SUnMaRC 2014

Southwest Undergraduate Mathematics Research Conference

The 11th Southwest Undergraduate Mathematics Research Conference, SUnMaRC 14, was held on February 30-March 1, 2014, in Phoenix, AZ, hosted by Mesa Community College. This conference series provides students an opportunity to see what math research can be about, to meet other students throughout the Southwest with similar interests, to explore possibilities for graduate studies, and, for those that have already been working on a research project, to present their work. See the full conference program.

UNM Sunmarc 2014 Attendees

The UNM contingent. Top photo (from right to left): Nujhat Adrita, Shabab Saad, Kirstin Harringer, Andrew Baxter, Juan Pablo Madrigal Cianci, Ahmed Suruzzaman, Scott Guernsey, Matt Pennybacker, Jamie Wallis, Miranda Mundt, Linh Ward, Sarah Black, Nelly Ayllon, Monika Nitsche. Bottom photo (from right to left): Juan Pablo, Nelly, Linh, Adrita, Scott, Andrew, Kirstin, Miranda, Ahmed, Sarah, Jamie, Matt, Shabab.

This year again, UNM had a good contingent of undergraduate students attending the conference. 12 of our students and 2 faculty members (see picture), packed in 2 vans, drove to Phoenix friday-sunday, to join 100+ students from Arizona (ASU, MCC, NAU, UA), New Mexico (NMSU, UNM), and Texas (UTEP). Four of our students gave wonderful talks on their research program (see pics below). We saw many other interesting talks both by students and invited speakers, heard about mathematics in art, mathematics in industry, and mathematics careers spanning research, teaching and mathematics education. And we met many students and faculty from throughout the Southwest. In particular, our students appreciated meeting fellow national and international UNM students with common interests, and enjoyed spending time together. Yes, the drive was long, but beautiful (see below), and well worth it!

Scott Guernsey from UNM, presenting his talk on "Analyzing a non-linear Black-Scholes option pricing model: The cost of constant volatility." Kirstin Harriger from UNM, presenting her talk on "First and Second Order Spectral Shift Functions on Self-Adjoint Matrices" Miranda Mundt from UNM, presenting her talk on "Mixing in Fluid Dynamics" Andrew Baxter from UNM, presenting his talk on "Numerical Semigroups, basically full ideals and their closures." Here are some of our students comments: " My favorite talks from guest speakers were about their career paths and the different things you could do with a math education." "I really liked the talk about modeling rat populations, because I want to go into research into mathematical biology using differential equations and this talk did just that. It was nice to see an actual research example with many parameters."

"I really enjoyed the math contest. It was fun!" "I most enjoyed the student talks and the ability to choose specific talks based on personal interests. I also enjoyed being able to present my work." "I enjoyed being able to present my work and see the work of other undergraduates. I got to talk to people about their experiences presenting, and I was able to apply that knowledge to my own presentation. I learned a lot from the experience, and I hope to attend similar events in the future" "I enjoyed the math contest the most at the conference because the problems over there were very challenging which helped me to test out my knowledge and math skills under a certain time constraint. Moreover, fighting and competing for my own university against several other universities was also fun and it was worth when we achieved the second place eventually." " I got to interact with other math students from my school and talk about grad school, industry, and what we get from our mentor relationships. I was able to meet foreign students at UNM that I didn't know before and make contacts. I have recommended the conference to 2 people so far. " " I gained a lot of skills and knowledge about mathematics and at the same time got inspired and encouraged by all those wonderful people over there. After attending the conference, I have discovered myself to have more interest in math and achieve more skills in it as far as possible." " I gained presentation experience, resume value, a revitalized energy to work on my thesis paper, and an overall re-energized excitement for mathematics" " From this conference i learned that math is not just about solvoing equations. It is about enjoying math and having fun while solving it!" Many thanks to Adam Avilez and Margie Lyscas from MCC for organizing this wonderful event! And thanks to all who participated, you make all the difference! Special thanks also to Jamie and Kirstin for the nice pictures, and to Matt for help with the driving! And many thanks to the National Science Foundation for supporting this endeavour through an MCTP (Mentoring through Critical Transition Points) grant. Get ready : Sunmarc 2015 at UTEP, El Paso !