Mathematics and Statistics Newsletter Spring 2017

We were fortunate to have several colloquium talks within our department for faculty and students this year.

On September 9, Dr. Gregory Budzban, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, gave a presentation titled “Markov Chains, Network Synchronization, and Random Walks on Matrices: A Unified Perspective.” Beginning with hands-on examples of colored directed graphs, Dean Budzban guided the audience through an easily understood introduction to the Road-Coloring Problem. Over the course of an hour, Dean Budzban touched on key concepts from graph theory, linear algebra, and probability, while pointing out their significance for applications in network synchronization.

On March 29, Dr. Andy Neath gave a presentation titled “Statistical Modeling for Replication Studies.” His talk provided examples of some interesting aspects of statistical problems in analyzing replication studies, and some thoughts on how the information from a single study fits together with what we learn from replication attempts.

On April 21, Dr. Jim Parish gave a presentation titled "Simple Closed Geodesics on Rectangular Prisms." In his talk, he described some of the ideas and techniques used in the study of geodesics (locally shortest paths) on polyhedra, and then showed how those ideas apply to rectangular prisms - i.e., boxes of specified length, width, and height. He concluded by outlining the complete classification of simple closed geodesics - that is, geodesics which form a complete, non-self-intersecting loop - on these prisms.

High School Math Contest
On February 25, approximately 400 students from 20 high schools participated in the annual Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics High School Math Contest. Some students traveled more than 100 miles to compete on our campus. This was a statewide event with almost 300 high schools participating in 4 divisions at 20 regional sites. Students could take at most three tests during the day, including both individual and team tests, as well as written and oral tests. Each region finished the day with awards ceremonies distributing individual, team and overall school awards. At SIUE the schools winning first place in their division were Gibault Catholic High School, Carlinville High School, Carbondale Community High School and Edwardsville High School.

Math Teachers’ Circle
The Great Rivers Math Teachers’ Circle meets on the fourth Thursday of the month. Middle school, high school, community college and university teachers spend the evening working on rich math problems and sharing a meal. The circle is partially funded by grants from the SIUE Meridian Society and the American Institute of Mathematics. More information on math teachers' circles can be found here.  If you are interested in being on the email list for the circle for the next academic year, please contact Tammy Voepel.

Welcome to new faculty member Dr. Jireh Loreaux who joined us this past fall as an assistant professor. He earned his PhD from the University of Cincinnati where he met his wife, Katie. They have been married six years and have two daughters, Dara and Anya. Dr. Loreaux’s research lies in functional analysis and operator algebras, with special emphasis on diagonals of operators. His interests outside of mathematics include cycling, disc golf, functional programming, cryptography and, above all, spending time with his family. Dr. Loreaux has lived in Cincinnati for the past 19 years and so the move to Edwardsville has been an eventful but welcome change. He recently purchased a house in the area, and he and his family look forward to integrating into the Edwardsville and SIUE communities over the coming years.

Congratulations to Dr. Stacey Staples. He is currently co-organizing a workshop entitled "ENGAGE - Empowering Novel Geometric Algebra for Graphics & Engineering" as part of CGI 17 (Computer Graphics International) in Yokohama, Japan this summer.

Congratulations to Dr. Junvie Pailden. He received an Excellence in Undergraduate Education Award for the academic year 2017-2018 to revise and use open source software for our Stat 244 and Stat 380 laboratory sessions. The revised lab exercises will use the free R programming software that is widely used in industry and statistics research (article). He also recently published three collaborative papers with faculty members from the SIUE School of Nursing and School of Pharmacy.

Congratulations to all the students who received an award at the Honors Day Convocation on April 9. We commend you on your academic achievements during this past year.

Outstanding Mathematics and Statistics Student Award – John Heeg
Outstanding Senior Student in Mathematics and Statistics – Maduka Balasooriya
Paul J. Baeske Incoming Statistics Student Scholarship - Steven Landry
Gordon T. Chamness Memorial Award – Kelly Buch
Clellie Curtis Oursler Senior Scholarship in Mathematics - John Heeg
Florence A. Fanning Award – Steven Munie
Andrew O. Lindstrum, Jr. Memorial Award – Kelsey Cutler
Ella Ott Weisman Award – Wen Lian
R.N. Pendergrass Graduate Student Scholarship Award – Theresa Lindell
Matthew and Heather Samsel Graduate Student Award – Eric Grubbs
Matthew Samsel Graduate Assistant Fellowship in Mathematics & Statistics – Ricky Hua

Several students have informed us of summer internships. Congratulations to all of them and best of luck with their experiences. Jason Couch has an internship this summer at Utility Design Services and will be working with electrical transmission and distribution design. Noah Sierer will be interning at Kress Manufacturing in Brimfield, IL.

Chris Couch completed a spring/summer 2016 co-op at Anheuser-Busch where he was a Group Manager in the Brewing Department.  He was the manager on shifts that ranged from 30 to 50 brewers per shift.

Lisa Dollar and Dr. Stacey Staples coauthored a paper, Zeon Roots, that is published in "Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras." Lisa also presented a talk, "Square and kth Root Properties of Zeons," in May at a national research conference in pure mathematics at SIU Carbondale.

Tiffany Stellhorn presented a talk, "An Extension of Nilpotent Adjacency Matrices for Graph Coloring," in May at a national research conference in pure mathematics at SIU Carbondale.

Kelly Buch will be attending the University of Tennessee and pursuing a PhD with an emphasis on mathematical ecology and evolution.

Lauren Beckman, BS '16 – Currently I am teaching 6th and 7th grade math at Lincoln Middle School in Edwardsville and am coaching cross country and track and field.  I am engaged to Matt Horton (SIUE School of Engineering, BS '16) and plan to marry in June of 2018.

Ryan Sleeper, BS '15 – After graduation I worked at Quincy High School for a year, and now I am at Collinsville High School.  I am coaching boys tennis and plan on participating in professional development workshops this summer.

Alumni, we would love to hear from you! Do you have a new degree, job information, a change in your family status, or a personal accomplishment? Consider sending us information to share in the next newsletter. We look forward to hearing from you.