Dr. Suzanne Fernandes-Sindi, Professor of Applied Mathematics at UC Merced, will deliver the 83rd Harry S. Kieval Lecture at Cal Poly Humboldt on Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. in Room 135 of the Science-B Building on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus. The public is welcome to this free lecture, which is geared toward a general audience. The title of Dr. Fernandes-Sindi's lecture is “Learning from Data in Biology: Why AI Alone Isn’t the Answer”.

In this talk, Dr. Fernandes-Sindi makes the point that while modern AI can predict the behavior of remarkably complex systems, prediction is not the same as understanding. In biology, we often want to know why a system behaves as it does, so mechanism still matters. Dr. Fernandes-Sindi will illustrate this through two examples from her research. First, she will show how we can learn governing equations directly from agent-based model data, discovering interpretable rules rather than simply making black-box predictions. Second, she’ll describe how a mechanistic model of blood clotting can be used to generate “virtual populations” of simulated patients, revealing previously unrecognized drivers of bleeding severity in hemophilia—predictions that were later confirmed experimentally. Through these examples, Dr. Fernandes-Sindi will show how combining data-driven methods with mechanistic models can give us something that AI alone cannot: insight into how complex biological systems work.

Dr. Suzanne Fernandes-Sindi is a Full Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Merced. She received her bachelor's degree from Cal State Fullerton, where she was Runner-Up for the Alice T. Schafer Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics and received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She completed her PhD in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computation at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was subsequently a Prager Assistant Professor at Brown University, where she also held a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship from the NIH. As a mathematical biologist, she uses mathematics, modeling, statistics, and computation to gain insight into biological systems such as protein aggregation diseases and blood coagulation. She has mentored more than 15 PhD students to completion, and in 2027 will be named a Fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Dr. Fernandes-Sindi is passionate about broadening participation in mathematics. She is currently the Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and the UC Co-Director of Cal-Bridge Mathematics - a statewide program supporting undergraduate students enter and succeed into PhD programs in mathematics.

The daughter of immigrants from Saudi Arabia and Portugal, Dr. Fernandes-Sindi grew up in Placentia, California. She enjoys science fiction, theatre, film, and true crime podcasts.
Please see https://www.sindilab.com/home for further details about Dr. Fernandes-Sindi’s work and many accomplishments.

The Kieval lecture series is named for Mathematics Professor Emeritus, Dr. Harry S. Kieval, who taught at Cal Poly Humboldt from 1966 to 1979. The series includes topics on popular and/or broad aspects of mathematics attractive to undergraduates and the public. For more information, please visit www.humboldt.edu/mathematics/kieval-lecture.

Dr. Fernandes-Sindi will also give a separate lecture earlier the same day as a part of the Cal Poly Humboldt Mathematics Colloquium. That lecture titled, “Discovering Governing Equations from Biological Data: Deterministic and Stochastic Perspectives” will begin at 4 p.m. in the same location, Room 135 of the Science-B Building on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus, preceded by refreshments in Room 312 of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Building (BSS) 312. The colloquium talk is also free to the public. For more information please visit http://www.humboldt.edu/mathematics/mathematics-colloquium.