News About Students
Department Prizes for 2013
Each Spring, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is pleased to recognize
student excellence with a variety of departmental prizes. Here is the list for 2013:
- The John S. Klein Prize, awarded to a graduating Senior to recognize excellence in Computer Science, to Alexander Kittelberger H'13.
- The Abigail Mosey Book Prize, awarded to a Hobart or William Smith Senior for generosity in helping others to learn and appreciate mathematical ideas, to Samuel Heinle H'13
- The William Ross Proctor Prize, awarded to the William Smith Sophomore who has achieved the highest rank in mathematics in her first two years at the Colleges, to Alana Kilcullen WS'15
- The Irving Bentsen Prize, awarded to the second year student at Hobart College who has the most outstanding record in mathematics and computer science, to Ruiqian (Richard) Dai H'15 and Luke DeLuccia H'15.
For more about student prizes in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, visit our department prizes page.
Posted 29 April 2013
Alex Kittelberger Honors Project
Alexander Kittelberger H'13 has completed an Honors project with the title, Online Virtual Math Museum:
Building a Virtual Math Museum with Modern Web Technologies
and an XML Infrastructure. An Honors project is a year-long endeavour culminating in a long Honors thesis and an oral examination by a committee of three examiners. Alex's Honors Project was to create a website for mathematical visualizations.
From equations to geometry, there are many different types of mathematical objects that can all be described in different forms. The “Online Virtual Math Museum” is designed to store and present information about mathematical objects in the form of a website. An XML language is used to define these mathematical objects, and a Java program is used to create webpages to present the objects visually. For this project, a framework was developed for a website that can display different mathematical objects. The framework can easily be extended and allows programmers to expand on the presentations.
Alex's advisor for the project was Professor David Eck.
Posted 29 April 2013
Laser Tag in CPSC 336
Here is a picture from a "laser tag" project in Professor Vaughn's Robotics course (CPSC 336). The first project in that course in Spring 2013 was for each student to build and program a mobile robot to play laser tag. Each robot was equipped with a low power laser, laser detector, and infrared obstacle detector. Any robot hit by an opponent's laser was required to leave the arena. Each behavior-based robot was individually programmed with a strategy to apportion its limited power resources for lasers, movement, or general health. The contest was held in a darkened arena to maximize the laser effects.
Students in the photo, from left to right, are: Kieran Koehnlein H'13, Kingsley Adarkwah H'13, Sam Heine H'13, Ruiting Wang H'14, Mark Benya H'14, and Chazoi Hardware H'13.
Posted 18 February 2013
Gionet Receives Fulbright Scholarship
Trevor Gionet (H'12) has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship
for study in Vietnam. In addition to teaching English, Trevor will take Vietnamese language lessons
focused on mathematics. With this, he hopes to be able to teach
math bilingually.
The Fulbright Program was established by the U.S. Congress in 1946. The purpose of the Fulbright Program worldwide is "to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange." The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs (ECA) is the principal administrator of the Fulbright Program. Bi-national commissions, composed equally of U.S. and partner-country citizens, coordinate Fulbright Programs in fifty-one of the 140 participating countries.
Posted 15 April 2012
Yaoxin Liu Honors Project
Yaoxin Liu, H'12, has completed an Honors project titled,
"A Mathematical Model: Hepatitis B and Hepatitis D Co-infection."
An Honors project is a year-long endeavor culminating in a long Honors thesis and an oral examination by a committee of three examiners.
Here is a description of his project: "In this honors project, mathematical models are developed to describe the
interaction between human liver cells, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis
delta virus (HDV). HDV is a dependent virus that can only infect patients who
are also HBV-infected, and it causes more severe damage to liver cells than HBV
alone. This project is an extension of previous research, which focused on
analyzing the impact of immune exhaustion on HBV and HDV infections. Shifting
the emphasis to the dynamics of the infections, this honors project will shed
light on what causes the severe damage to liver cells. Mathematical models of
the system are built from a simpler model of a single infection and used to
explore the possible outcomes of HBV and HDV co-infection. Computer simulations
are also created to support analytical results. Manipulation the magnitude of
different parameters has helped in understanding how different host and viral
factors affect the severity of disease." Yaoxin's advisor on this project was Professor Jon Forde.
Posted 13 April 2012
Marcela Melara Honors Project
Marcela Melara, WS'12, has completed an Honors project
titled, "ELARA: Environmental Liaison and Automated Recycling Assistant." An Honors project is a year-long endeavor culminating
in a long Honors thesis and an oral examination by a committee of
three examiners. Here is a description of Marcela's project:
"One environmental issue we face today is dealing with the large amounts of
landfill garbage. While many efforts are already being made to increase recycling,
many people still have trouble identifying and sorting recyclable materials.
In order to improve this situation, I designed and built ELARA. This is a new
system that facilitates recycling and waste sorting by helping people identify
the items which are recyclable and those which are not. The most immediately
noticeable aspect of ELARA is a networked kiosk to help users sort their waste
correctly. The kiosk is the front end of a larger system of hardware and software." Marcela's advisor for this project was Professor John Vaughn.
Posted 13 April 2012
Shaun Viguerie Honors Project
Shaun Viguerie H'12 has completed an Honors project
entitled "ISTAT: Online Interface for Hypothesis Testing."
An Honors project is a year-long endeavor that culminates with
a long Honors thesis and an oral examination by a committee of
three examiners. Here is a description of his project:
"This honors project involved the creation of an online statistical software
application (called ISTAT) for hypothesis testing. The package has a user-friendly
interface, and is able to work with data from a variety of different sources.
Designed for student use, it supports hypothesis tests commonly covered in
introductory statistics courses. The core functionality of the application lies
in JavaScript libraries, making it easily extendable. By utilizing many modern
web technologies, the project demonstrates the improving capabilities of the web
as a platform for complex applications." Shaun's advisor for this
project was Professor David Eck.
Posted 13 April 2012
A Mathematical Model of T Cell Exhaustion Caused by HBV/HDV
On Wednesday, November 9th at 4:30pm, Hobart Mathematics Major Yaoxin Liu '12 will discuss his summer research project in Napier 201. In patients with chronic hepatitis B infection, the immune system becomes exhausted, losing its effectiveness over time. Co-infection with another virus, Hepatitis Delta, reduces the amount of HBV in the blood, and so may relieve the exhaustion. During the Summer Research Program last summer, Yixiao Sha, Yaoxin Liu and Prof. Jonathan Forde developed an ordinary differential equation model of the interactions of these two viruses and the immune system to study the effect of a second infection on immune exhaustion. Sha, Liu and Forde started by studying the four dimensional model with only HBV infection, and then added the second virus, HDV. They also analyzed various steady states and their stability for both systems. All the stability conditions are found for the four dimensional system with only HBV infection. For the five dimensional system with HDV, numerical simulations show the existence of positive steady states representing chronic coinfection. The model suggests that co-infection does not reduce the exhaustion level, but increases damage due to general inflammation. (Refreshments will be served beforehand.)
Posted 4 November 2011
Graph Theory Article Published
An article by Professor Erika King and her students, Trevor Gionet
and Yixiao Sha, has been published in the journal Discrete
applied Mathematics. The article, which is titled
"A revision and extension of results on 4-regular, 4-connected,
claw-free graphs," corrects a classification of 4-connected, claw-free, well-covered graphs that was published in 1995.
Posted 2 June 2011
Department Prizes 2011
Every Spring, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
awards several prizes to students in recognition of excellence in
mathematics or computer science. These prizes have been endowed
at various times in the history of the department, and
they carry (small) cash awards in addition to the recognition.
Prizes awarded in Spring 2011 were as follows:
- The Robert L. Beinert Prize, awarded to a graduating Senior to recognize excellence in Mathematics, to Zhiyou Cao '11.
- The John S. Klein Prize, awarded to a graduating Senior to recognize excellence in Computer Science, to Reynaldo Kelly '11.
- The Glen M. Lee Prize, awarded for the first time in 2011, to the Hobart Senior who has displayed the greatest proficiency in Mathematics and Athletics, to Kyle Whitaker '11.
- The William Ross Proctor Prize, awarded to the William Smith sophomore who have achieved the highest rank in mathematics in their first two years at the Colleges, to Yanfen Wu '13
- The Irving Bentsen Prize, awarded to the second year student at Hobart College who has the most outstanding record in mathematics and computer science, to Samuel Heinle '13 and Alexander Kittelberger '13.
Posted 30 April 2011