News: page 9

Dahkota DeBold is graduating from CCNY in 2022 with a B.S. in Pure Mathematics and Physics. She is going to move on to work on her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee!

Hear about it from Dahkota DeBold herself!

My name is Dahkota DeBold, and I am a graduating senior this spring and will start a Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee this Fall. I started at CCNY in the Fall of 2017 intending to pursue an undergraduate degree in physics. I was initially interested in physics because I wanted to eventually study general relativity and black holes. During my sophomore and junior years, I became more interested in math, especially multivariable calculus. I had the pleasure of being taught by a Ph.D. student, Bryce Gollobit, and Prof. Bianca Santoro. They both highlighted the beauty of math to me in a way I had never seen before, and thus, I decided to declare a double major in Pure Math and Physics.

Since then, I have taken a course in Differential Geometry with Professor Christina Sormani of Lehman College, which led to a year-long research opportunity in Computational Geometry with her and Professor Chen-Yun Lin. Through this experience, I got to develop a broader understanding of what it means to be a woman in mathematics and how I can fit into academia. I have also since realized that I can work on general relativity problems through mathematics.

My time at CCNY has been wrought with many obstacles, but my mentors in the math department have been amazing at encouraging me to achieve my best. Specifically, Prof. Bianca Santoro and Prof. Zajj Daugherty of CCNY and Professor Chen Yun Lin and Professor Christina Sormani of Lehman College have been amazing and understanding mentors. They have taught me that resilience and effort matter above all else, especially in math. Also, they have given me a community to be a part of and be supported by which is invaluable and just feels nice.

My friends and family have also been supportive of me in every step of my journey through my undergraduate. They have always wanted me to follow my dreams, no matter where they lead. I am truly blessed and thankful to have such wonderful, supportive people in my life.

There is a virtual conference planned via Zoom on April 12th in memory of Prof. Emeritus Eli Goodman and his longtime collaborator Richard Pollack, celebrating lifelong contributions to discrete and computational geometry.

(Virtual) Discrete & Computational Geometry Day in Memory of Eli Goodman and Ricky Pollack

Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 12:30–16:05 ET (New York time)

Zoom link: https://springer.zoom.us/j/6440052748

Program:

12:30 Janos Pach (Renyi Institute): Welcome & Introduction

12:40 Andreas Holmsen (KAIST): An allowable feast

13:15 Micha Sharir (Tel Aviv University): Polynomial partitioning: The hammer and some (recent algorithmic) nails

13:50 Esther Ezra (Bar Ilan University): Recent developments on intersection searching

14:25 Xavier Goaoc (Loria, Nancy): Some questions on order types

15:00 Andrew Suk (UC San Diego): Unavoidable patterns in simple topological graphs

15:35 Sylvain Cappell (Courant Institute): Mesh matrices of graphs, of simplicial complexes and of matroids and the significance of their eigenvalues

See also https://users.renyi.hu/~pach/geoscape/eve.html for more information.

Congratulations to Prof. Shub! He has been awarded a 2021 Fullbright U.S. Scholar grant to go to Uruguay.

Adrian Cabreja is a masters student in Mathematics at CCNY. He is also a recipient of a Dr. Barnett and Jean Hollander Rich 2021 Summer Internship, working with Prof. Sean Cleary.

Hear more about it from Adrian himself!

My name is Adrian Cabreja and I interned for Professor Sean Cleary this past summer. The duration of my work consisted of studying important groups in geometric group theory, i.e., Thompson’s group, Houghton’s group, and automaton groups. Additionally, I studied the notion of measure in the context of group theory.

The opportunity to concentrate solely on mathematics during the summer allowed me to develop my mathematical intuition, my ability to understand complicated mathematical literature, and my ability to write multiplexed proofs. I am very fortunate to have been given the opportunity, for it also solidified my research interests.

I thank Professor Cleary for his wisdom and guidance and my partner Clarisselle for her unwavering support.

Prof. Jack Hanson has been awarded the prestigious 2021 Junior Faculty Research Award in Science and Engineering (JFRASE). The JFRASE is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and comes with a $50,000 fellowship.

A panel of reviewers chose Dr. Hanson's project for this highly selective award because they were convinced of its potential to make a significant contribution to society, to CUNY, and to his field. Dr. Hanson is joining a select group of 22 CUNY faculty who have won this award since 2012.

Above is an image related to Prof. Hanson's research: A simulation of a random growth model on a Voronoi tesselation; the color represents the time at which each cell is "infected" by an infection started at the origin.