In this episode, Chris Rackauckas and Michael Tiemann welcome back Firoozeh Dastur, a theoretical mathematician and PhD candidate from Germany working on tropical geometry. This marks the first time someone has returned to the Julia Dispatch podcast! Firoozeh shares her journey from Pakistan to Germany, her pivot from K3 surfaces to tropical geometry, and how she discovered Julia during the pandemic. She explains what tropical geometry is, her early struggles with Julia, and how the Julia Slack community became crucial to her learning process. The conversation then shifts to her work on computational algebra and HPC workflows, where she discusses the frustrations with existing HPC tools that led her to develop DistributedWorkflows.jl. She introduces us to Petri nets as an alternative to DAGs for managing cyclic workflows and explains how her package aims to make HPC accessible to everyone. Firoozeh also shares insights about overcoming perfectionism in open source development, the importance of releasing early (inspired by Airbnb's launch story), and her thoughts on differential equations as Turing complete systems.

Firoozeh Dastur is a theoretical mathematician specializing in algebraic and tropical geometry with a strong focus on leveraging computer algebra systems for advanced mathematical research. Her other interests include high-performance computing (HPC) tools, with a particular goal of making distributed computing accessible to all domain scientists. As a passionate educator, Firoozeh is committed to fostering an inclusive learning environment that empowers the next generation of researchers and innovators. In her spare time, she develops Julia libraries that reflect her interests in distributed computing and computer algebra systems.

DistributedWorkflows.jl: https://github.com/JuliaServices/DistributedWorkflows.jl

Julia Slack community: https://julialang.org/slack/

NEMO.jl: https://github.com/Nemocas/Nemo.jl

Oscar.jl: https://github.com/oscar-system/Oscar.jl

SPACK: https://spack.io/

Recorded on: 2025/05/20

Hosts: Chris Rackauckas, Michael Tiemann

Editor: Stazi

Find us everywhere:

https://juliadispatch.fm

https://github.com/JuliaDispatch/

https://www.youtube.com/@JuliaDispatch

https://anchor.fm/s/fc63539c/podcast/rss

Chris and Guillaume discuss the contents of the "This month in Julia world - 2025-08". We cover the upcoming JuliaCon Local Paris event, Julia 1.12 beta release updates, major compiler improvements with JuliaLowering.jl, performance optimization discoveries, and ecosystem growth with new packages like TestPicker.jl, BorrowChecker.jl, and AI integration tools. We also dive deep into technical discussions about optional modules, static arrays, and the ongoing focus on reducing latency across the Julia ecosystem.

This month in Julia world - 2025-08: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/this-month-in-julia-world-2025-04/128859

Recorded on: 2025/05/13

Hosts: Chris Rackauckas, Guillaume Dalle

Editor: Stazi

Find us everywhere:

https://juliadispatch.fm

https://github.com/JuliaDispatch/

https://www.youtube.com/@JuliaDispatch

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Good morning, good evening, good night, wherever you are in the world! Today we welcome Jacob Zelko, who takes us on a fascinating journey from his early days as a biomedical engineering student through his work at the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic, and into his current exploration of applied category theory. Jacob shares how his pandemic response work led him to seek more fundamental approaches to public health problems, ultimately discovering category theory as a potential framework for composing different models and analyses. We also dive into his role as leader of the Julia Health Organization, his experience as a Twitch streamer known as "The Cedar Prince," and his vision for using Julia to bridge the gap between high-performance computing and accessible health research tools.

Jacob Scott Zelko is a MS student in Applied Mathematics at Northeastern University (NEU) and a trainee of NEU's Roux Institute. Prior to this, he has worked for Georgia Tech Research Institute as a Health Data Analytics and Informatics Researcher and as a Research Engineer for the Centers for Disease Control Office of Science. In the Julia community, he is the leader of the JuliaHealth organization, a community of Julia developers who use the Julia programming language to improve medicine, health care, public health, and biomedical research. Additionally, he is the co-admin for the Julia Language's GSoC program and is the Community Manager for the AlgebraicJulia ecosystem.

Julia Health Organization: https://juliahealth.org/

Jacob's personal website: https://jacobzelko.com/

Jacob's GitHub: https://github.com/TheCedarPrince

Recorded on: 2025/05/07

Hosts: Chris Rackauckas, Michael Tiemann

Editor: Stazi

Find us everywhere:

https://juliadispatch.fm

https://github.com/JuliaDispatch/

https://www.youtube.com/@JuliaDispatch

https://anchor.fm/s/fc63539c/podcast/rss