Ninth Annual

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All talks are open to the entire UNL Community

All sessions will be in the Nebraska Union on the City Campus unless otherwise stated.

Friday, February 9, 2007

2:30 - 3:30

Welcome and Registration, lobby near the Centennial Room
Soft drinks and snacks, Regency Room Fischer Lounge

3:30 - 3:45

Opening Session, Auditorium
Welcome: Judy Walker, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Remarks: Richard Hoffmann, Dean of Arts and Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

3:45 - 4:35

Plenary Session I, Auditorium
Barbara Lee Keyfitz, Fields Institute and University of Houston
Three Ways To Look At Conservation Laws

4:45 - 6:10

Small Group Discussions, Ballroom (groups A through D) and Centennial Room (groups E through J)

What is Research?
Balancing Career and Family
Jumping From a Small College to Graduate School
Preparing To Be a Graduate Student

7:00

Banquet, Holiday Inn
Panel Discussion:
How to Benefit from NCUWM

Panelists:	Carol Meyers, Lawrence Livermore National Labs
	Betseygail Rand, Texas Lutheran University
	Suzanne Sindi, Brown University
Moderator:	Judy Walker, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Saturday, February 10, 2007

8:00 - 8:30

Continental Breakfast, Food Court Meeting Rooms

8:30 - 9:25

Session 1 - Presentations by Undergraduate Participants

8:30 - 8:45

Centennial Room left: Megan Logue, Jacksonville University
Minimum coverings with fish
Centennial Room right: Irina Kareva, University of Maryland
The role of myeloid cells in cancer-immune system interactions
Regency Room: KyLynn Whipple, University of Wisconsin-Stout
Demonstrating eigenvalues and eigenvectors using linear transformation

8:50 - 9:05

Centennial Room left: Megan Patnott, Hope College
Graph pebbling
Centennial Room right: Nicole Sims, Agnes Scott College
A network approach to the gene expression puzzle
Regency Room: Mutiara Sondjaja, Harvey Mudd College
Strongly taut restricted block monoid over Z

9:10 - 9:25

Centennial Room left: Linda Hoffmann, Newman University
Bending a soccer ball
Centennial Room right: Danielle Schroeder, Texas A&M University
Molecular evolution of male pregnancy genes in Sygnathidae
Regency Room: Cynthia Flores, California State University-Northridge
Dressing Actions

9:35 - 10:20

Panel Discussion, Auditorium
How to Get Money Thrown At You For Math

Panelists:	Peter March, National Science Foundation
	Ellen Maycock, American Mathematical Society
	Michelle D. Wagner, National Security Agency
Moderator:	John Meakin, Chair of Department of Mathematics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

10:20 - 10:40

Break

10:40 - 11:55

Session 2 - Presentations by Undergraduate Participants

10:40 - 10:55

Centennial Room left: Jolie Baumann, Ithaca College
Counting dominating configurations of kings
Centennial Room right: Amanda Moore, Denison University
Classifying projections of (n,k)-frames
Regency Room: Amanda Taylor, U. Maine at Farmington & Christy Hediger, Muhlenberg College
Reformulating san gaku problems in spherical geometry

11:00 - 11:15

Centennial Room left: Melissa Geddes, Bates College
The traveling salesman problem
Centennial Room right: Debbie Witczak, Benedictine University
Existence of regular stick numbers of torus knots
Regency Room: Lisa Morales, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona
Properties of segments in the Hausdorff metric geometry

11:20 - 11:35

Centennial Room left: Keona Padgett, Ashland University
Googling Markov and a presidential failure
Centennial Room right: Katherine Field, The College of William and Mary
Counting lower Hessenberg matrices
Regency Room: Laura Feys, Calvin College
Modeling the hyperbolic plane

11:40 - 11:55

Centennial Room left: Jessica Belanger, Fitchburg State College
Fiction and higher dimensions
Centennial Room right: Kelly Houston, University of Louisville
On two functional equations and their solutions
Regency Room: Jennifer Johnson, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
The isoperimetric surfaces in T^2[0.2, 1] X R

12:00-12:15

Group Photo, fountain outside north door

If you did not sign a photo release statement, please do not participate in the group photo.

12:15 - 1:30

Lunch, Wick Alumni Center, 1520 R Street (corner of 16th & R)
Note: The plenary speakers, panelists, invited graduate students, and members of the organizing committee have agreed to sit at assigned tables so that participants can have an opportunity to talk with them informally. Check the packet of bios for table assignments.

1:30 - 2:20

Plenary Session II, Auditorium
Ruth Charney, Brandeis University
The Geometry of Groups

2:30 - 3:05

Session 3 - Presentations by Undergraduate Participants

2:30 - 2:45

Centennial Room left: Jennifer Crounse, Fitchburg State University
Pascal's triangle in secondary education
Centennial Room right: Elizabeth Martin, University of Tennessee
A model for the peopling of the Americas
Regency Room: Sara Reynolds, Nazareth College of Rochester
Conformal mappings in the analysis of leaf structure

2:50 - 3:05

Centennial Room left: Jillian Cavanna, Ithaca College
Geometry in culture: mathematical explorations of infinite patterns
Centennial Room right: Pamela Arbisi, Denison University
Links in K_7
Regency Room: Kim Meyer, University of Louisville
The Devil's Staircase

3:10 - 4:40

Poster Session, Centennial hallway
Snacks, Food Court Meeting Rooms

4:45 - 5:20

Session 4 - Presentations by Undergraduate Participants

4:45 - 5:00

Centennial Room left: Sandra Lacea, State University of New York at Brockport
Beyond the beauty of fractals
Centennial Room right: Nicole Scholtz, Denison University
Orbital mechanics in the power system performance analysis of the international space station
Regency Room: Naomi Brownstein, University of Central Florida
Transformation of variables in statistics: a simple way of saving trees

5:05 - 5:20

Centennial Room left: Joan Zoellner, Humboldt State University
A characterization of curves in S^3
Centennial Room right: Crystal Lee, Seattle University
Mathematical models of water waves
Regency Room: Jan Marie Andersen, Utah State University
Probabilistic analysis of a simple stochastic board game using a modified Monte Carlo algorithm

5:30 - 6:30

Panel Discussion, Auditorium
Choosing a Graduate School

Panelists:	Maia Averett, University of California-San Diego
	Ruth Charney, Brandeis University
	Sue Geller, Texas A&M University
	Kris Lund, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
	Suzanne Sindi, Brown University
	M. Shel Swenson, University of Texas-Austin
Moderator:	Jim Lewis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

6:30

Dinner (see Restaurant Guide)

8:00

Game Night, Holiday Inn

Sunday, February 11, 2007

8:00 - 8:30

Continental Breakfast, Food Court Meeting Rooms

8:30 - 9:45

Session 5 - Presentations by Undergraduate Participants

8:30 - 8:45

Centennial Room left: Jenya Sapir, University of Chicago
Triangulations of sphere bundles over S^1
Centennial Room right: Pam Welch, Nazareth College of Rochester
Graph theory and the Konigsberg bridge problem
Regency Room: Alla Shved, University of Massachusetts-Boston
A mathematical model for tightening and heat generation in self-tapping screws

8:50 - 9:05

Centennial Room left: Liza Lawson, Randolph-Macon College
Real polynomials, imaginary critical points, and enchanting ellipses
Centennial Room right: Christina Frederick, University of Maryland
Euler characteristics of graphs and triangulated planar polygons
Regency Room: Peta-Gay McCarthy, Ithaca College
Fun with Chebyshev polynomials and connections

9:10 - 9:25

Centennial Room left: Mary Wooters, Swarthmore College
Topological properties of reconfigurations of convex polygons
Centennial Room right: Sarah Schmitt, Marquette University
An application of dominating sets
Regency Room: Jessica Meixner, Texas Tech University
Modeling and simulation of the lens-waveguide system in a simple apposition compound eye

9:30 - 9:45

Centennial Room right: Allison Davis, Muhlenberg College
Transformation of graphs, characteristic polynomials and spectra
Regency Room: Pamela Reitsma, University of Maine
The dynamics of cigarette smoking among adolescents

9:45 - 10:00

Break

10:00 - 11:00

Panel Discussion, Auditorium
Careers in Mathematics

Panelists:	Barbara Keyfitz, Fields Institute and University of Houston
	Carol Meyers, Lawrence Livermore National Labs
	Rachel Pries, Colorado State University
	Betseygail Rand, Texas Lutheran University
	Rebecca Roberts, University of Michigan
	Michelle D. Wagner, National Security Agency
Moderator:	Ellen Maycock, American Mathematical Society

11:00

Conference Wrap-up, Auditorium
Remarks: John Meakin, Chair of the UNL Department of Mathematics