With their
faculty supervisior and the title of their research
project:
In 1999-2000:
Lydia DIEMER (A. Assadi): Computational vision with application
to depth perception.
Ann SCHEELS (D. Griffeath), Ergodic behavior of traffic models.
Ryan GANTNER (R. Brualdi), Young tableaux and (0,1)-matrices.
Paul BRODHEAD (S. Lempp, R. Solomon), Logic and computation theory.
Suzanne REICHEL (P. Orlik), Algebraic Geometry
Kendra NELSEN(A. Ram), Bitraces of Iwahori algebras).
(Ann Scheels and Ryan Gantner received degree credit for their
projects
and consequently were not funded by the VIGRE grant.)
In 1999-2000, 13 undergraduate students, two graduate students
(one of whom was a VIGRE predoctoral graduate fellow) were part of
Professor James Propp's Spatial Systems Laboratory - an Undergraduate
Group Research Experience. The
participant
list and activity summary is available.
In 2000-2001:
Kendra NELSEN (continuing with A. Ram)
Brian BEHLENDORF (D. Griffeath)
Semmi PASHA (A. Assadi)
Blake Butkowski (A. Assadi)
Students working with David Griffeath in the Spatial Systems
Lab (convened as a Math 490 course/research project
under the supervision of David Griffeath in Fall, 2000-01):
Mark Chapman
Adam Engelhart
Yu-Shan Fung
Geir Helleloid
Abraham Smith
Sandy Welander, and
Winston C. Yang (grad student)
Christopher Raymond (VIGRE postdoc).
In the Fall semester, the course focused on deterministic and
probabilistic cellular automata, interacting particle systems,
percolation, and related models for complex spatial processes.
Over the term, in addition to Griffeath's weekly seminars, there
were outside lectures by Cris Moore of the Santa Fe Institute and
University of New Mexico, Janko Gravner from the University of
California - Davis, and Timo Seppalainen of Iowa State University.
The other main component of the course was a weekly two-hour
collaborative research session in our electronic classroom. The
group explored several open problems concerning the asymptotic
shape and density of simple crystal growth models. The focus was
on nearest neighbor "totalistic" solidification rules first
studied empirically by Packard and Wolfram in the mid 1980s.
Rigorous evaluation of the asymptotic density was obtained for
many of these basic cellular automata which grow like van Koch
snowflakes. Even the numerical values which the group derived are
new.
Students working with Jim Propp in the Spatial Systems
Lab Spring, 2000-01.
Geir Helleloid
Jonah Johnson
Nick Pongratz
Rachel Dahl
Dominic Johann-Berkel
Yang Qiao
Hal Canary
Kristin Jehring
Dan Luu
Michael Lang (grad student).
The topic this semester is tilings. The SSL gang will be exploring
two-dimensional tiling
problems from a variety of angles, inspired by combinatorics, algebra,
probability, physics, and computer science.
Moreover, the SSL gang will be giving the VIGRE seminar
on Wednesday, May 2, 2001.
In 2001-02 (fall):
Laura Mueller (A. Assadi):
working on infant vision and face recognition.
Students working with Dan Knopf (assisted by Christopher Raymond and
Rebecca Field) in the
Laura Mueller (A. Assadi):
continuing on a project on infant vision and face recognition.
Laura Mueller's
slides from her presentation at the 11th Annual Meeting of
Computational Neuroscience in Chicago this summer.
Nick Pongratz (A. Assadi): working on a project in bioinformatics.
Students working with Dan Knopf (assisted by Christopher Raymond and
Rebecca Field) from the Minimal Surfaces Lab.
In 2002 (summer):
Joe Uchill (A. Assadi): working on Matrix Frequency Analysis and Its
Application to Language Classification of Textual Data for English and
Hebrew. Joe Urchill's
paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Optical Society of
America this summer.
Michael Behrman (A. Assadi): working on evolutionary computation
and
design of new neural network architectures inspired by evolutionary
biology.
Kristin Jehring (A. Ram): working on representation theory. Also
went to the University of Wuppertal (Germany) to work with Professor Peter
Littelmann.
In 2002-03 (Fall)
Joe Uchill (A. Assadi), working on Image Segmentability. Joe
will present his second paper on this subject at the International
Meeting in
Electronic Imaging and Photonics in Santa Clara, Jan 2003.
Mike Behrman (A. Assadi), working
on analysis of positive data
(self-report, as in behavioral/medical/social sciences) using Support
Vector Machines. He will be submitting a paper to one of the
main international journals in neurology, called "Pain".
Elliot Merriam (A. Assadi), continuing from the summer.
Jennifer Keith (A. Ram), on quantum Weyl groups.
In 2002-03 (Spring)
Joe Uchill (A. Assadi), continuation of work from the fall.
Mike Behrman (A. Assadi), continuation of work from the fall.
Kristin Jehring (P. Orlik), on the computation of
some real arrangements obtained from the arrangement of
reflecting hyperplanes of the symmetric group
(where a pair of coordinates are equal) by adding
hyperplanes where sums of pairs of certain coordinates are equal.
Tim Grilley (A. Adem), on fundamental groups, covering spaces and
low dimensional topology.
Song Guo (T. Yang) on computer implementation of an explicit
formula (for primes different from 2) for so-called local density of
quadratic forms, a local counterpart for finding the number
of ways to express an integer by a positive definite quadratic form,
and using symbolic computation to find a similar formula for p equal to
2.
Gordon Klaus (P. Milewski) on "Stochastic differential equations
modeling wave interactions".
Summer 2003
Lyuba Chumakova (F. Waleffe and Joy Wang) on the
search for nonlinear three-dimensional traveling waves and
self-similar solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations and elucidating
the nature of turbulence: visualizing these complex 3D solutions and
turbulent flow fields in the visualization theater.
Allison Pollack (A. Assadi)
Jo Uchill (A. Assadi), continuation of work from the academic
year on
image
and
signal processing.
Brenton McMenamin (A. Assadi) on using SVD and PCA, applied to
Spline representation of facial profiles to essentially attack the
problem of parameterizing the "space of all profile faces" using
neural networks for handling the nonlinearities that we are guaranteed
to encounter at that stage.
Mike Behrman (A. Assadi), continuation of work from the academic
year.
In 2003-04 (Fall)
Students working with Jim Propp in the Spatial Systems
Laboratory
on
integrable recurrence relations
and associated combinatorial models:
Paul Heideman
Emilie Hogan
Carl Edquist
Abigail Scott
Joe Uchill
Sam Lachterman
assisted by Stephen Griffeth (Math grad), Martin Hock (CS grad) and
Josh 0Nissenboim.
Gordon Klaus (P. Milewski), working on
the
behavior of networks of coupled conservative differential equations,
and
exploring numerically some statistical properties of the network
with
random forcings and dissipation.
Lyuba Chumakova (P. Milewski), working on image
processing of
electron
microscopy images that show the binding of molecules to a surface,
and quantifying various aspects of the distribution of these
molecules on the surface.
In 2003-04 (Spring)
Lyuba Chumakova (P. Milewski), continuing work on image
processing of
electron
microscopy images that show the binding of molecules to a surface,
and quantifying various aspects of the distribution of these
molecules on the surface.
Jennifer Keith (A. Ram) on quantum groups.
Gordon Klaus (P. Milewski), continuing work on
the
behavior of networks of coupled conservative differential equations,
and
exploring numerically some statistical properties of the network
with
random forcings and dissipation.
Jeffrey Noel, Michael Anderson, and Joe Wildenberg (John Vano)