Graduate Student Stories Transcripts: Stephanie Allen

Transcript of Stephanie Allen's video

When I visited the University of Maryland, I really felt this sense of, people knew each other and cared about each other, but you could also do your own thing. So, it was, there was a friendliness, there was community, but it wasn't stifling.

I've met so many awesome people here, and been challenged in ways that I couldn't imagine.

I just finished my first year, so my research is just starting, but I was able to do an end-of-semester project for an Operations Research Methods and Engineering class, I took through Mechanical Engineering.

By focusing on fortification decisions on Nepal's road network, so given various situations that might occur in Nepal in regard to disasters what are the best fortification decisions for their road network.

When I was in college, I thought I was going to be an Econ PhD, I- that's what I was thinking I was going to do. But as I took math and econ classes for my double major, I fell in love with math, because I could describe, basically, anything, with math. So, I saw math as a way of moving between various different application and disciplines, depending on what you want to do, and math gave me power, essentially.

I'm part of the Women in Math Organization here. I'm on the e-board there, and so we're trying to help involve more women in math, through the graduate- you know, and undergraduate students.

I went, actually, symposium in the winter, so between the fall semester and the sprint semester this past year, and it was kind of, like a professional developmentvseminar for graduate student, and I really enjoyed that. They had a variety of workshops on things, you know, writing cover letters, or writing, you know posters to, you know, how you apply for fellowships, et cetera. And I- I found the advice very useful.

The beautiful thing about the Applied Math program, is that we have, you know, 140 plus, associated faculty that the Applied Math students can go, you know, seek out, as advisors, and so, you have opportunities for more research projects, that way, as well.

There's the Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis. It's a really cool place that a lot of people are getting involved in.

Definitely keep a lookout on the emails for various professional development events that are going on, they constantly have them, and I wish I could go to more. Definitely keep an eye out on that. I think, making sure that you interact with people, and- and really establish those friendships, because graduate programs are great here, but you're going to need a little bit of support. And, I think, just coming in with an open mind, and realizing that there are definitely going to be hard times, but it is- it is worth it at the end of the day.

So, I want to go work, for basically, an academic lab, that- where I would apply mathematics directly to real life. So something like National Labs, or, I actually did an internship at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, this past summer. And so, I really enjoyed that, as well.

I would love to put together, and start, you know, working on frameworks for disaster relief, that are able to account for things like temporal shifts, like, with things over time. [sthocastic 00:02:46] events that, where we don't know what's happening, be able to involve different [inaudible 00:02:50]. So, basically, I want to part of putting together a framework for disaster relief and how we do crisis management better.