UNews - Kai Fender

Back in class, Fender has no regrets over change in career focus

trevor.kenney — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 22:15:38 +0000

It is never too late to make decisions that change your career path, even if the goal is almost entirely different than what you initially set out for yourself.

Kai Fender (BSc ’16) is a shining example of this, recognizing his degree didn’t quite match what he’d decided to do with his life. Despite having nurtured a passion for mathematics since grade school, Fender realized his future was better suited to a medical career than an academic career in math. Now on his way to taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and applying to medical school, Fender is back at the U of L taking university science courses relevant to medicine.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Kai Fender now eyes a career in medicine.

For as long as he can remember, math has been Fender’s favourite subject.

“I loved the abstract, logical thinking involved in math, but I always felt like grade school was just laying the foundation for mathematical thinking, teaching students recipes to solve certain problems instead of showing them why the recipes work and how to come up with their own recipes,” he says. “I really wanted to move past laying the foundation and dive into more advanced mathematics, and I figured studying math at university would be a great way to do so.”

Near the tail end of his high school career, Fender discovered a fascination with physics and eventually decided that these two areas would be his focus in university. He subsequently worked through his undergraduate degree with a level of uncertainty about what he would do after graduation.

“I knew I loved solving puzzles in math and physics, I knew I loved learning, and I knew I really enjoyed helping my classmates with math and physics work. Given all of this, I had an inkling I might like to pursue an academic career related to math or physics, but I wasn’t certain,” he says.

Working at math and statistics help sessions provided a dynamic and challenging environment that gave Fender a chance to embrace his passion for math while helping to improve the university experience for others. He valued these one-on-one interactions with his peers, the chance to build relationships, and the opportunity to help people in need. Toward the end of his degree, these experiences ultimately inspired Fender to reconsider a career choice in academia and instead consider becoming a physician. As such, he could also likely choose to stay and work in southern Alberta, close to family.

The only obstacle for Fender was that he was missing courses relevant to those tested on the MCAT. He decided to continue his studies in chemistry, biochemistry and biology at the U of L while remaining active and passionate in his extra-curricular commitments with mathematics.

Fender looks to finish his course work at the U of L, apply to medical school in Canada and ultimately practice as a doctor in southern Alberta. Even though he has spent nearly half a decade studying mathematics and physics in university, he does not feel that his time was wasted.

“I’ll likely never face complex mathematical or physical questions in a medical career, but studying math and physics was valuable for other reasons,” he says. “By spending years solving problems in math and physics, I had an excellent opportunity to practice thinking creatively to come up with solutions to problems I’d never seen before using methods I’d never learned before.”

Fender admits that it was intimidating to change career paths, but realizes the time he invested in education towards a career change pales in comparison to the time he would ultimately spend working in that career. He advises others who might be facing the same circumstance to not look at time spent studying something else as time wasted.

“Think about what you gained from your initial interests, look at them for what they are: a learning experience that helped expand your worldview and made you a more well-rounded person,” says Fender. “It's good to keep an eye on the future, but don't forget to make the most of the present. You're in university; have fun, learn to problem solve, expand your worldview, and get involved with whatever interests you!”

U of L programmers lead Canadian schools at Rocky Mountain Regional

trevor.kenney — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:28:06 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge student programmers earned the highest finish of all Canadian universities, placing fourth overall, at the 2015 ACM Rocky Mountain Regional Programming Contest hosted by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta recently.

U of L Team 1, consisting of Kai Fender, Brandon Fuller and Lukas Grasse, solved seven of 11 total problems with 999 penalty minutes to earn the top spot among Canadian schools. ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary 3 was second amongst Canadian entries and fifth overall, while the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan had teams that ranked eighth and ninth overall in the competition.

“Basically, their solutions have to be in the form of computer programs that will run and produce the correct answers,” says Dr. Howard Cheng, associate professor of mathematics and computer science and the group’s coach. “For example, one of the easier problems they solved was to write a computer program that will read a recipe for a certain number of portions, and scale all the ingredients to some desired number of portions. A harder problem was to write a program that will read a map of a scavenger hunt and the values of each item in the hunt, then find a way to achieve the maximum value and still finish the hunt in time.”

Cheng says a wide cross-section of students take part in the contest, and all reap the rewards of the experience.

“I have students who are not in math and computer science at all. Some have just taken some programming classes and enjoyed it, and decided to try out for this,” he says. “The skills they get are general problem solving skills, as well as the ability to quickly turn a conceptual solution into a computer program that works correctly and efficiently. These skills are commonly sought after by high-tech companies, so they are increasingly using these types of problems/puzzles in their job interviews.”

A total of 52 teams were entered in the competition from throughout Western Canada and the western United States, with ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Utah, Colorado School of Mines and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona finishing first through third respectively. Both Utah and Colorado solved eight problems, while Arizona solved seven but had less penalty minutes, 823, than the U of L’s top team.

In all, the U of L entered four teams with all four finishing in the upper half of the competition.

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge 2, with team members Lindsay Ablonczy, Matt Basaraba and Stephanie McIntyre, placed 14th overall (five solved, 555 penalty minutes), while U of L 3, with Brad Melchin, Julius Moore and Soraj Seyed Mahmoud, placed 20th (four solved, 205 penalty) and U of L 4, consisting of Lyle Snelgrove, Marko Ilievski and Justin Werre, was 21st overall (four solved, 341 penalty).

To view full results, visit the competition website.

Programmers earn third-place finish at regional contest

trevor.kenney — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 23:29:12 +0000

A third-place finish led the way for a quartet of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge student teams that participated in the Rocky Mountain Regional Contest of the 2014 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest recently.

The U of L sent four teams to the 53-team competition, with the group of Kai Fender, Brandon Fuller and Camara Lerner grabbing third place overall. The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta finished first and second respectively. Other teams represented Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Eastern Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Saskatchewan and New Mexico.

“The students have done a tremendous amount of preparation for this competition,” says ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge associate professor of mathematics and computer science Dr. Howard Cheng, the team coach. “To get ready for this, some of the students were putting in eight hours per week under actual contest conditions.”

Students are given a series of complex, real-world problems that they must solve over a five-hour time period. Competitors race against the clock, and each other, in a battle of strategy, logic and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and write programs that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve – except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers.

The past two years saw a U of L team qualify for the world finals, and while this group fell just shy of making it to the international stage, Cheng is excited about their prospects moving forward.

“We had some of our senior students move on after last year, so we’re in a bit of a rebuilding phase,” says Cheng. “What was really exciting was that through this contest, we attracted interest from a number of high profile companies looking to recruit students. These events are excellent career-building opportunities for our students.”

The u of L’s other teams included the group of Lindsay Ablonczy, Chris Thomas and Justin Were (15th place); Matt Basaraba, Lukas Grasse and Marko Ilievski (19th place); and Brandon Robertson, Soraj Seyed Mahmoud and Zackery Shortt (36th place).

Programming team excels in Russia

trevor.kenney — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 20:20:14 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Inter-Collegiate Programming Contest team will return from the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia with several notable achievements after their first-ever international competition.

The team, made up of Hugh Ramp (fourth-year physics); Chris Martin (third-year computer science); Darcy Best (second-year MSc mathematics); and coaches Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science) and Dr. Kevin Grant (mathematics and computer science) took fourth place in an open challenge competition where they had to code their way out of a video game problem – and avoid being eaten by digital zombies in the process.

Their win was chronicled on the ITBusiness News website and the ITWorld Canada website:

http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/alberta-students-scoop-fourth-place-in-international-ai-programming-challenge/37384

http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/alberta-students-4th-in-ai-programming-contest/147325

In a similar online challenge at the end of June, first-time contestant Camara Lerner claimed a second place finish among 14 teams, while teammate Kai Fender made it through three rounds of problem-solving challenges. http://www.uleth.ca/notice/display.html?b=300&s=19610

As well, the team placed third among the Canadian competitors, 12th out of 23 North American teams and 80th of all 120 teams entered in the contest, which was hosted by St. Petersburg National Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO).

Complete results are available here: http://static.kattis.com/icpc/wf2013/

The team will return to Lethbridge July 6.

Programming team in Russia

trevor.kenney — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:54:28 +0000

After months of training and wins at regional competitions, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Inter-Collegiate Programming Contest team is participating in the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia for the first time.

Seeded sixth in a field of more than 100 competitors, the team's Canada Day long weekend won't be spent relaxing or camping in the great outdoors. They will instead be camped out in a university lecture hall 10 time zones away from home with hundreds of other students, looking to solve challenging computer coding problems.

The international event is hosted by St. Petersburg National Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO). Only 115 of the top teams worldwide make it to the world finals.

The events leading up to, and including, the St. Petersburg events are a gruelling series of problem-solving boot camps, competitions and drills designed to enhance the students' ability to work as a team under relentless pressure, the watchful eyes of the world's best judges and under extremely strict working conditions.

The team is on the road from June 27 to July 5. The competition takes place from June 30 to July 4. Team profiles and results will be posted on the ICPC website: http://icpc.baylor.edu/

In addition to sending a team to Russia, mathematics and computer science professor Dr. Howard Cheng is developing the next group of programming challenge participants.

In conjunction with the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals, an online programming challenge took place this past week among 14 teams or individuals.

Third-year U of L undergrad student Camara Lerner staged a remarkable comeback to take second place overall in the open category, following the St. Petersburg State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of IT, Mechanics and Optics – the host venue for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals.

Lerner defeated Finland's Aalto ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of British Columbia "Purple Puppy' team. Lerner's third-year colleague Kai Fender made it through three rounds, winning against the National Institute of Technology (Warangal, India) and Turkey's Yasar ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ before falling to the UBC Purple Puppy team.

Details can be found at this website: http://icpc.baylor.edu/Challenge/

UNews - Kai Fender

Back in class, Fender has no regrets over change in career focus

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