The department offers programs of study in both pure and applied mathematics. Programs of study focus on mathematics which provides appropriate training for employment in academia, industry, or government. Pure areas of emphasis include dynamical systems, topology, complex analysis and global analysis. Applied areas of emphasis include mathematical biology, computational mathematics, inverse and ill-posed problems, numerical analysis, and sensitivity theory. Interdisciplinary research opportunities in biological, engineering and physical applications are encouraged in the applied program component. Recent research topics include:

• substitution tiling spaces
• dynamics of iterated maps on surfaces and rotation sets
• linearizability of complex polynomial germs
• Conley index theory
• symbolic dynamics
• continuum theory
• Pisot numbers
• harmonic polynomials

• Biofilm and bio-remediation modelling
• Oscillations in excitable media and neuroscience
• Wave propagation in chemical and biological systems
• Sensitivity methods with applications to MAVs and control of pinned beams
• Inverse problems methods for image enhancement
• Gene regulation modelling and genetic algorithm dynamics
• Neural coding

The graduate programs in statistics strike a balance between statistical theory and methods. Graduates are prepared for employment as consultants, researchers and teachers. Areas of emphasis include mathematical statistics, probability, applied probability, linear models, multivariate analysis, time series, spatial analysis, sampling, experimental design, biostatistics, response surface methodology, and statistical modeling. Our statistics programs provide experience in practical problem solving and computational statistics; this experience is gained, in part, through a consulting seminar program in which all graduate students participate. Programs are individually tailored and may emphasize applications to other disciplines such as biology, medicine, engineering, and the social sciences. Recent research topics include:

• methods for assessing the efficacy of antimicrobial agents
• efficient computations in correspondence analysis
• construction and evaluation of invariant tests of additivity
• analysis of DNA sequence data
• sampling methods for the regional assessment of biodiversity
• sampling designs for rare, clustered populations
• asymptotically distribution free methods for analyzing correlation structures

The graduate program in mathematics education includes both qualitative and quantitative experimental research. Areas of emphasis include problem solving, computation and estimation, new approaches to the assessment of mathematical learning, mathematics education for minorities, investigating the effects of utilizing multiple embodiments involving technology in the classroom, and factors affecting changes in teacher beliefs and practices.

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Last Modified:Thursday, 24-May-2007 14:00:07 MDT