Undergraduate Paper Sessions, Awards, and Ice Cream Social
| Daluss Siewert, Black Hills State University |
This article supplements the feature in the October/November issue of MAA FOCUS.
The MAA undergraduate student paper sessions at MathFest were again a great success, with 95 presentations featuring 126 presenters. Once again, many attendees commented on the outstanding quality of the presentations.
Recognizing student achievement and participation at an ice cream social following the J. Sutherland Frame Lecture was a tradition that continued. The packed room was full of anticipation and excitement as the awards were announced.
The winners of the various prizes are as follows:
The CUR (Council on Undergraduate Research) Award annually goes to a student who gave an exceptional presentation on original research. This year’s recipient was Nathan Bishop of St. Olaf College for the presentation “Rational Equidistribution.”
The Andersen Prize, awarded in memory of Janet Andersen by the Bio SIGMAA, recognizes an outstanding presentation and work in areas related to mathematical biology. This prize went to James Peiskee of Tarleton State University for the presentation “Optimal Control of the Spread of Cholera.”
The SIGMAA EM award recognizes an exceptional presentation that involves work on a problem arising from environmental sources. This award was given to Enela Aliaj of Benedictine University for the presentation “An Edge-Weighted Model for the Spread of a Non-Indigenous Species.”
The SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Award was given to Kevin He of the University of California at Berkley for the presentation “Modeling the DNA Unknotting Action of Type II Topoisomerases.”
Thanks to the generosity of the MAA, we were able to present 15 MAA Outstanding Presentation Awards for students who gave especially noteworthy presentations in any area of mathematics on original or learned topics. The winners of these awards (in no particular order) were:
Justin Halverson of University of Wisconsin, Stout, for “Dead End Depth in Thompson's Group F”
Alexis Johnson of Grand Valley State University and Amelia Stonesifer of St. Olaf College for “Word Length in Alternative Presentations of Thompson’s Group F”
Lisa Kaylor of Westminster College for “Straightline Hanoi”
Miranda Henderson of Benedictine University for “Comparison of Boolean and Continuous Dynamics of Three-Gene Regulatory Networks”
Holly Arrowood of Furman University for “The Isoperimetric Inequality of Constant Gausssian Curvature Surfaces”
James Howe of Walla Walla University for “The Mathematics of Juggling: An Introduction”
Brandon Alberts of Michigan State University for “On Properties of Quasi-Fibonacci Polynomial Sequences”
Jon Calhoun of Arkansas State University for “Dynamic Contact of Viscoelastic Rods”
Theodore Dokos of Ohio State University for “Inversion Wilf Equivalence in Permutations”
Jie Ling Liang of the University of Central Florida for “Congruences for the Number of Smallest Parts in the Partitions of n”
Nathaniel Coursey of Kennesaw State University for “Mutually Orthogonal Sudoku Latin Squares”
Miguel Flores of Truman State University for “Geometry of Surfaces with Densities”
Clark Bowman of the University of Rochester and Ada Yu of the University of Puget Sound for “Can Iterative Voting Solve the Separability Problem in Referendum Elections?”
Karleigh Cameron, Michael Gustin, John Holden, and Stacy Siereveld of Central Michigan University for “Investigation of Second Generation Wavelets”
Rachel Bachman of Clarkson University for “Quantum Walk on Graphs and Perfect State Transfer”
Congratulations to each of the winners. We also want to say a special thank-you to all those that presented and to their advisers for all their efforts—job well done! We hope to see you at MathFest again next year and hope that you will encourage your classmates to consider presenting at MathFest 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin.
Of course, the awards are not possible without the generous help of volunteer judges. The following people volunteered their time and expertise to judge an undergraduate student paper session: Dora Ahmadi, Chris Ahrendt, Michael Allocca, Papiya Bhattacharjee, Daniel Biles, Jason Callahan, Eric Canning, Alex Capaldi, Jenna Carpenter, Doug Chatham, Leah Childers, Jonathan Cox, Joyati Debnath, Anthony DeLegge, Chris Drupieski, Jill Bigley Dunham, Daniel Galiffa, Chad Giusti, Allison Henrich, William Higgins, Theron Hitchman, Josh Holden, Melissa Hoover, Heidi Hulsizer, Aminul Huq, Eric Kahn, Annela Kelly, Wojciech Kosek, Terry Jo Leiterman, Dick Little, Mary Liu, Brenda Mammenga, Andrew Martin, Susan Martin, Andrew Miller, Erin Moss, Colm Mulcahy, Peter Olszewski, Melanie Pivarski, Daniel Pragel, Katie Quertermous, Patrick Rault, Sarah Raynor, Pamela Richardson, Kristine Roinestad, Eric Ruggieri, Steven Schlicker, Rachel Schwell, Nick Scoville, Kristen Sellke, Thomas Sibley, Jessica Sklar, David Strong, Rosemary Sullivan, Jana Talley, Narayan Thapa, Monica VanDieren, Murphy Waggoner, Jennifer Wagner, Tom Wakefield, Ellen Ziliak, and Nicholas Zoller.
Thanks so much to all of you, and we hope you will help us judge again next year.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to recognize the work of Lyn Miller of Slippery Rock University for her outstanding job in helping organize the undergraduate paper sessions.