Podcasts

In 2023 I conducted a couple of episodes for the Forecasting Impact podcast with with Mahdi Abolghasemi. Prof George Athanasopoulos on multiple topics including IIF’s plans and his research on forecasting. Dr Thiyanga and Dilini Talagala on their academic journey from Sri Lanka to Australia and back to Sri Lanka again. Dr Eric Siegel on his new book. Stay tuned for this podcast, it will come out in 2024.

Industry PhDs I did two more podcasts in 2023 for the Random Sample. One podcast was on industry PhDs. Industry PhDs give a lot more options for the PhD candidates in terms of jobs. And they get to see how the industry views research as well. For this podcast I chatted to 3 OPTIMA PhD students at Melbourne University – Hritika Gupta, Harry McArthur and Nico Andres Thio. The podcast is available at https://www.

After a hiatus, I got a chance to do an episode for the Random Sample. I really enjoyed talking to Prof Peter Stuckey. He has done a lot in the optimisation domain and it was fascinating to talk to him. Peter is the Deputy Director of OPTIMA and he spoke of very cool optimisation problems. The podcast is available at https://www.therandomsample.com.au/podcast/discrete-optimisation/ As usual, Tim Macuga was helping me in the background.

Recently, I got a chance to co-conduct episodes for the Forecasting Impact podcast with with Mahdi Abolghasemi. We had great fun chatting with the guests and learnt so much about different topics. The topics were diverse, but timely and related to forecasting in some way. Dr Ataman Ozyildirim on the business cycle and leading economic indicators. Prof Galit Shmueli on causal inference, behavioural modifications, and role of ethics.

In this episode I spoke to Prof Di Cook about data visualization and reproducibility in research. Di spoke about the challenges in visualizing data in high dimensions and how she became interested in data visualization. She also spoke about the importance of reproducible research. Di has a great phrase for reproducibility, “if I can do it, you can do it too!” Di says that sums it up. As usual Tim Macuga of ACEMS helped me with this podcast.

In this episode I spoke to Prof Kate Smith-Miles about OPTIMA. OPTIMA is an ARC Training Centre and it stands for Optimisation Technologies, Integrated Methodologies and Applications. Kate spoke a lot about the importance of industry collaborations and how to build successful relationships with the industry. As usual Tim Macuga of ACEMS helped me with this podcast. This was all done on Zoom. This podcast is available at https://acems.

In this episode I spoke to Prof Cheryl Praeger about many things. She spoke about her love for mathematics and told us a bit about her mathematical journey. Cheryl spoke about how the mathematical landscape in Australia has changed over the years. She encouraged people to reach out to the wider community and promote mathematics at all levels. As usual Tim Macuga of ACEMS helped me with this podcast.

In this two-part podcast I interviewed Prof Asha Rao from RMIT University and Dr Sophie Calabretto from Macquarie University on Mathematics Education and Women in Mathematics. This is an ACEMS Random Sample podcast and the first part is available at https://acems.org.au/podcast/episode-43-maths-perseverance. It was a great chat on why maths is needed, how it can help us in our careers and how we can go about learning mathematics. Asha and Sophie gave different viewpoints cementing the importance of a good mathematics education.

Tim Macuga from ACEMS and I talked to Prof Galit Shmueli from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan via zoom and made a podcast. This is available at https://acems.org.au/podcast/episode-34-galit-shmueli. Galit talked about different aspects of statistics and how it is used. She talked about different viewpoints, for example in social sciences and STEM fields. Galit also talked about the possibility of big tech giants influencing us in ways that we do not think.

During the 2020 working-from-home period Tim Macuga from ACEMS and I interviewed Prof Gael Martin from Monash University via zoom and made a podcast. This is available at https://acems.org.au/podcast/episode-32-bayes-theorem. Gael gave a brief history of the Bayes Theorem and explained how it became so powerful a tool in today’s computational world. She gave examples and explained some theoretical stuff too. Pretty cool! In this episode she also explains the differences between Bayesian and Frequentist paradigms and discusses how Bayesian computation developed over the years.