Math Circle student research honors

Math Circle students Gili Rusak, Matthew Babbitt, and Zubin Mukerjee have won honors this year for their original math research projects.   They will be presenting their research in separate sessions at the 20th annual Hudson Undergraduate Math Research Conference, which will be held at Williams College on Saturday April 6.

Gili's applied mathematics project, An Analysis of Teenage Twitter Communities, which draws on graph theory, probability, and sociology, won top honors at  Capital Regional Science and Engineering Fair at RPI  last week.  This means that Gili will represent our region at the Intel  International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) to be held in Phoenix, Arizona.  This is the world's largest international science fair, where over 1,500 students from over 70 countries around the world gather to present their work.  Over $3 million in prizes will be awarded.  Gili is a sophomore at Shaker High School who has been taking advanced college classes at Siena College.  You can read more about Gili's awesome work as a mathematical community builder here.

Matt Babbitt's graph theory research project, Counting number of edges, thickness, and chromatic number of k-visibility graphs, won semifinalist honors in this year's Intel Science Talent Search.  Matt's research benefits from advice from his MIT Research Science Institute mentor, Jesse Geneson, and Dr. Tanya Khovanova, the head mathematics mentor at RSI.  Matt, a homeschooled senior from Fort Edward  who has taken advanced math classes at Union College, has been named a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar and plans to attend MIT next year.

Zubin Mukerjee's number theory research project, Random Involutions and the Number of Prime Factors, is based on his joint work with a fellow student, Uthsav Chitra, at PROMYS last summer.  Their research mentor was Dr. Kristen Wickelgren, a research fellow at Harvard.   The project won semifinalist honors in the Siemens Competition in Math Science and Technology.  Zubin, a senior at Guilderland High School, who has been taking advanced math classes at SUNY Albany, has also won a number of honors in history and music.  You can read more about Zubin here.