| NSF Org: |
DMS Division Of Mathematical Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | February 11, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | February 11, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1659047 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Cesar Silva
DMS Division Of Mathematical Sciences MPS Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
| Start Date: | April 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $328,037.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $328,037.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1049 UNIVERSITY DRIVE 209 DARLAND DULUTH MN US 55812-3011 (218)726-7582 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1049 University Drive Duluth MN US 55812-3011 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | WORKFORCE IN THE MATHEMAT SCI |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.049 |
ABSTRACT
The objective of the Duluth REU program is to provide a professional level research experience for nine of the nation's most talented undergraduate mathematics students, an experience that is not available at their home institutions nor at other REUs. The program provides a unique research community-of-peers setting that emphasizes developing the independence of each student. Rather than having students work in groups on problems with a faculty adviser who contributes substantially to the research effort, at Duluth the approach is to treat undergraduate students with extraordinarily high potential for doing significant research as though they are working on a PhD thesis problem where the adviser provides the problem and mentoring but avoids direct involvement in solving the problem.
The program has a 38 year history of developing students into independent, high level research mathematicians and integrating them into the research community at an early stage of their careers. The program has produced over 200 papers published in well regarded professional research journals and 133 PhDs. The development of human resources is the explicit purpose of the Duluth REU program. The most significant contribution the Duluth program makes towards that purpose is the training of future generations of mathematicians who will foster undergraduate research when they become professionals. Participants in the program become part of a network of extraordinary alumni who are important members of the mathematics community. Among them are people who are tenured, or on tenure track, at Princeton (Fields medal winner and member of the National Academy of Sciences), MIT (3 total, one with an endowed chair and a member of AAAS), Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, UC San Diego and Northwestern. Ten are American Mathematical Society Fellows. Duluth REU alumni have substantially contributed to the national security and the economic competitiveness of the U.S. Many alumni have been employed at the Center for Communications (a subdivision of the Institute for Defense Analysis) at La Jolla and Princeton and two are at the National Security Agency. Program alumni have been employed at Google, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, Dropbox, Ksplice, Quixey, Yelp, Khan Academy, and a variety of other software companies, and three have started their own companies.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The 2017-2019 Duluth REU programs in combinatorics and number theory were of ten-week duration with nine participants per year. The program goals were to keep undergraduates with extraordinary mathematical ability in the pipeline to a PhD degree, maximize their ability to perform high-level professional research, and to integrate them into the broader research community. Participants worked on problems suitable for publication in leading journals in a community-of-peers setting that emphasizes the development of the independence of each student. The program provided a supportive, engaging environment that trains the participants to be future research mentors of undergraduate students and graduate students. Participants who do not become academics nearly always enter the technology sector, thereby contributing to the US economic infrastructure and national security.
The program contributed to the advancement of mathematics by resolving conjectures and answering questions in the literature of interest to well-established people in the field. New methods, concepts, novel applications, and examples were introduced in the papers. Some papers provided deeper insights and better ways to think about a concept. All papers written in the program included new conjectures, questions, and problems, thereby inspiring more work on the subject. Over the three-year grant period thirty-three papers were published and eight others are under review. Among the journals in which the program papers appeared are: Journal Combinatorial Theory Series A, Combinatorica, Advances in Applied Mathematics, SIAM Journal of Discrete Mathematics, European Journal of Combinatorics, the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Discrete Mathematics, and Discrete Applied Mathematics. The participants from the 2018 and 2019 programs alone were recipients of 20 Fellowships (Hertz (3), NSF, NDSEG). Three program participants from the 2017-2019 programs were awarded the American Mathematical Society--Mathematical Association of America--Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Morgan Prize for outstanding research in mathematics by an undergraduate, in part for their research done in the Duluth REU. Three received Honorable Mention.
Last Modified: 10/04/2020
Modified by: Joseph A Gallian
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