Invited Paper Sessions

• History of Mathematics

  Thursday, August 6, 1:00 – 3:30 pm

  Organizers:

  • Janet Beery, University of Redlands
  • Amy Shell-Gellasch, Pacific Lutheran University
  • Charlotte Simmons, University of Central Oklahoma
  Speakers:
  • Fernando Gouvêa, Colby College

    “Emilia's Arithmetic: A Brazilian Intellectual Tackles Mathematics Education”

  • Charlotte Simmons, University of Central Oklahoma

    “August De Morgan: The Man Behind the Scenes”

  • Jim Tattersall, Providence College

    “Mathematical Queries from Late Nineteenth Century American Publications”

  • Janet Beery, University of Redlands

    “Sums of Powers of Integers”

  • Stacy Langton, University of San Diego

    “Newton's Theory of the Speed of Sound”

  An activity of HOM SIGMAA

• Gems of Combinatorics

  Friday, August 7, 3:30 – 5:30 pm

  Organizers:

  • Ezra Brown, Virginia Tech
  • Arthur Benjamin, Harvey Mudd College
  Speakers:
  • Joe Buhler, Center for Communications Research

    “Juggling bijections”

  • Naiomi Cameron, Lewis and Clark College

    “Combinatorial enumeration via the Riordan group”

  • Ravi Vakil, Stanford University

    “A new description of the outer automorphism of S₆”

  • Greg Warrington, Wake Forest University

    “A combinatorial variation of Sylvester's four-point problem?”

• The Mathematics of Poker

  Saturday, August 8, 1:00 – 3:30 pm

  Organizer:

  • Steve Bleiler, Portland State University
  Speakers:
  • Brian Alspach, University of Newcastle and Simon Fraser University

    “Three Mathematical Gems Arising from Poker”

  • David Bachman, Pitzer College

    “Convergence of discrete poker endgame models”

  • Steve Bleiler, Portland State University

    “Quantized Poker”

  • Thomas Ferguson, UCLA

    “Variations on Basic-End-Game in Poker

  • Bill Chen, The Susquehanna International Group

  The mathematical study of poker models traces back to E. Borel and J. Von Neumann. Concurrent with the recent phenomenal rise in the worldwide popularity of poker has been a shift to a new type of player, one who applies mathematics to the “art” of playing poker thus making it much more of a science. Our session will feature presentations from contemporary mathematicians who have furthered this science, and who have developed and implemented courses in Mathematics and Poker with a demonstrated appeal to students far beyond the major.

• Research with Undergraduates

  Saturday, August 8, 2:00 – 5:00 pm

  Organizer:

  • Mario Martelli, Claremont Graduate University
  Speakers:
  • Diana Thomas, Montclair State University

    “A Mathematical Model of Weight Change with Adaptation”

  • Abdul-Aziz Yakubu, Howard University

    “Mathematical Models in Ecology and Epidemiology”

  • Aparna Higgins, University of Dayton

    “Directing Undergraduate Research – Issues Beyond Solving the Mathematical Problem”

  • Ami Radunskaya, Pomona College

    “Mathematical models of tumor growth: lessons learned from (and with) undergraduates”

  • Ali Nadim, Claremont Graduate University

    “Electrowetting and Digital Microfluidics”

  • Cynthia J. Wyels, California State University Channel Island

    “Graph Labeling Problems Appropriate for Undergraduate Research”

  The goal of the Special Session on Research with Undergraduates is to emphasize the importance and the value of this activity, particularly at those institutions that do not offer a PhD program. The speakers will present various aspects of their experience: how to find appropriate problems, how to bring undergraduates up to speed, where to publish the obtained results, how the institution evaluate and compensate their efforts, how to find financial support for the students and themselves.

• Mathematical and Computational Genomics

  Thursday, August 6, 3:00 – 5:30 pm

  Organizer:

  • Cedric Chauve, Simon Fraser University
  Speakers:
  • Anne Bergeron, University du Quebec a Montreal

    “Sorting genomes with parking functions”

  • Binhai Zhu, Montana State University

    “Approximability and fixed-parameter tractability for the exemplar genomic distance problem”

  • Aida Ouangraoua, Bordeaux University and Simon Fraser University

    “Ancestral genome architecture reconstruction”

  • Cedric Chauve, Simon Fraser University

    “An introduction to some mathematical aspects of genome rearrangements”

  • Hamid Reza Chitsaz, Simon Fraser University

    “Predicting RNA-RNA interaction probability and structure”

  This session will focus on computational and mathematical problems that are motivated by genomic questions. The basic point we want to make is that the analysis of the exponentially amount of available data (such as whole genome sequences, proteomic and interaction data, …) requires sound mathematical methods. The main focus will be on combinatorial and algorihmic questions that are aimed at understanding the evolution of whole genomes through major evolutionary events called genome rearrangements. We will discuss how it can be sometimes hard and sometimes easy to compute evolutionary scenarios, how we can say a lot about the high-level structure of an unknown ancestral genome. Finally we will introduce a more probabilistic and applied problem in the growing field of “system biology”, namely the inferrence of RNA-RNA interactions.

• Graphs, Networks, and Inverse Problems

  Saturday, August 8, 2:30 – 5:00 pm

  Organizer:

  • James Morrow, University of Washington
  Speakers:
  • Chad Klumb, University of Washington

    “Nonunique Solutions to the Inverse Problem for Electrical Networks”

  • Tom Boothby, University of Washington

    “Embedding Permutation String Diagrams”

  • Liz Stanhope, Lewis and Clark University

    “What is an orbifold graph?”

  • Richard Froese, University of British Columbia

    “Absolutely continuous spectrum for discrete Schrodinger operators”

  • Alberto Grunbaum, University of California, Berkeley

    “A few nonlinear inverse problems for simple networks”

  Recovering information about networks and graphs from partial information such as boundary data.

• Matroids You Have Known

  Friday, August 7, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

  Organizer:

  • Nancy Ann Neudauer, Pacific University
  Speakers:
  • David Neel, Seattle University

    “Matroids and the Third Deadly Sin”

  • Gary Gordon, Lafayette College

    “Pretty pictures produce pretty matroids”

  • Jakayla Robbins, University of Kentucky

    “From digraphs and determinants to oriented matroids”

  • Carla Cotwright, Hampton University

    “'Clone Wars' – Clones in Matroids”

  • James Reid, University of Mississippi

    “On Circuit Sizes of Matroids”

  • Brett Stevens, Carleton University

    “The Solution to the Shannon Switching Game”

  Gian Carlo Rota said that “Anyone who has worked with matroids has come away with the conviction that matroids are one of the richest and most useful ideas of our day.” We look at connections between seemingly unrelated mathematical objects, and show how matroids have unified and simplified diverse areas of mathematics.

  Matroids play an essential role in combinatorial optimization, and examples of matroids include networks, matrices, configurations of points, arrangements of hyperplanes, and geometric lattices. We all know some matroids, but not always by name. We consider several discrete objects that are matroids (you have known) and concrete ways to view these sometimes abstract objects. We also learn how matroids arise in optimization settings and in familiar combinatorial settings.

• Open and Accessible Problems in Knot Theory

  Friday, August 7, 10:30 – 11:50 am, 1:00 – 3:20 pm

  Organizer:

  • Laura Taalman, James Madison University
  Speakers:
  • Colin Adams, Williams College

    “Three Knotty Tales: Complementary Regions, Spiral Index and Spanning Surfaces”

  • Joel Foisy, SUNY Potsdam

    “Linking graph theory and knot theory”

  • Thomas Mattman, California State University Chico

    “Knotted Graphs and Boundary Slopes”

  • Matt DeLong, Taylor University

    “Knotted Colorability: Undergraduate Research using Crayons, Computers and Linear Algebra”

  • Sandy Ganzell, St Mary's College of Maryland

    “Hot Jones!”

  • Lew Ludwig, Denison University

    “Link and knots in complete graphs with linear edges”

  • Kenneth Millett, University of California

    “Knots, Ephemeral Knots, and Slipknots in Random Walks and Equilateral Polygons”

  • Ramin Naimi, Occidental College

    “Lots of new intrinsically knotted graphs via computer programs”

  With the increase in undergraduate research there is also an increased need for open and accessible problems for students to tackle. Knot theory is particularly fertile ground for such problems. The speakers in this session have all supervised undergraduate research in knot theory, and can speak to a wide variety of open problems on the cutting edge of knot theory that are suitable for undergraduate research.

• Applications of Fluid Dynamics

  Saturday, August 8, 8:30 – 10:30 am

  Organizer:

  • Katherine Socha, St. Mary's College of Maryland
  Speakers:
  • Kurt Ehlers, Truckee Meadows College

    “Micro-locomotion: squirmers, rowers, and singers”

  • Benjamin Akers, University of Illinois at Chicago

    “Stokes, Taylor, Wilton and the power of series”

  • Malgorzata Peszynska, Oregon State University

    “Flow and transport in subsurface with multiple scales”

  • Roger Samelson, Oregon State University

    “Mathematical Modeling of Coastal Ocean Circulation”

• Discrete Mathematics

  Thursday, August 6, 3:30 – 6:30 pm

  Organizer:

  • John Caughman, Portland State University
  Speakers:
  • Rob Beezer, University of Puget Sound

    “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Hoffman-Singleton Graph, But Were Afraid to Draw”

  • Chuck Dunn, Linfield College

    “Higher Order Lattice Chains and Delannoy Numbers: The generating functions”

  • John Caughman, Portland State University

    “Higher Order Lattice Chains and Delannoy Numbers: The enumeration”

  • Colin Starr, Willamette University

    “2-odd Graphs and Prime Distance Graphs”

  • Erin McNicholas, Willamette University

    “Vertex Adjacencies in Random Planar Trees”

  • Daniel Cranston, Rutgers; I. Hal Sudborough, University of Texas, Dallas; Doug West, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

    “Bounds for Cut-and-Paste Sorting of Permutations”