagation, in conjunction with a reasonable initial velocity model. However, seismic sources and receivers are band-limited and cannot provide signals down to 0 Hz. To improve solution of the seismic inverse problem one can synthesize the missing low-frequency content by solving a regression problem using machine learning (ML). The recorded high-frequency (HF) seismic data is the input and the ML models are trained to predict the missing low-frequency (LF) seismic data. Deep learning models utilizing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs) demonstrate important capabilities for LF extrapolation. However, such models require powerful hardware and careful training. We explore the feasibility of using less costly ML models such as a random forest, Gaussian process surrogates, and gradient boosting as alternatives to computationally expensive deep learning models.

Biography: Sue Minkoff is Chair of Applied Mathematics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 2012-2024 she was a Professor of Mathematical Sciences and an Affiliated Professor in the Departments of Sustainable Earth Systems Sciences and Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Texas at Dallas. From 2000-2012 she served on the faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She received her doctorate in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University. From 1995-1997 she was a National Science Foundation-Industrial postdoc joint with the University of Texas at Austin and British Petroleum, and from 1997-2000 she held the von Neumann Fellowship in the Mathematics Department at Sandia National Labs. In 2000 Minkoff was promoted to Senior Member of the Technical Staff in Sandia's Geophysics Department. Minkoff's research interests include scientific computing, inverse problems, uncertainty quantification and digital twins modeling, Earth science, and photonics.

Location: CDS, Bldg. 725, Training Room

Join ZoomGov Meeting: https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1606848158?pwd=miUtq7OkYL5SNkjbgVb19teZPNennd.1

Meeting ID: 160 684 8158
Passcode: 068399