Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Colloquium and Seminar Schedule
Fall 2008


The Department is sponsoring or co-sponsoring several colloquia and seminars this term as listed below. Click here for information about the next scheduled talk. Check this page regularly for the latest schedule as more talks are added.


September 2008
  • Student Summer Research, Part 1
    Speakers: Alex Bryce '09 and Bailey Meeker '09
    Thursday, September 25th at 4:45 PM.
    (Refreshments beginning at 4:30 PM.)

    Abstract: Alex Bryce '09 and Bailey Meeker '09 will discuss their summer research experiences. For 8 weeks, Alex Bryce participated in a REU at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. Working with Professor Pau Atela from Smith College in Northampton, MA, he and three other students worked on a Phyllotaxis research project and a project involving math puzzles. During Summer 2008, Bailey Meeker participated in the HWS Summer Science program. She worked with Professor Forde to develop a mathematical model of Varicella Zoster Virus, which causes Chicken Pox and Shingles.
October 2008
  • Crossing Numbers.
    Speaker: Dr. Michael J. Pelsmajer, the Illinois Institute of Technology
    Friday, October 17
    4:15 PM in the Sanford Room
    (Refreshments at 4:00)

    Abstract: When drawing a graph on the plane or another surface, usually one tries to avoid having any two edges cross. When that is not possible, often people would like to minimize the number of crossings in a drawing, perhaps avoiding "unnecessary crossings". For example, this theorem of Hanani and Tutte:

    If a graph can be drawn in the plane such that every two edges cross an even number of times, then it can be redrawn with no crossings at all.

    We will discuss this and some more recent results of this nature, mostly due to joint work with Marcus Schaefer (DePaul University), Daniel Stefankovic (University of Rochester), and Despina Stasi (a graduate student at University of Illinois Chicago). Everything will be introduced from scratch; no knowledge of graph theory will be assumed.


  • Student Summer Research/Experience, Part 2
    Speakers: Rob Hendry '10 and Lisa Maticic '10
    Tuesday, October 21st at 4:45 PM in the Sanford Room
    (Refreshments beginning at 4:30 PM.)

    Abstract: Lisa Maticic spent nine weeks this summer participating in the HWS Summer Science program researching with Prof. Paul Kehle. They tried to create a new lowerbound for the Ramsey (5,5) number by studying properties of critical graphs of other known diagonal Ramsey numbers.

    As an intern with the Analog Devices hardware design team this past summer, Rob Hendry was able to gain experience from a variety of projects. From these projects, he was able to learn the power of scripting languages in both hardware and software design. With the new skill of writing scripts, he was able to provide a solution to a problem that encumbered his group at work. This problem, the central project of his internship, arose from mismanagement and decentralization of databases that were used by both software and hardware teams to develop new products.


  • What Can We Learn from Software Failure Data -- Developing Software Reliability Growth Models
    Speaker: Dr. Veena B. Mendiratta from Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
    Wednesday, October 29 at 4:15 PM in the Geneva Room.
    (Refreshments beginning at 4:00 PM.)
    Sponsored by SIAM.

    Abstract Failure detection and fault correction are vital to ensure high quality software. During the software development and deployment phases detected failures are commonly classified by severity and tracked to meet quality and reliability requirements. Besides tracking failures, this data can be analyzed and used to qualify the software and to control the development and maintenance process. This talk will focus on failure data collected during the development phase and explores what we can learn by analyzing this data. By applying software reliability models and statistical techniques to this data, we can answer questions such as the following:
    • Is the maintenance process increasing the software reliability?
    • Is the maintenance process under control?
    • How many failures are expected to occur in the field?
    • What is the expected time remaining to meet the reliability requirement?
    These questions are addressed by using a methodology based on trend analysis, control charts and software reliability growth models.

    Veena B. Mendiratta is a Consulting Member of Technical Staff at Alcatel-Lucent where she has worked since 1984 (formerly AT&T, then Lucent) and is currently a member of the Network Reliability Department in the Chief Technology Office. Her work is focused on the reliability and performance analysis for telecommunications systems products, networks and services to guide system architecture solutions. Her technical interests include architecture, system and network dependability analysis, and software reliability engineering.
November 2008
December 2008
If you have interest in giving a talk or know of someone who does, please contact Erika King at eking@hws.edu or at (315) 781-3355