NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
UCLA Mathematics Dept.
Present
Future
The COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) is an annual international contest where teams of three undergraduate students use mathematical modeling to solve a real world problem. Teams have just four days to chose one of two posed problems, clarify and make necessary assumptions about the problem, develop and analyze a mathematical model, and compose their findings in a clear and coherent paper. A panel of judges then score the solution papers and prizes are awarded. In 2012, 3,697 teams representing institutions from 17 countries competed in the MCM.
UCLA undergraduate students interested in competing can find more information here.
Each year, Andrea Bertozzi and the applied math group at UCLA host a summer program where undergraduate students engage in high-quality, university-level research. Past research topics include crime modeling, fluid dynamics experiments and modeling, robotics and control, medical imaging, cancer stem cells, bone growth, remote sensing applications, alcohol biosensors, photovoltaic cells, and algorithm design for microscopy.
During the summer of 2012, I mentored a REU team on a statistical ranking project. The students won an outstanding award for their presentation at the undergraduate poster session at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meeting in San Diego. We have also submitted an article to a statistics journal on the subject. A preprint of the article, entitled “Ranking rankings: an empirical comparison of the predictive power of sports ranking methods”, can be downloaded here.
2012 team members: myself, Ian Drayer, Daniel Barrow, Peter Elliott, and Garren Gaut.