NSERC USRA 2024
Every year, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research awards undergraduate students the opportunity to experience graduate-level research in the form of full-time research assistant positions under the sponsorship of professors across the Faculties of Science and Engineering. This year, five undergraduates were chosen to work with professors in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics on cutting-edge research projects, and they will present their work at national undergraduate conferences this summer. Meet our five talented students and their research projects!
Cody Antal, a graduating mathematics honours and education student, is working with Dr. Francis Bischoff this summer in differential geometry. His research project is on the study of the flat connections on \( C^k\) that are permitted to have logarithmic singularities, which are thought of as the sharp point at the origin on the curve \(x^3-y^2 = 0\).
Layne Burns, a graduating mathematics honours student, is working with Dr. Edward Doolittle this summer in statistics. His summer research project focuses on the Markov analysis of the traditional Indigenous Peach Stone and Bowl game, and they are additionally studying natural language processing techniques to create digital tools to preserve traditional languages.
Emily Erick, a fourth year statistics student, is working with Dr. James McVittie this summer in survival analysis under the Bayesian Statistics paradigm. Since there are limited studies on nonparametric Bayesian survival analysis, her research project builds upon previous works to construct and code the nonparametric Bayesian survival function estimator for combined right-censored incident cohort and left-truncated right-censored prevalent cohort failure time data.
Cody Solie, a third year computer science student, is working with Dr. Karen Meagher this summer in the area of combinatorial matrix theory relating to EKR-type problems. His summer project is the construction of a database for the intersection density of small permutation groups, which aims to help researchers identify and categorize the groups that have intersection density greater than one.
Peter Wadel, a graduating mathematics honours student, is working with Dr. Remus Floricel this summer on Zauner’s conjecture in quantum information theory. This conjecture seeks to affirm the existence of a maximal set of equiangular arrays, called a SIC-POVM, in every finite-dimensional complex Hilbert space. In particular, they are examining how certain symmetries exhibited by known SIC-POVM’s parallel the symmetries of certain other algebraic structures.
For undergraduate students wishing to learn more about the NSERC USRA program in our department, please contact our department.