Sunday, February 2nd, 2020.

Today, many participants are traveling home from the Santarena Hotel after the Math + X Symposium, a yearly gathering organized by Rice University to encourage novel collaborations between mathematics and other disciplines in science and engineering minds. This year’s symposium focused on “inverse problems and deep learning, mitigating natural hazards,” and discussed modeling and tracking complicated natural phenomena like earthquakes, volcanic activity, sea ice, and floods, using techniques like machine learning, AI, and neural networks. 

These areas of study affect both Costa Rica and the world as a whole, and seeing this research happen here definitely points to Costa Rica’s increasing role at the forefront of climate and ecological research. 

With Math + X, as well as other groups like XPT, the Culinary Institute of America, and the Peace Corps all hosting events in town, it’s great to see how interesting groups are choosing Santarena to meet.