• Professors Giusti, Johnson, Laison, Nyman, Otto, Seaders, and Starr all attended the annual Joint Mathematics Meeting held this year in Boston, MA on January 4-7, 2012. The list of the talks given can be found in the scientific program for the meetings.
  • On December 14, Associate Professor Josh Laison gave a talk as part of the U Think series at Willamette University. The talk was titled The Limits of Computation.
  • The article, "Eigenvalue Statistics of One-Face Maps", by Assistant Professor Erin McNicholas has been accepted for publication in Congressus Numerantium and will appear in December 2011.
  • Assistant Professor Kathryn Nyman gives the Mathematics Colloquium talk at Dartmouth College on December 1, 2011. The title of her talk is The Peak Algebra of the Symmetric Group.
  • On Thursday, December 1, Kristy Pelatt from the University of Oregon will give the colloquium talk titled The Hairy Ball Theorem.
  • Associate Professor Josh Laison was one of three speakers at the n-th Annual Combinatorial Potlatch held this year at Seattle University on Saturday, November 19, 2011.
  • On Thursday, November 17th, the colloquium was a preview of next semester's mathematics course offerings.
  • Visiting Assistant Professor Chad Giusti has been appointed to the Mathematical Association of America committee for the Involvement of Minorities in Mathematics.
  • The article, "The mod-two cohomology of symmetric groups as a Hopf ring", authored by Visiting Assistant Professor Chad Giusti and co-authors P. Salvatore and D. Sinha has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Topology.
  • On November 10, the colloquium talk was given by Assistant Professor Kathryn Nyman. The talk was called The Peak Algebra of the Symmetric Group.
  • Mathematics major Stephanie Jones gave a presentation on her Carson Summer Undergraduate Research grant titled "Into the Minds of Math Teachers" on Thursday, November 10 at 3:30pm in the Hatfield Room.
  • On November 3rd, Prof. Colin Starr gave a colloquium talk entitled The Nine-Point Circle and Feuerbach's Theorem.
  • On October 30th, the Math Club held a Halloween Party in Ford.
  • On October 21st, mid-semester day, the Math Club sponsored a trip to OMSI in Portland.
  • Assistant Professor Erin McNicholas gave a talk in the Mini University during Family Weekend at Willamette on Saturday, October 15. The title of the talk was Cryptography goes public: the impressive utility of modular equivalence.
  • Associate Professor Michael Dorff from Brigham Young University gave two colloquium talks. The first talk was titled Soap Bubbles, Shortest Paths, and When Does the Derivative of the Area Equal the Perimeter? and was given on Thursday, October 6, at 4pm. The second talk was on Friday, October 7 at 3:45pm and the title was "Toy Story 3", the "real" Iron Man Suit, and advising the President of the United States. Thanks to everyone who attended!
  • Associate Professor Peter Otto gave a colloquium talk on Thursday, September 29, at 4pm. The title of the talk was The Mathematics of Mixing Things Up. See the colloquium calandar for future talks.
  • On September 22, 2011, Associate Professor Colin Starr was awarded the Jerry E. Hudson Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award celebrates distinguished teaching and leadership by a faculty member at Willamette University. Congratulations, Colin!!
  • The first Mathematics Colloquium of the year was given by Associate Professor Inga Johnson Thursday, September 22, at 4pm. The title of the talk was The Link Smoothing Game.
  • Last summer, mathematics major Taylor McKenzie ('12) spent his time at Pacific Northwest National Labs as a part of the National Security Intern Program working on developing a worldwide disease model for SARS and cholera and prototyping both models in Python. In addition, his group worked on developing estimations for both air travel between foreign countries and the probability of an infected individual being quarantined as a result of airport screening in a given country.
  • The article, "Polynomial representation for the expected length of minimal spanning trees", co-authored by Associate Professors Peter Otto and Colin Starr, and former Willamette University student Jared Nishikawa has been accepted for publication in the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. Jared Nishikawa graduated from Willamette in 2010 and is currently a graduate student in the mathematics PhD program at University of Colorado at Boulder.
  • The article, "Mixing times for the mean-field Blume-Capel model via aggregate path coupling", co-authored by Associate Professor Peter Otto, Yevgeniy Kovchegov (Oregon State University), and former Willamette University student Mat Titus hs been published in the Journal of Statistical Physics in September 2011. Mat Titus graduated from Willamette in 2009 and is currently a graduate student in the mathematics PhD program at Oregon State University.
  • Associate Professor Inga Johnson received a grant from the Academy for Inquiry-Based Learning/Education Advancement Foundation to revise and expand inquiry-based learning textbook resources for her Math 499 - Knot Theory Senior Seminar.
  • The article, "Spectra of Coronae," by Assistant Professor Erin McNicholas and former Visiting Assistant Professor Cam McLeman, appeared in Linear Algebra and its Applications in September 2011.
Willamette University

Mathematics Department

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Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
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