George Mason University is a recipient institution of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates grant. Here is a testimonial from Tom Stevens, one of the students who participated.
This is the second year of the Undergraduate Research in Computational Mathematics Program here at Mason, and next year's participants are beginning to assemble. The program is available to undergraduate mathematics majors interested in challenging faculty-mentored academic research, and has proven to be excellent preparation for industry as well as for graduate school.
A portion of the 2008-09 participants have been focusing on applications in materials science with the specific task of modeling the solidification process from a thermodynamic perspective as well as from a statistical mechanics perspective. I have been working with Dr. Thomas Wanner on the thermodynamic end and have enjoyed the interaction with my colleague, and fellow math major Mike Atkins, as he has worked with his mentors from the statistical mechanics viewpoint. An interesting and challenging task he has taken on attempts to reconcile mathematical models taken from both viewpoints.
Throughout this academic year each of the program's participants have taken opportunities to travel to professional academic conferences hosted by the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the Annual Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Most recently we traveled together to Miami, Florida, for SIAM's Computational Science and Engineering conference. In Miami we attended talks given by scientists from the National Institute for Standards and Technology on open-source software in scientific computing, and watched a researcher from the Los Alamos National Laboratory discuss advances in parallel-processing computational techniques. We also made time to enjoy authentic Cuban sandwiches and cafe con leches, and took in the lights on South Beach.
I can speak for the entire group by saying that this experience brought many surprises. Our mentors let us know from the beginning that academic research is not like coursework, and at various times throughout the year we each came to understand some of the differences. One example was the effort required to simply acquaint ourselves with our particular application. Scholarly journals are generally not written as introductions to a topic, and familiarizing ourselves with the relevant mathematics was a difficult and rewarding task. Another surprising difference was noticed when each of us began to prepare our presentations for the academic conferences that we attended. Delivering an effective and coherent talk on a piece of original academic research strains the imagination. We were not prompted by exercise sets from a textbook, and it took some work to figure out what was important when trying to explain our results to other scientists.
As this year comes to an end, each of us is excited for the opportunities next year's participants will get to enjoy, and is grateful to the professors of the Department of Mathematical Sciences here at GMU for their consistent encouragement throughout the year.
Photo: left to right, are: Matt Venuti, Minerva Venuti, Kevin Kelbaugh, Tom Stephens, and Mike Atkins.
Posts
