Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was revised on July 21, 2017, to reflect that additional funding was provided by the College of Sciences.

Two Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs will take place in the School of Mathematics from May 22 through July 12, 2017.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), REU programs provide opportunities for undergraduate students to work closely with faculty and other researchers on a real-world research topic. Students are granted stipends and, in many cases, assistance with housing and travel. The College of Sciences provided additional funding for the 2017 REUs .

Altogether, 20 math students from nine universities are participating.

The program organized by School of Mathematics Professor Michael Lacey aims not only to provide research experience to undergraduates, but also to train postdoctoral fellows to design a program of research study, select students, and supervise students’ research over an extended period.

Projects will center on one-bit sensing and fluid dynamics. The program will culminate in a capstone poster session on July 12, 2017 at 2-5 pm in Room 005, Skiles Building.

The Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellows in Lacey’s REU program are Robert Kesler, Michael Northington, and Andre de Souza. They will be mentoring seven students from Alabama and Georgia Universities:

• Amadou Buh, Perimeter College at Georgia State University
• Korynn Claiborne, Alabama State University
• Samuel Hood, Morehouse College
• Bryson Kagy, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Allison Madson, Georgia Tech
• Jade Redding, Alabama State University
• Emily Smith, Agnes Scott College

In the second program, organized by School of Mathematics Professor Igor Belegradek, 13 math students will work with Georgia Tech researchers on a variety of research topics. The students are expected to help achieve the research outcomes envisioned by the principal investigators.

This REU will also culminate in a capstone poster session in July 12, 2017, time and location to be determined. Additional funding comes the College of Sciences

In this program, students from Georgia Tech are joined by peers from California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia universities:

• Ken Adams, Georgia Tech
• Santana Afton, College of William and Mary
• Nicholas Barvinok, University of Michigan
• Catherine Chen, Georgia Tech
• Nhu Do, Mount Holyoke College
• Sam Friedman, University of Michigan
• Andrea, Martinez, Georgia Tech
• Rose McCarty, Georgia Tech
• Hunter Vallejos, Georgia Tech
• Yandi Wu, University of California, Berkeley
• Jun Xiang, Georgia Tech
• Queena Zhou, Georgia Tech
• Yihan Zhou, Georgia Tech

Mentors are seven Georgia Tech mathematics professors and one postdoctoral fellow, Caitin Leverson. Mentors and their research projects are:

• Mohammad Ghomi, Unfoldings of Convex Polyhedra
• Christian Houdre, Estimation of the Chvátal-Sankoff Constant
• Sung Ha Kang, Video and Image Restoration with Atmospheric Turbulence Distortion
• Caitlin Leverson, Augmentations of Legendrian Knots and Links
• Doron Lubinsky, Asymptotics for Special Toeplitz Determinants
• Dan Margalit
  • Generating Sets for Big Mapping Class Group
  • Implementation of the Fast Nielsen-Thurston Classification 
  • Kernel of the Magnus Representation
• Robin Thomas 
  • Colin de Verdiere Invariant of Graphs 
  • Extremal Function for Bipartite Linklessly Embeddable Graphs
• Josephine Yu, Matroid Theory and Tropical Geometry