Search Research Symposium Abstracts

Exploring Bridge Program Participants' Sense of Belonging and Identity in Mathematics

There are many ways that institutions of higher learning aim to address attrition rates and lack of diversity in STEM. Studies show that sense of belonging in mathematics may impact students’ desire to persist in STEM. Summer bridge programs are one resource used to improve retention in STEM by helping students become acclimated to STEM in college. This [Read More...]

Presenter: Skylyn Irby, The University of Alabama
Authors: Skylyn Irby
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 9:45 am

The Mathematics of Mathematics (#MetaMath): An Introduction and Some Examples

We present examples of the application of quantitative techniques, tools, and topics from mathematics and data science to the mathematics community itself. Using research and data about Ph.D.-granting institutions in the United States first published by Wapman, Zhang, Larremore and Clauset (Nature, 2022), we quantify, document, and highlight inequity in [Read More...]

Presenter: Omayra Ortega, Sonoma State University
Authors: Ron Buckmire, Joseph E. Hibdon, Jr., Drew Lewis, Omayra Ortega, Jose L. Pabon, Rachel Roca, Andres R. Vindas-Melendez, Sam Zhang
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 10:10 am

Maximum Stars in Very Well-Covered Graphs

The Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem is a pivotal result in extremal set theory which gives an upper bound on the number of sets of a fixed size that are pairwise intersecting. Of particular interest is the straightforward construction of an intersecting family that attains this bound by collecting all sets of the specified size which contain some fixed element. In [Read More...]

Presenter: Jessica De Silva, California State University, Stanislaus
Authors: Cashous Bortner, Paola Campos, Jessica De Silva, Jeffrey Venable
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 10:35 am

Transmission of La Crosse Virus between Humans and Mosquitoes in Tennessee and North Carolina

La Crosse Virus (LACV) is spread by the bites of infected Aedes mosquitoes with most severe cases occurring in children under 16 years old. Children with LACV may also develop La Crosse Encephalitis. We use a system of ordinary differential equations with temperature and precipitation in some rates to model the transmission of LACV between humans and [Read More...]

Presenter: Amber Young, University of Tennessee Knoxville
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 11:00 am

The Power of Persistent Cohomology

The latest methods of studying data involve the tools of topological data analysis (TDA). Even though the theoretical foundation of TDA comes from areas of math as abstract as algebraic topology, linear algebra, and homological algebra, the implementation of these tools can be done in a jupyter notebook with a few example packages. Given a data set, we use [Read More...]

Presenter: Sofía Martínez, Purdue University
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 2:00 pm

Algebra and Geometry of Camera Reseactioning

Multiview geometry, lying in the intersection of computer vision and projective geometry, is the study of three-dimensional objects being photographed by multiple pinhole cameras. Two natural questions arise: (1) Given a 3-D object or scene and multiple images of it, can we determine the (relative) positions of the cameras in the world? And, (2) given [Read More...]

Presenter: Jessie Loucks-Tavitas, University of Washington
Authors: Erin Connelly, Timothy Duff, Jessie Loucks-Tavitas
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 2:25 pm

Harmonic Analysis on Simplicial Simplexes: How far could we take it?

Networks’ emergence as an ideal setting for studying complex systems brought enormous interest in extending powerful harmonic analysis (HA) tools from Euclidean spaces to graphs. Most efforts focused on the graph Laplacian’s eigendecomposition, producing results such as the graph Fourier transform. Recently, the same endeavor moved to higher-order [Read More...]

Presenter: Karamatou Yacoubou Djima, Wellesley College
Authors: Karamatou Yacoubou Djima
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 2:50 pm

Assessing risk stratified interventions with difference-in-differences

Difference-in-differences (DID) designs are widely used across disciplines, such as social sciences and economics, to estimate the effect of interventions or policies. Often DID regression models are used to estimate the average treatment effect or average treatment effect on the treated. This is straightforward in cases where the treated group is [Read More...]

Presenter: Maricela Cruz, Kaiser Permanente Washington
Authors: Maricela Cruz, Susan M Shortreed, Yates Coley
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 3:15 pm

Learn to Live on the EDGE: A Q&A session

During this slot we will have an open gathering where interested individuals will have the opportunity to discuss and engage with past EDGE participants and overall members of the EDGE community. Organizers will kick off the session with a brief introduction of the EDGE Program and the EDGE community. Then, organizers will moderate further [Read More...]

Presenter: Learn to Live on the EDGE: A Q&A session, Virginia Tech
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: September 30, 2023; 3:40 pm

Step by Step: A Time Scales View on Modeling

Differential and difference equations are commonly used in mathematical modeling of physical systems. Our method uses dynamic equations on time scales to model. A time scale $\mathbb{T}$ is an arbitrary, nonempty, closed subset of the real numbers. We will concurrently introduce calculus on time scales and give an application to oncology. We will share [Read More...]

Presenter: Raegan Higgins, Texas Tech University
Authors: Raegan Higgins
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: October 1, 2023; 2:00 pm

Applications of Single Particle Tracking

Single particle tracking techniques can be found in many applications in mathematical biology. These techniques are based on stochastic models whose features rely on defining a problem as a sequence of states. Theory allows us to infer unknown properties of these models using Bayesian inference methods, as well as explore long-term dynamics of the systems. [Read More...]

Presenter: Keisha Cook, Clemson University
Authors: Keisha Cook
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: October 1, 2023; 2:25 pm

The role of electrostatics in machine learning models for biological applications

We report our recent work for the prediction of protein binding affinity using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). This work utilizes uniform features extraction from both topological data analysis and electrostatics from charged protein-ligand complexes. Our methods overcome the difficulties of involving electrostatics, which is expensive to compute due [Read More...]

Presenter: Elyssa Sliheet, Southern Methodist University
Authors: Elyssa Sliheet
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: October 1, 2023; 2:50 pm

Understanding Neutrophil Dynamics during COVID-19 Infection

Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) results in varied clinical outcomes, with virus-induced chronic inflammation and tissue injury being associated with enhanced disease pathogenesis. To determine the role of tissue damage on immune populations recruitment and function, a mathematical model of innate immunity following [Read More...]

Presenter: Quiyana M. Murphy, Virginia Tech
Authors: Quiyana M. Murphy and Stanca M. Ciupe
Symposium Year: 2023
Session: Pure and Applied Talks by Mathematicians Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) [Organized by Quiyana M. Murphy and Sofía Martínez Alberga]
Presentation Time: October 1, 2023; 3:15 pm