Undergraduate Research Initiative

 
With the assistance of a generous grant from the Honors College, the Mathematics Department undertook an initiative this semester to increase the participation of undergraduates in mathematics research. The Honors College grant provided stipends to enable the following students to pursue independent mentored research projects:

  • Drew Allen, under the supervision of Professor Cherry, investigated the continued fraction expansions associated to certain Sturmian words.
  • Kevin Bach, under the supervision of Professor Schlutzenberg, investigated connections between certain games and partial tilings of the plane. Kevin presented the initial results of his research at the Texas Section meeting of the MAA.
  • Jordan Beardslee, under the supervision of Professor Cherry, investigated the continued fraction expansions of certain irrational numbers associated to the Fibonacci numbers. The department would like to congratulate Jordan for winning the second place prize in the "natural sciences" category for papers presented at Scholars Day.
  • Josh Cai, under the supervision of Professor Kung, investigated Hamiltonian cycles on graphs associated to the mid-levels problem for vector subspaces of finite fields. Josh's work this semester continued work he did previously with his fellow TAMS students Adam Su and Andrew Shi, also under the supervision of Professor Kung. That work won Josh and his collaborators first prize at the Fort Worth Regional Science and Engineering Fair. Josh will be able to continue his research with Professor Kung this summer thanks to financial support from TAMS and the department's Research Training Grant.
  • Thomas Gilton, under the supervision of Professor Krueger, explored descriptive set theory. Thomas is also working with Professor Krueger as part of the department's Research Training Grant.
  • Jeffrey Lobe, under the supervision of Professor Jackson, began work toward studying Steinhaus sets for lattices in three space. Jeff will continue his research with Professor Jackson this summer with financial support from the math department's Research Training Grant.

Funding from the Honors College grant also enabled the above undergraduates together with a few additional undergraduates interested in mathematics research to attend the Texas Section meeting of the MAA.