Aug 13, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - With presentations, talks and poster sessions given by its faculty and students, Harvey Mudd College was well represented at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ (SIAM) annual meeting in San Diego last month.

Andrew Bernoff, professor of mathematics, co-organized a mini-symposium on undergraduate research in dynamical systems, kicking it off with the presentation "Promoting, Publicizing and Publishing Undergraduate Research." He also co-organized a poster session highlighting undergraduate research—a first for SIAM.

Physics major Stephen Rosenthal ’09 gave a talk, “Localized Forcing in Driven Thin Liquid Films,” based on work conducted with Rachel Levy, associate professor of mathematics, as part of the HMC-UCLA Summer Research Training Group (RTG) Program.

“Being a part of the SIAM conference was a very valuable experience,” said Rosenthal. “I consider becoming a professor as a possible future goal, so conferences like SIAM give me a perspective of how real academic research works.”

Levy closed the session as part of a panel discussion in which she discussed her experiences with the UCLA RTG program, and more generally mentoring undergraduate research.

At conferences like this, “Students are able to make connections between the mathematics they see in the classroom, cutting edge research and solutions to problems from industry,” said Levy, who also presented her research in a contributed presentation entitled "Localized Forcing in Driven Thin Liquid Films."

“In our case, my summer research students attended a mini-symposium on problems very similar to the one we are tackling this summer on particle-laden fluid flow,” she explained. “The 12 research talks across several disciplines emphasized that researchers are interested in the problem we are studying. The talks also emphasized the connections between the experiments and modeling of our research and real physical problems such as mudslides and avalanches.”

Patrick Foley ’09 and Vedika Khemani ’10, who participated in the HMC-UCLA RTG program, also attended the conference.

Established in 1952, SIAM was founded to support and encourage the important industrial role that applied mathematics and computational science play in advancing science and technology.

SIAM conferences focus on timely topics in applied and computational mathematics and applications and provide a place for members to exchange ideas and to expand their network of colleagues in both academia and industry.

“Our hope is that by attending such conferences, students can begin to envision themselves as part of a large community of mathematicians,” said Levy.