Student Ambassador Spotlight: Hevander Da Costa

Students at Wolfram
Nov 7 · 2 min read

My name is Hevander Da Costa, and I’m a physics and computer science student at the University of Maryland. I became a Wolfram Student Ambassador in September 2019.

I was previously studying at the University of North Georgia as a physics major. At the University of North Georgia I took Riemannian Geometry, Advanced Partial Differential Equation, Electrodynamics, as well as a whole gambit of other physics course. My transfer to the University of Maryland was to tailor my physics academic career to computational fluid dynamics. At the U-Maryland I’ll be taking standard junior level computer science courses, focusing on machine learning and numerical analysis.

Currently I’m in a Co-op program for Cardlytics in Atlanta Georgia. Cardlytics is one of those non-tradition work environments, so although it’s cooperate, it’s a fairly relaxed team with great interdepartmental communication. I work on the revenue analytics team. Primarily that entails improving the predictive models for marketing campaign. However, recently I worked on a python script to update and automate their marketing revenue reports. My boss bragged that the script will be saving them some work for the next year, so I’m assuming that was fairly impactful.

In my interactions with the academic community, my biggest emphasis is fostering interdisciplinary collaboration around STEM related projects. At my previous university I founded and ran two clubs. Both the clubs I founded were forums for student to teach each other skills. I assembled a team who could do the instructional work, and we taught and learned together using projects rather than lectures. In my free time I networked with GT Solar from Georgia Tech to help the club acquire a solar powered car — we’re still sorting out the logistics. Ideally that particular project will help foster the sort of interdisciplinary collaboration that better emulates workflows in the wider world.

Most of the work I’ve done using Wolfram technologies has been in differential equations and computational physics. With differential equations I modeled membrane behavior given certain boundary condition. For computational physics it was everything from basic plots for interferometer data, to 3-dimension plots for particle physics Jet-Algorithms. For me, the fun comes from learning the functionality of the Wolfram platform, and how Wolfram can give produce presentable results on the fly.

Why did I join the Wolfram Student Ambassador program? The short answer is to learn more about Wolfram. Wolfram lets users handle symbolic and numerical data, as well as being an academic multitool. That being said, my goal as an ambassador is to show other students how they can leverage Wolfram’s Mathematica more readily than any other academic software. Wolfram has a library of functions tailored to academic use, and can help students develop further insight to whatever problem they’re tackling — physics or otherwise.

Students At Wolfram

The Students At Wolfram program supports young technology enthusiasts around the world to engage their communities in STEM and the Wolfram Language. Includes the Student Ambassador Program, Emerging Leaders Program and others.

Students at Wolfram

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Wolfram Research is connected to a thriving community of students, who participate in a variety of programs, including Student Ambassadors and Emerging Leaders

Students At Wolfram

The Students At Wolfram program supports young technology enthusiasts around the world to engage their communities in STEM and the Wolfram Language. Includes the Student Ambassador Program, Emerging Leaders Program and others.

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