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Research Opportunities

Students in the Mathematics program regularly take part in individualized experiences to help them develop as mathematicians. These include:

Internships

Students have had internships with many different companies in the area. These opportunities can occur at any time in the year and can count for multiple credits toward graduation. Examples:

  • Guardian Life Insurance
  • Mack Truck
  • Victaulic
  • PPL
  • B.Braun
  • Olympus
  • Many others in the area

SOAR

Student Opportunity for Academic Research (SOAR) provides funding for students to pursue research projects with a faculty member over the summer. Faculty from our program are always interested in working with talented students on these wonderful projects. Examples:

  • Network Reliability Measures
  • Analyzing Partisan Combinatorial Games
  • Bandaged and Constrained Rubik’s Cubes
  • Quasi-Crowns
  • Network Analysis in Music
  • View other recent SOAR examples

Honors

Exceptional students may choose to pursue an Honors project in their senior year. This is a year-long project in coordination with a faculty advisor. Our faculty love working with students in this capacity. Examples:

  • Exploring Potential Energy Functions (with Physics)
  • Determining College Success Based on High School Performance
  • Partizan Graph Connectivity Games
  • Following Folding Transitions with Capillary Electrophoresis and Ion Mobility Spectrometry (with Chemistry)
  • The k-Neighbor Component Connectivity of a Graph
  • An Exploration of Lie Algebras and Kostant's Weight Multiplicity Formula
  • Upper Bounds on the Birank Number of G3,n
  • Exploration of the Phenotypic Search Space of Grammatical Evolution
  • Locking Conditions of Polygonal Chains in R3: A Model for Protein Chains
  • View other recent Honors examples

REU

Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) is a national program funded by the NSF that sponsors undergraduate research groups throughout the country. We have had many students go to these. Examples:

  • Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA: Research Challenges of Identifying Integer Sequences Using the OEIS
  • Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA: Physics Undergraduate Research Program
  • Texas A&M, College Station, TX: Cyclotron Institute
  • South Dakota School of Mines, Rapid City, SD: Distribution of Degeneracy in the Phenotypic Search Space of Grammar Evolution Algorithms

Independent Study

An Independent Study is a credit carrying course completed in small groups of one or two students with a faculty member. The course provide students an opportunity to learn a wide array of interesting topics which are not in the course catalog. The department typically has 3-4 independent studies per year. Examples:

  • Game Theory
  • Graph Theory
  • Putnam Problem Solving Course
  • Introduction to Mathematical Research
  • Introduction to Topology
  • Differential Geometry
  • Introduction to Probability Theory
  • Mathematical Theory of Interest
  • Introduction to Biological Sequence Analysis