COURSES

GRADUATE

Students in Summer 2008 REU Programs
Yevgeniy Milman has been accepted into the program NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) established in Hong Kong by the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines. The program is entitled Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing with Applications in Applied Science and Engineering.

Michael Vitz has been accepted into the REU program in Geometric Group Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign.

MathFest 2008
Sharma Goldson and Shari S. Levine will be going (cost-free) to MathFest, this summer held in Madison, Wisconsin, on July 31 – August 2. MathFest is the annual summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), consisting of lectures, mini courses, and numerous student activities. Mr. Goldson is the winner of the Student Problem Solving Competition held locally at Hunter this past academic year, and Ms. Levine is the student who conducted the contest at Hunter. At Mathfest, Mr. Goldson will participate in the finals of this Problem Solving Competition.

Other Summer 2008 Activities
David McGarry has been awarded an internship in The Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) Junior Fellow Program. He will work as an intern in one of the Federal statistical agencies and attend a seminar on large scale surveys.

Dana Warmsley will be a participant in the Summer Math Pilot at Columbia University, which includes a course in optimization and workshops and seminars to provide valuable information about competitive doctoral programs. Ms. Warmsley will also be at the Summer Intern Workshop of the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, based at Phillips Academy in Andover, Maine, a program that helps participants prepare for graduate study.

Students Entering Programs outside Hunter in Fall 2008
Henry Chong - PhD program in Economics at Carnegie Mellon
Hans Gilde – MA program in Statistics at Baruch
Samiul Jubaed – Study Abroad at Oxford University
Shari S. Levine – PhD program in Mathematics at Oxford University
Blanca Marmolejo – PhD program in Mathematics at SUNY Stony Brook
Elizabeth C. Paul - MA program in Civil Engineering: Transportation at MIT
Irina Pavlyuk – PhD program in Mathematics at CUNY Graduate Center
Mimi Tsuruga – PhD program in Mathematics at Berlin Mathematical School

2007-2008 Scholarships from outside the Department
Philip and Aida Siff Foundation – awarded to Mimi Tsuruga
Hunter Scholarship and Welfare Fund – awarded to Shari S. Levine and Mimi Tsuruga
Alumni Association: Joseph A. Gillet Memorial Award – awarded to Shari S. Levine and Mimi Tsuruga

2007-2008 Student Presentations
Shari S. Levine presented a poster at the Einsteins in the City 2 International Student Research Conference at The City College of New York in October 2007. This was the third in a series of student research conferences (evolving into a multi-disciplinary conference) whose host sites alternate between CCNY and The Technical University of Vienna. Ms. Levine’s poster described the results she found in developing Cliffs Notes for Shakespearean plays using differential equations and other mathematics.

Yevgeniy Milman presented a co-authored paper at the joint meeting of the national professional mathematics associations (AMS/MAA) in January 2008 in San Diego, California. His travel expenses were covered, partially by Hunter’s Presidential Student Engagement Student Presentation Initiative Award. The paper, entitled “A Buckling Problem for Graphene Sheets” is the result of Mr. Milman’s participation in the Summer 2007 REU program at the University of Akron.

Library Competition
In Spring 2007, Philip Ross was a winner of the Best Student Paper competition based on his paper "Sets as Totalizations of Extensions," submitted by Professor Daniel Cohen from a Computer Science course.

Putnam Competition
Samiul Jubaed, one of our mathematics majors, was a participant in the Sixty-Seventh Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, which took place at Hunter on Saturday, December 1, 2007. Every year the Department has at least one student in this six-hour contest administered by the Mathematical Association of America.

Online Mathematics Calculator Developed by Faculty Member
With funding received through a Hunter College TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology) Development grant, Daniel Chess has developed online a mathematics calculator that can perform operations such as factoring a sum of
polynomials, dividing polynomials, plotting a function, solving an algebraic equation, differentiating a function, and evaluating a definite integral, among others. The URL for this online calculator is http://www.danchess.com/wm/calculator/. It was created using the application webMathematica.

Another Technology Grant
Daniel Chess has been awarded a second Hunter College TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology) Development grant for his proposal "Addressing the Problem of Success Rates in the Mathematics Department's Service Courses." He is developing the use of WebWork in Hunter’s multi-section precalculus and calculus courses. This will allow students to do homework problems online with instant feedback. The calculus coordinator, Robert Thompson, has already experimented with this online resource in a section of calculus that he taught some semesters ago.

Faculty Receive Grant for Research in Mathematics Education
The Responsive Research Network (RRN) has awarded funding to Barry Cherkas, Dana Draghicescu, and Rachael Welder for a grant proposal entitled "Investigating Learning and Assessing Performance from Online, Student-selected, Worked-out Examples in Precalculus.” The RRN is part of the MSPin NYC (Mathematics and Science Partnership in New York City), a five-year NSF-funded grant that partners with the NYCDOE and CUNY.

Extension of Grant for Pre-college Math Students and Teachers
Barry Cherkas has been awarded an extension (2007-2010) of his Mathematics and Science Partnerships Project: Region 7, NYC Department of Education. This grant provides scholarships to teachers to take mathematics courses at Hunter to enrich their background. The grant also provides high school students with the opportunity to earn college credits by taking Hunter’s Mathematica Precalculus Workshop.

New Programs in Bioinformatics
In the years since the draft of the human genome was published in 2001, biology has increasingly been evolving from a mainly experimental science performed at the bench to one in which large databases of information, statistical methods and computer models play a significant role. In order to effectively extract, model and analyze this enormous amount of data, various computational tools and statistical models are taking rapidly expanding roles in biomedical research.
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Hunter now has 1) a new concentration within the mathematics major for Bioinformatics, 2) a new Bioinformatics sequence within the statistics major and 3) a new Bioinformatics track in the master's program in statistics and applied mathematics. Information on the curriculum for these new programs is available on the MAJORS and GRADUATE pages of this web site. The departmental program directors are Dana Draghicescu and Makram Talih.

Teacher Academy
Hunter College offers an exciting program for exceptional students who want to become outstanding teachers capable of inspiring enthusiasm for mathematics and science among the City's diverse student population in the middle schools and high schools. Benefits for students in the Teacher Academy include free tuition for four years, paid internships in partnership public schools and a full-time teaching position in New York City's public school system upon graduation. Students major in biology, chemistry or mathematics and take a complete sequence of education courses. Applications for freshmen and additional information are available at the City University's Teacher Academy website: www.cuny.edu/teacheracademy. For admission to Hunter's program as a sophomore or transfer student, see the Hunter College Teacher Academy website: www.hunter.cuny.edu/education/teacheracademy.

Kolchin Seminar in Differential Algebra
The Kolchin Seminar in Differential Algebra holds two seminar series at The City University of New York: a Graduate Center series on most Friday mornings at 11am in Room 6421, designed to introduce the participants to differential algebra, and a series at Hunter College on selected Saturdays at 2pm in 920 Hunter East that focuses on original research in differential algebra and related fields. For the latest information, please visit the Kolchin Seminar web site at http://www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~ksda/.