Mohan Shankar

Mohan Shankar

Undergraduate in Chemistry, University of Virginia

Talks and Presentations

Distinguished Majors Symposium

April 19, 2024

Talk, University of Virginia, DMP Symposium, Charlottesville, Virginia

This talk was given for the Distinguished Majors Program (DMP) symposium at the University of Virginia where undergraduates present their research. It consisted of a presentation followed Q&A where I presented on my quantum mechanics oriented undergraduate project that I also wrote my thesis on. In short, the goal is to develop a system describing quantum effusion to create a baseline model which quantum transition state (QTST) theories can be measured against, analagous to how classic TST used classical effusion as its model. Students in the DMP also had to create and present a poster at the regional ACS meeting.

An Introduction to Group Theory and its Applications

March 12, 2024

Talk, University of Virginia, STEM Communication Practice , Charlottesville, Virginia

Group theory is an incredibly elegant theory despite its somewhat dry mathematical definition: group theory is the study of algebraic structures known as groups. The main focus of the talk will be the of permutaion of three numbers denoted P(3) and the symmetry operations of an equilateral triangle, showing how these two are connected using group theory. Following this, a slight mention of group theory’s application in cryptography was made.

Linear Algebra v2: Regression and SVD?

March 05, 2024

Talk, University of Virginia, STEM for Virgina , Charlottesville, Virginia

Building off of my first talk, I will couple linear algebra and calculus to introduce the idea of the cost function along with the simple technique of linear regression. We’ll then revisit eigenvectors and values while briefly describing how to systematically find them. The Google Page Rank algorithm will also be shown again, this time with the numerical calculations of finding the eigenvector associated with $\lambda = 1$. From there, we’ll touch on the singular value decomposition (SVD), one of the most important linear algebraic tools given its utility for dimensionality reduction and look at image compression using the technique.

String Theory: How do Musicians Know What Sounds Nice?

September 12, 2023

Talk, University of Virginia, STEM Communication, Charlottesville, Virginia

This talk was given for STEM Communication, a group of graduate students who made an exception and were willing to have an undergraduate sit in. My goal was quite lofty as I set out to explore a less rigorous topic in STEM to a group of theoretical physicists and chemists. I think there was a lot of ground to cover in more rigorous scientific fields related to the music including physics (wave mechanics), biology (interpretation of sounds and perhaps even consciousness), and math (measure theory). That said, I believe it went well, and it was a fun experience.