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Raymond Joseph Friend Jr.

Graduate Assistant, Thesis Advisor: Linda Westrick
Raymond Friend with trees in the background
I am a graduate student at Penn State. I am interested in things like sustainability and making a more accessible and affordable world.

Personal Information

My professional website can be found here.

My advisor at Penn State is Dr. Linda Westrick.

This is the link to my GitHub.

¡Trato de ser bilingüe!

Roles

Projects

  • I work with Dr. Jan Reimann and other graduate students in creating a new, open-source suite of projects to make math education at Penn State more accessible and affordable using HTML, Jupyter, and Python. Here is an example of our new MATH 110: Techniques of Calculus textbook deployed Fall 2021.
  • I produced the first ever Eberly College of Science Greenhouse Gas Inventory, quantifying the annual emissions related to all of Penn State's Eberly College of Science activities and operations. This was the most ambitious inventory effort performed at Penn State, and has served as a template for various other colleges and units at the university to produce their own inventories. My inventory further recommends methods for decarbonization, offset, and strategic planning to counteract our current emissions. I personally have helped produced unit-level inventories for the University Libraries and the College of Health and Human Development. Eberly College's Science Journal 2022 Issue 2 featured an exposition on this project. 
  • I also produced the first ever Council of Commonwealth Student Governments Lifetime Greenhouse Gas Inventory, quantifying all greenhouse gas emissions produced through all operations committed by Penn State's CCSG (the student grovernment for all commonwealth campuses) in its 60+ year history. This inventory effort was the first performed for any organization at Penn State, and has inspired other student governments to produce their own as well.
  • My team and I were finalists in the 2021 Nittany AI Challenge with our idea Trace.
  • I advised and co-lead a finalist team in the 2022 Nittany AI Challenge named Stellar AI.

Volunteering

Resources for Students

  • Here is the link to a list of resources available to students dealing with housing, food, clothing, transportation, funding, or health insecurities. Feel free to distribute. The list was compiled by me and my students from MATH 33 during Fall 2021.
  • I aim to provide a safe space for all students of all races, abilities, sexual & romantic orientations, genders, religions, ages, nationalities, and ideologies. Please reach out to me if you believe I can help you navigate Penn State more safely or equitably. 

Mathematical Experiences

  • I participated in the 2-week MSRI Mathematics of Machine Learning Summer School held at New York University's Courant Institute in Summer 2022. We covered Deep Learning, Statistical Learning, Online Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Convex Optimization.
  • I participated in the 3-week IMS Logic Summer School held by the National University of Singapore for three weeks in Summer 2022. We covered topics in forcing, tracial von Neumann algebras, and effective Hausdorff dimension.
  • I participated in the sixth IMA Math-to-Industry Bootcamp in Summer 2021. We covered machine learning, statistical programming, and data science techniques, as well as performed data science projects for industry partners over 6 weeks.
  • I participted in the 8-week Mathematics REU held at Auburn Unviersity in Summer 2018, where we mostly covered open problems in Graph and Ramsey Theory.

Interests

  • I have been learning Spanish since August 2020, y he viajado a muchas países donde se habla español. 
  • I love to travel. I have traveled to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, and Singapore so far :)
  • I usually run, bike, swim, and rock climb.
  • I love to code, especially mathy games and visualizations. You can see some of my creations on my Khan Academy profile!
  • I am the proud parent of many houseplants.