Holy Cross mathmatician to give Pi Mu Epsilon keynote

Catherine Roberts of the College of the Holy Cross will be the keynote speaker at the spring induction ceremony of Skidmore's New York Alpha Theta Chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honor society. The program begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, in Bolton Hall, room 282. All are welcome.

	Catherine Roberts

Fourteen students and four faculty members will be inducted into the society that night. Student inductees are as follows: Lori Bordzuk '08, Katie Butler '08, Amanda Holland '10, Kubra Komek '10, Oliver Layton '09, Yan Luo '08, Brian McGowan '08, Samantha Morrison '08, Jessica Reynolds '09, Claire Rupprecht '08, Christopher Sacca '09, Herbert Stitson '09, Molly von der Heydt '09, and Sarah Whateley '09. Faculty to be honored are Rachel Roe-Dale, assistant professor of mathematics; Mike Eckmann, visiting instructor in computer science; Josh Lesperance, visiting assistant professor of mathematics; and guest speaker Catherine Roberts.

Roberts's talk, titled "An Equation Runs Through It: River Rafting in the Grand Canyon," will explore human activities on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon National Park, with a focus on the history and politics of white-water river running. Roberts will detail the challenges that the National Park Service faces as it seeks to manage an important national resource, and explain how a mathematician came to play a part in these efforts. She will share a mathematical model that was developed for a real-world example.

An associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the College of the Holy Cross, Roberts also is director of the college's Environmental Studies Program. In addition, she is editor-in-chief of the journal, Natural Resource Modeling, and a master teacher in the Massachusetts Intel Mathematics Initiative, sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education.

Roberts says that relating the significance of mathematics as a tool for understanding and explaining the world is a fundamental component of her approach to teaching.

She exemplifies this approach in one of her research specialties: natural resource modeling, which seeks to characterize complex human-environment interactions in a recreational setting. In her studies of recreational white-water rafting on rivers, she has developed traffic models that simulate the responses of humans to an ever-changing natural environment. One such model, the Grand Canyon River Trip Simulator, uses artificial intelligence and statistical techniques to capture the unique nature of this interaction.

Pi Mu Epsilon promotes scholarly activity in mathematics. Students are considered for membership based on their work in at least three semesters of college-level mathematics courses as well as their general academic record.