Graduate student designs tool to raise colorblindness awareness

January 29, 2018

David Nichols, a graduate student in mathematics studying mathematical logic, has published a web application that shows users whether a given color palette is accessible to viewers who are colorblind. It uses simulations of colorblindness to allow instructors with normal color vision to see in low-dimensional color spaces and choose the colors they use to communicate to their students accordingly.

You can try out the tool yourself.

Students presenting at MAA Student Poster Session

January 11, 2018

Raji Majumdar and Anthony Sisti, both majors in mathematics, will be presenting posters Applications of Multiplicative LLN and CLT for Random Matrices and Black-Scholes using the Central Limit Theorem on Friday, January 12 at the MAA Student Poster Session, and both of them will be giving talks on Saturday, January 13 at the AMS Contributed Paper Session on Research in Applied Mathematics by Undergraduate and Post-Baccalaureate Students. You can find their posters here.

Valdez, Vadiveloo and Gan receive CAE research grant from the Society of Actuaries

August 29, 2017

Professors Emiliano A. Valdez, Jeyaraj Vadiveloo and Guojun Gan have been awarded a Center of Actuarial Excellence (CAE) research grant from the Society of Actuaries. The grant will support a three-year (2017-2020) research project on “Applying Data Mining Techniques in Actuarial Science” which aims to examine and evaluate data mining tools and approaches for analyzing data in actuarial science and insurance. In particular, they will focus on tools and methods that will effectively demonstrate on how actuaries can use them to preform predictive analytics in three specific areas: claims tracking and monitoring in life insurance, understanding policyholder behavior in general insurance, and model efficiency for variable annuity products.

This research grant is part of a competition that is sponsored by the Society of Actuaries each year for schools that have received the CAE designation. The submission process involves passing two rounds that make it extremely competitive and the review process normally takes about 5-6 months till final decision. In the first round, interested CAE universities must submit a brief letter of intent with a summary of proposed research project. In 2016, 18 CAE schools submitted letters of intent and only about half were invited to submit a full proposal in the second round. Full proposals are then judged according to five criteria: impact, cost-benefit, uniqueness, viability, and overall quality. Each year, only about 2-3 universities receive an education or research grant.

This is the first time that the SOA awarded such a research grant to the University of Connecticut. Other universities that have received such grants include University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Michigan. A complete list of past CAE grant awards may be found here (https://www.soa.org/Education/Resources/Cae/edu-cae-grants-award-history.aspx).

A website detailing the UConn research grant may be found on this link