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Cornell University

Charles Van Loan

Selected Talks and Writings

Categories:

Teaching
Computer Science
Scientific Computing
Dean of Faculty
Post DoF

Teaching

From 1977-1981 I created and taught The Computer Age (CS 101), a.k.a., Programming For Poets. The course grew from 60 to 400 over this time and the act of explaining across campus what it was all about taught me a lot about the connection between practical and liberal education:

  • Computer Science and the Liberal Arts Student, The Educational Form, November, 1980, 29-42. (pdf)

Talking about math and computing to non-specialists has always been a favorite pastime. Perhaps that explains why I was always a big fan of Cornell’s annual “Bring a Child to Work Day”:

  • Those Fabulous Hexagons (pdf)

In the early 1990s I created and taught CS 100M, a Matlab-based intro that targeted non-CS STEM majors. As with Programming for Poets, it was an occasion to learn about other instructional connections:

  • Building Freshman Intuition for Computational Science and Mathematics, SIAM News, September and October 1995. (pdf)

Computer Science

The creation of CIS at Cornell in 1999 forced us to rethink our connections to the ugrad scene within engineering, in particular, the role of core requirements in mathematics and the sciences:

  • Requirements and New Majors in Engineering (pdf )

Serving as the Director of the CS Master of Engineering program just as entrepreneurship was beginning to blossom on the Ithaca campus made me think about its relationship to basic research and breadth of education:

  • Ben Franklin: The Doctor Would Want a Masters, SIAM News, May 2013.(pdf , see page 8).

It’s not easy being a dissertation student. Here is a talk I gave at one of our “professional development” seminars in which I offer a little perspective:

  • Fifteen Ways to Think About Research–Some Alignments and Metaphors (pdf)

I had a hand in writing these two university-level reports,

  • A Framework for Thinking About Mental Health (pdf)
  • Reimagining Calculus, CSE, and Applied Math (pdf)

and these two internal-to-CS memos:

  • The Job Talk Colloquium–Advice (pdf )
  • Hiring New Assistant Professors–25 Questions About the Process (pdf )

Scientific Computing

These “after dinner” talks were fun and serious at the same time:

  • Stanford CS at 50 and Gene Golub at 75 (pdf)
  • Understanding Mrs. Divitz–Metaphor and Computational Mathematics (pdf)

Together with many others in 2008  we celebrated the life of longtime colleague and friend Gene Golub:

  • 50/50, 20/20, and Other Golden Ratios–Reflections on a Favorite Collaboration (pdf)

I gave the first ever SIAM Community Lecture” at the 1995 National Meeting,

  • If Copernicus Had a Computer (pdf)

and the von Neuman Lecture at the 2018 meeting:

  • Untangling Random Polygons (pdf)

The “untangling” talk was based on a paper that I co-authored with Adam Elmachtoub. One reason it is one of my favorite publications is that it had its origins in a freshman level introductory programming course–proof that there can be a totally blurred line between teaching and research. More on this here:

  • From Random Polygon to Ellipse–A Snapshot of Computational Science and Engineering (pdf)

The “Copernicus” talk marked my interest in using various orbit problems as examples whenever I taught undergraduate-level scientific computing. Ellipse computations were a natural consequence of this:

  • Using the Ellipse to Fit and Enclose Data Points–A First Look at Scientific Computing and Numerical
    Optimization (pdf)

Fascination with the Kronecker product began with my FFT book wherein I explained that different FFT algorithms correspond to different factorizations of the DFT matrix. Another “after dinner talk”:

  • The Kronecker Product–A Product of the Times (pdf)

From this point, my transition to computational multilinear algebra was quite natural:

  • From Matrix to Tensor (pdf)

For more detail on this transition, here are my 2010 Golub Summer School Lectures:

  • Lecture 1: Introduction to Tensor Computations (pdf)
  • Lecture 2: Tensor Unfoldings (pdf)
  • Lecture 3: Transpositions, Kronecker Products, Contractions (pdf)
  • Lecture 4: Tensor-Related Singular Value Decompositions (pdf)
  • Lecture 5: The CP Representation and Tensor Rank (pdf)
  • Lecture 6: The Tucker Representation (pdf)
  • Lecture 7: Other Decompositions and Nearness Problems (pdf)
  • Lecture 8: Symmetry and Multilinear Rayleigh Quotients (pdf)
  • Lecture 9: The Curse of Dimensionality (pdf)
  • Lecture 10: Special Topics (pdf)

 

Dean of Faculty

Serving as Dean of Faculty (2016-2021) still involved research and teaching. You research tough problems that confront the University and then teach the faculty all about them so that they can make totally informed decisions that relate to those problems. There were sixty-one meetings of the Faculty Senate during my five years. Quick overview of what we accomplished:

  • Annual Trustee Presentations (pdf)

To me, every problem and every issue that came my way as DoF was a “teaching moment”, e.g.,

  • Snow Days at Cornell–What Faculty and Staff Have to Say About March 13-15, 2017 (pdf)
  • The Bicycle and the Helmet–One Way to Frame the “First-Gen” Discussion (pdf, 2018 Ezra Article)

I had the good fortune to chair/co-chair a number of great committees as the DoF. Here are the jointly authored final reports from some of those committees:

  • The 2016-17 Academic Calendar Committee (pdf)
  • The Transition to Emeritus Committee (pdf)
  • The Consensual Relationships Policy Committee (pdf)
  • The Academic Titleholder Representation Committee (pdf)
  • The AFPSF Committee Tenure Track Project Recommendations (pdf)
  • Working Group C: A Proposed Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures (pdf)
  • Working Group S: Racial Justice and Equitable Futures–An Educational Requirement for Students (pdf)
  • Working Group F: Racial Justice and Equitable Futures–An Educational Requirement for Faculty (pdf)

Note: Committee recommendations are not necessarily adopted!

Being a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science for forty-one years provided the perfect set of experiences for the Dean of Faculty job.

Post-DoF

Less Than Zero: Rethinking STEM Literacy
CAPE Lecture (5/24/2022)

It is impossible to overstate the importance of having a citizenry that is literate in matters that concern Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).  “STEM literacy” has several components that I will explain by tracing how my thinking on the topic has evolved since joining the faculty. Watershed events for me include teaching “Programming for Poets” in the 1970s, being DGS in the 1980s, DUS in the 1990s, department chair in the 2000s, and MEng director in the 2010s. Further STEM-literacy insights came my way when writing textbooks and while serving as Dean of Faculty. Big surprise: the underappreciated “history of zero” and how we do arithmetic with the place value system sums it up!