Title: Julia: A modern programming language for scientific computing

Abstract: Julia is a modern high-level programming language designed specifically for scientific computing. Because it uses Just-in-time compilation, it can achieve run-time speeds similar to those of statically compiled languages like C and Fortran. Other features include custom types, a built-in documentation system, macro processing, and an advanced package management system with integrated version control. Despite being a relatively new language, Julia already has a plethora of packages, making it ideal for research in many quantitative disciplines. In this talk, we give an overview of the main features of the language, give examples of some useful packages, and discuss some advantages and disadvantages Julia has over other programming languages.

Bio: Jamie is a Lecturer in Operational Research, in the Management Science Department at Lancaster University.  Jamie's interests lie in the areas of optimization, applied probability and statistics. He has worked on applications in logistics and telecommunications.  During his PhD, his research concerned scenario generation which is an issue that arises in stochastic programming.