Author: jasonc

Dr. Jason Callahan accompanied math majors Roman Morales, Crisel Suarez, Valeria Gonzalez, Toni Galvan, and Bianca “B” Salinas to the 96th Annual Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). Roman Morales and Crisel Suarez each presented research conducted with Dr. Callahan, and Dr. Callahan presented research from his paper “Analysis of a Coupled, n-Patch Population Model with Density Dependence” with Richard Rebarber et al. published by International Journal of Difference Equations at the end of 2015. Congratulations to all our students and faculty for taking advantage of the opportunity to attend and present at a conference!

Math major Stephanie Thrash has been accepted to an NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, June 12 to August 7, 2016. Research topics for the program include lottery voting (can randomness lead to better representation?), graphs and election simulation (use graphs to simulate diverse electorates in referendum elections), big data analysis and visualization (solve applied mathematics problems that involve large data sets and creative visualizations), outer billiards (explore fundamental domains of outer billiard maps in the hyperbolic plane and/or Euclidean plane), geometry and groups (create and classify finite geometries from finite groups), graph embeddings (enumerate the embeddings of graphs into a flat three-torus), and equal circle packing (find and prove the optimality of dense arrangements of circles on tori or Klein bottles). Congratulations to Stephanie for being accepted to this nationally competitive program and for taking advantage of such an exciting opportunity to conduct research in mathematics!

Math major Andy Barnes and professor Dr. Jason Callahan attended the Texas Undergraduate Topology and Geometry Conference at The University of Texas at Austin February 27-28, 2016. Congratulations to Andy for taking advantage of this opportunity to attend a conference and learn some new mathematics!

Dr. Jason Callahan recently had two papers and a book published:

• Knots, Molecules, and the Universe: An Introduction to Topology with Erica Flapan et al. American Mathematical Society (AMS), Providence, RI: 386 pages, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-4704-2535-7.
• “Analysis of a Coupled, n-Patch Population Model with Density Dependence” with Richard Rebarber et al. International Journal of Difference Equations, 10(2): 137-159, 2015.
• “Denominators and Differences of Boundary Slopes for (1,1)-Knots.” Boletín de la Sociedad Matemática Mexicana, 21(2): 275-287, 2015.

Math major Roman Morales, whose research with Dr. Jason Callahan was funded by the McNair Scholars Program and an Orlowski Fellowship of the Brother Romard Barthel, CSC, ‘47 Student/Faculty Summer Research Fund respectively the past two summers, was awarded a Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Student Travel Grant to present this research in the MAA Student Poster Session at the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) in Seattle on January 9, 2016. He previously presented this research at the Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC) at the University of Texas at Tyler on October 10, 2015.

Fellow student Amulya Deva also attended the JMM with Drs. Carol Gee, Edward Early, Cindy Naples, and David Naples, and fellow math majors Jasmynne Wilson, Valeria Gonzalez, Crisel Suarez, Sharon Freshour, Stephanie Thrash, Jesse Thomas, Gilbert Rivera, and Toni Galvan also attended TUMC with Dr. Michael Saclolo. Congratulations to all our students for taking advantage of the opportunity to present at or attend national and regional conferences!

Math major Abigail (Abby) Edgar, whose research with Dr. Jason Callahan was funded by the Dr. M. Jean McKemie and Suzanne Mason Endowed Student/Faculty Fund for Innovative Mathematics Summer Scholarship the past two summers, won an Outstanding Presentation Award  for her presentation at the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) MathFest Conference in Washington, DC, on August 6, for which she was also awarded an MAA Student Travel Grant. Congratulations to Abby on her well deserved award and for taking advantage of the opportunity to present her research at a national conference!