Faculty-Staff Achievements, May 2, 2011
Activities
Skidmore's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science hosted the 18 th annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference April 16 on campus.
The HRUMC is a one-day mathematics conference held annually each spring semester at rotating institutions, attended by students and faculty from various universities, colleges, and community colleges in New York and New England.The goal of HRUMC is to provide undergraduates with the experience of attending and/or presenting at a professional mathematics meeting designed primarily with the student in mind.
Nearly 150 students and faculty from 32 colleges attended the Skidmore event, which featured short talks by students and faculty and a longer address by an invited speaker. This year's invited talk was "Order and Chaos," delivered by Carl Pomerance, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, who is known for his ground-breaking work in number theory. Skidmore's Cooper Boniece introduced the guest speaker.
Skidmore faculty participants included the following:
Una Bray, who chaired sessions on Mathematics Education and Applied Mathematics; Alice Dean, who chaired sessions on Computational Geometry I and II; Gove Effinger, who gave the conference welcome and chaired a session on Game Theory and Voting; David Vella, who chaired a session on Abstract Algebra; and Rachel Roe-Dale, who chaired a session on Applied Mathematics.
Vella gave a presentation titled "One Lump or Two - A Lumped Parameter Model for the Detection of Diabetes" and Roe-Dale gave a presentation titled "Uncovering the Pattern: Using Residuals to Predict the Function of Best Fit."
Participating Skidmore students and their topics included the following: Pu Chen, Jack Liao, and Matthew Wang, "Geometric Algorithms for Rubik's Cube"; Becca Comfort and Mark Thibodeau, "Three-Dimensional Convex Hulls"; Andrew Lichtenberg and Larry Razenj, "The Fortress Problem"; Abe Lerman and Ming Xiao, "The Prison Guard Problem"; Ava Hamilton and Tim Nichols, "Art Galleries with Mobile Guards"; and Alexandra McGuire, "Containing Airborne Virus Outbreaks via Air Travel Restrictions."
In the News
Mary Zeiss Stange, professor of women's studies and religion, was a source for "Changing the face of faith - Trend favors the non-traditional," an Easter Sunday story published in The Saratogian.
