An Unexpected Journey: from Music to Art Via Math

Philadelphia, PA, July 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mathematics and code are often seen as purely practical, but a closer look can uncover surprising depths of beauty and creativity. This Texas A&M University professor demonstrates that potential by transforming music into visual artwork using self-designed algorithms that draw on techniques from his work collecting and visualizing matrices.

Dr. Timothy A. Davis, Computer Science and Engineering Professor at Texas A&M University, will deliver the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) 2025 I. E. Block Community Lecture, which is open to the public and intended to encourage public appreciation of the excitement and vitality of science. Well regarded for his work in sparse matrix algorithms and applied mathematics, Dr. Davis’ primary scholarly contribution is the creation of widely-used sparse matrix algorithms and software, SuiteSparse. His software is relied upon by a vast array of commercial, government lab, and open-source applications, such as MATLAB, Google Street View, Pokémon Go, and many more. Every Apple device, such as the iPhone and Mac, incorporates his software as well.

“Math and code are beautiful, so they say, but are often underappreciated by the untrained eye,” said Dr. Davis, who will be presenting this free and livestreamed public lecture on July 30 as part of the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings, sponsored in part by Tourisme Montréal. “With the right techniques, visual beauty can be found in matrices, music, and math,” he added.

In his upcoming presentation entitled An Unexpected Journey: from Music to Art Via Math, Dr. Davis will present his work on collecting and visualizing matrices, and the unexpected turn he took when he was asked to create artwork from music using the same techniques. He will reveal stunning visual beauty found in matrices, music, and math with his artwork and illustrate how apparently disconnected topics collide to produce amazing beauty.

In honor of his research contributions, Dr. Davis was named a SIAM Fellow (2013), an Association for Computing Machinery Fellow (2014), and an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow (2016). He was also a recipient of the 2018 Walston Chubb Award for Innovation and awarded the 2021 Computing Society Prize by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences for his pioneering work on roundoff-error-free matrix factorization. Learn more about Dr. Davis.

The July 30 presentation is free for the public and media to attend. Please email Taylor Johnson at [email protected] if you plan to attend and/or would like to interview Dr. Davis following the talk. You must email SIAM in advance to attend in-person; press credentials will be required.

The lecture will be livestreamed and posted to SIAM’s YouTube afterwards. Visit the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings webpage for details.

An Unexpected Journey: from Music to Art Via Math
Featuring: Timothy A. Davis 
Texas A&M University 
Tuesday, July 30, 6:15 – 7:15 p.m. ET
Room 517D  
Montréal Convention Center 
1001 Pl. Jean-Paul-Riopelle,
Montréal, Quebec H2Y 0A3, Canada  

About SIAM
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an international society of more than 13,000 individual, academic, and corporate members from 85 countries. SIAM helps build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology to solve real-world problems through publications, conferences, programs, and communities like student chapters, local sections, and activity groups. Learn more at siam.org. 

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• Dr. Timothy A. Davis

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