Honors projects are an opportunity to delve deeply into graduate level mathematics or statistics. Projects may or may not involve original research, but all involve significant independent work. Usually honors work begins in the fall or January and extends through the spring semester. For more information on the honors program, visit the Academic Program page. There are also other opportunities for student research.
Below is a list of recent honors projects. If available, the name of the project is linked to the final paper. All copyrights are held by the authors or publishers; the papers are posted here with permission. The first faculty member listed is the primary supervisor.
| Project | Student(s) | Year | Supervising Faculty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chow's Theorem | Yohannes D. Asega | 2017 | Fernando Q. Gouvêa David Krumm |
| Tying the Knot: Applications of Topology to Chemistry | Tarini S. Hardikar | 2017 | Scott Taylor Jan Holly |
| Normal Surfaces and 3-Manifold Algorithms | Joshua D. Hews | 2017 | Scott Taylor David Krumm |
| Numerical Solution of the Black-Scholes PDE | Saran Liukasemsarn | 2017 | Jan Holly Lu Lu |
| Chaos: The Mathematics Behind the Butterfly Effect | James Manning | 2017 | Jan Holly George Welch |
| Some Examples of the Interplay between Algebra and Topology | Joseph D. Malionek | 2017 | Scott Taylor Fernando Q. Gouvêa |
| Modeling Ocean Ecosystems | Anna Kroanauer | 2016 | Jim Scott Stephanie Taylor |
| A fast algorithm for simplifying triangulations of the 2-sphere | Dan Medici | 2016 | Scott Taylor Leo Livshits |
| Topological Data Analysis | Nick Murphy | 2016 | Scott Taylor Jim Scott |
| Inequalities for Heegaard and bridge surfaces | Chris Burnham | 2015 | Scott Taylor Lu Lu |
| The Central Hankel Transform | Matt Levine | 2015 | Ben Mathes Justin Sukiennik |
| Quantization of analysis | Kelvin Lui | 2015 | Ben Mathes Scott Taylor |
| Cyclic Properties of the Volterra Operator | John Dixon | 2014 | Ben Mathes Otto Bretscher |
| A Coder's Guide to Elliptic Curve Cryptography | Stephen Morse | 2014 | Fernando Gouvêa Justin Sukiennik |
| Linear Algebra in Quantum Computing | Byoungwook Jang | 2014 | Leo Livshits Fernando Gouvêa |
| Towards Sullivan's No Wandering Domain Theorem | Kyle Hawkins | 2014 | Leo Livshits Scott Taylor |
| Banach-Mazur Games and Borel Determinacy | Stephen Jenkins | 2014 | Leo Livshits Lu Lu |
| Unknotting Number and Combinatorial Sutured Manifold Theory | Alex Rasmussen | 2013 | Scott Taylor Andreas Malmendier |
| The Geometry of the KdV Equation | Arjumand Masood | 2013 | Andreas Malmendier Fernando Gouvêa |
| A Monte Carlo Simulation Study of the Performance of Hypothesis Tests Under Assumption Violations | Gareth Cleveland | 2013 | Liam O'Brien Jim Scott |
| The Trace Formula for Modular Forms of Level One | Alex Barron | 2013 | Fernando Gouvêa Andreas Malmendier |
| Odd or even: uncovering parity of rank in a family of rational elliptic curves | Anika Lindemann | 2013 | Fernando Gouvêa Andreas Malmendier |
| Recurrence relations, fractals, and chaos: implications for analyzing gene structure | Sarah Harmon | 2012 | Jan Holly Scott Taylor |
| The Radon transform and the mathematics of medical imaging | Jen Beatty | 2012 | Alan Von Hermann Fernando Gouvêa |