Please mark your calendars to come celebrate and support our students’ achievements!
The Department of Mathematics’ Annual Awards Day Ceremony will take place on Wednesday, April 25th. There will be a small reception at 3:00 pm in MONT 201, followed by the Awards Ceremony at 3:30 pm in MONT 104 and invited lecture at 4:00 pm by David Constantine (Wesleyan) on “Entropy, Symmetry, and Rigidity”.
For the full program, click here.
All are invited!
On April 19th the math department will host its first integration bee, which we hope will become an annual tradition. An integration bee is like a spelling bee, but students take turns computing integrals instead of spelling words. There will be prizes for the top students and free refreshments for everyone.
The Integration Bee will take place on April 19th at 5 PM in Monteith 313. All undergraduates who are familiar with the material on integration methods from Calculus II are welcome to participate. Walk-ins are welcome, but it is preferred that students who plan to attend send an email by April 18th to Zoe Cramer.
The event is organized by UConn’s AMS Graduate Student Chapter.
For most days of the week February 12-16, the math department will have events that are open to students deciding on a major, in order to help them determine if math would be a good fit. These include courses that are open to visitors and panel discussions or presentations by faculty.
February 13th
12:30-1:45: Two courses open to visitors are Math 2110 – Multivariable Calculus in Arjona 105 and Math 2710 – Transition to Advanced Mathematics in Monteith 321.
3:00-4:00: A faculty panel discussion What is math research? in Monteith 313.
February 14th
11:15-12:05: A course open to visitors is Math 3265 – Applied Mathematical Logic in Monteith 225.
February 15th
12:30-1:45: A course open to visitors is Math 3094 – Mathematics of Encryption in Monteith 314.
4:00-5:00: A faculty panel discussion Exploring UConn math degrees in Monteith 313.
February 16th
2:00-3:00 PM: A faculty presentation Math: What is it good for? in Monteith 226.
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.
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
Come and help us celebrate the accomplishments of our students!
Our Annual Awards Day Ceremony is on Friday, April 28th. We will have tea at 3:00 PM in Monteith 201, followed by the awards ceremony at 3:30 PM in Schenker Lecture Hall. (Program and list of awards.)
This year’s Invited Address will be given by Dr. Brendan Kelly, preceptor in Mathematics at Harvard University. He will speak on “How many ways can I get to the coffee shop?”.