Students awarded at Garden State Undergraduate Mathematics Conference

The 12th Annual Garden State Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (GSUMC) was held Saturday, April 11, 2015 at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ, with 150 students from all across New Jersey, as well as New York and eastern Pennsylvania. At the Conference, Montclair State University Mathematics major Rob Rexler Baello was awarded an Outstanding Poster award for his poster titled Design of Knapsack Cryptosystems Using Certain t-Superincreasing Sequences and Mathematics major Giancarlo Labruna won an Outstanding Oral Presentation award for his talk Maximum or Minimum Randic Connectivity Indices of Graphs Consisting of a Hexagon and Attached Trees. Both students were mentored by Montclair State University Mathematical Sciences professor Aihua Li.

A total of five student researchers from the Montclair State Department of Mathematical Sciences presented their work at the conference. Kaitlyn Scrudato, advised by Haiyan Su, gave a talk on the Analysis of Water Quality in New Jersey in which she described results of her statistical analysis of water-quality data, while Physics students, Doralia Castillo and Karina Soriano, advised by Ashwin Vaidya, gave a talk on their project Metastable States in Terminal Orientation of Symmetric Bodies in a Flow.

“The best part about attending the GSUMC was getting the chance to see others who have the same interests in pursuing research in mathematics and related areas. Also, hearing some presentations as to how mathematics is involved was really interesting. One presentation that I enjoyed was how mathematics plays a role in music”, said Labruna. In preparing for her presentation at the conference, Kaitlyn Scrudato gained a new perspective on her research accomplishments: “What I found most interesting about preparing the presentation is getting to see the whole project come together and realizing how much I learned along the way.”

Students also commented on how much they enjoyed working alongside a faculty member outside of the classroom as productive members of the mathematics research community. “Working alongside with my advisor, Dr. Li, has been incredible. The best part about it is how we have been able to obtain results for the project,” said Labruna.

Beginning with the 2015 conference, Montclair State Mathematical Sciences faculty member A. David Trubatch is director of the GSUMC, after working as one of the organizers over the previous five years. The GSUMC provides students with an opportunity to present to a friendly audience and receive feedback from experienced faculty and professional researchers. The next GSUMC will take place in April 2016 at William Paterson University and promises to be a rich experience for students to present their research and to see the work of like-minded peers.