This summer the University of West Georgia is host to an eight-week Research Experience for Undergraduates program, funded by the National Science Foundation. The $230,000 REU program will be run each summer, through 2016, under the direction of Dr. Bruce Landman, professor and chair, and Dr. Abdollah Khodkar, professor, both of the department of mathematics.
The program accepts eight talented undergraduate mathematics majors each year who will live on campus at UWG during the summer. The students are selected from a large pool of applicants from throughout the United States. The students receive a stipend, room and board, and reimbursement for travel expenses. The program provides these students with hands-on experience in conducting research in the mathematical areas of number theory, graph theory and combinatorics.
Dr. Landman explains, “This year’s students are all highly motivated, a pleasure to work with and very talented. They were chosen from well over one hundred students who applied.”
Dr. Landman is the author of “Ramsey Theory on the Integers,” a book written to introduce students to their first research experience in mathematics. He has also authored thirty-five articles, edited several research books, is the founder and managing editor of an international research journal, and has organized several international research conferences at UWG. Dr. Khodkar is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of graph theory and design theory, and has authored more than one hundred research articles.
The UWG program features carefully guided team and individual research work with a faculty mentor, several lectures by visiting speakers, weekly seminars in which the students give oral presentations of their work, the writing up of a mathematics research paper and the opportunity to attend a mathematics conference.
This is the second three-year REU grant awarded to Dr. Landman and Dr. Khodkar at UWG. The first ran from 2007 through 2009 and was highly successful, resulting in eight published articles in peer-reviewed research journals and several presentations at conferences.
“I recommend REUs to any undergraduate math major who is interested in meeting other math majors and is considering graduate school,” says Brenna Cole of Baylor University. “It’s really interesting learning how research is done.”
The 2014 REU students are Brenna Cole (Baylor University), Rebecca Eastham (University of Wisconsin – Madison), Sohail Farhangi (Virginia Tech), Paul Frigge (Northwestern University), Ryan Matzke (Gettysburg College), Alexandra Peterson (Berry College), Christina Wahl (SUNY – Potsdam), and Zachary Walsh (Carleton College).
