Passion plus creativity equals great teaching for one UMW grad.
Leo Lee Presents Research at Regional Conference
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Jangwoon “Leo” Lee, traveled to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, last weekend to deliver an invited talk at the Spring Central Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society. His talk was titled Discretization of Stochastic Optimal Control Problems by the h x p Version of the Stochastic Galerkin FEM.
STEM Summit Showcases Area Technology
The second annual FredTech STEM 16 Summit brought together more than 350 educators, students, community members and business leaders at the University of Mary Washington on Saturday, April 20.
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The day-long event featured seminars on STEM programming in school districts and women in technology, as well as a STEM career panel. The summit also included more than 45 projects from UMW, regional elementary and secondary schools, Germanna Community College, and local and regional businesses and nonprofit organizations. Six UMW offices and academic departments were represented at the summit, including the Department of Biological Sciences, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Department of Mathematics, the Office of Admissions and a 3D printing demonstration.
UMW computer science student David Peworchik was honored with the “SWIFT Scholarship in Computer Science” Award for the 2013-2014 academic year, which provides a merit scholarship to a top computer science major in the region. The scholarship is funded by the Society for World Interbank Financial Telecommunications, Inc (SWIFT).
In addition, UMW students, Alex Gilley, Zach Goodwin, Jerome Mueller and Russell Ruud , were named as SWIFT Student Research Fellows for the 2013-2014 year. They received funding from SWIFT and UMW to attend the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) conference in San Diego in July. The students will present their part of an interdisciplinary research project in the area of pharmaceutical discovery. Their work with supercomputers and data analysis may lead to new treatments for diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis, according to Associate Professor Karen Anewalt, chair of the Department of Computer Science.
In conjunction with the summit, UMW held a titration competition and its seventh annual calculus tournament. In the team competition of the calculus tournament, the team from Paul VI High School in Fairfax came in first place and the team from the Commonwealth Governor’s School came in second place. In the individual competition, Jack Sweeney of Paul VI High School won first place and Lina Hong of Paul VI High School won second place.
In the titration tournament, members of UMW’s honors general chemistry class won first place, followed by senior chemistry majors in second place.
The summit culminated with a keynote lecture by David Kerr, a program lead in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Communications.
Keith Mellinger Presents on Math & Music
Associate Professor and Chair of Mathematics Keith Mellinger recently attended the Mathematical Association of America‘s regional meeting held at Salisbury University. At the meeting, Mellinger presented Eigentriads – a musical offering in which he discussed eigenvectors, a topic found in any undergraduate course in linear algebra, and an amusing relationship they have with diminished and augmented triads.
Larry Lehman Publishes Research
Larry Lehman, professor of mathematics, published the article “Suborder Polynomials Modulo Primes” in the February 2013 issue of JP Journal of Algebra, Number Theory and Applications. This article relates patterns in recursively defined sequences to the roots over finite fields of a certain class of polynomials.
Janusz Konieczny Publishes in Semigroup Forum
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has co-authored a research article, Centralizers in the full transformation semigroup, published in the journal Semigroup Forum.
Mathematics Faculty and Student Present in San Diego
Suzanne Sumner
At the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, Calif., in January, two faculty members and a student from UMW presented their work. Suzanne Sumner, professor of mathematics, delivered the talk “Intensive Experiences for Undergraduate Mathematics” in a session on Communicating Mathematics sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America.
Debra Hydorn
Debra Hydorn, professor of mathematics, spoke in a session devoted to Innovative Ideas for Courses in the First Two Years. Her talk was titled “Exploratory Projects in an Introduction to Discrete Mathematics Course.” Hydorn gave a second talk titled “Using R for Data Analysis Assignments in an Introductory Statistics Course” in a session devoted to Modern Ideas in Introductory Statistics Courses. In addition, she was honored to have a piece of geometric artwork accepted through a juried process to the Mathematical Art Exhibition.
Finally, UMW senior Ryan Vaughn presented a poster at the National Undergraduate Student poster competition. Ryan’s poster, titled “Embeddings of Complete Bipartite Graphs in Finite Projective Planes” won one of the Outstanding Poster Awards.
Keith Mellinger Publishes Research Article
Keith Mellinger, associate professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, saw his co-authored article “Blocking semiovals containing conics” published in the January 2013 issue of Advances in Geometry. The article addresses the construction of blocking semiovals, a mathematical object that finds application in areas of modern cryptology and the design of experiments.
Leo Lee Presents Research in Korea
Janusz Konieczny Publishes in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has published a research article, Centralizers in the infinite symmetric inverse semigroup, in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society.