At Siena College, students majoring in mathematics have the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty on cutting-edge research. The skills students develop while doing research are highly sought-after by employers and graduate institutions.
Our summer research students...
Learn to communicate complex ideas and manage long-term project;
Explore new ideas and mathematical objects;
Look for patterns and use those patterns to predict the behavior of complex systems;
Generalize their work to find new uses for the tools and techniques they have developed;
Scour the mathematical literature to find recent articles relating to their own work; and
Communicate their work to other students and faculty either by presenting their work in the Siena Math Colloquium or at a regional or national research conference, or by publishing their work in a mathematics journal.
“Doing math research has been an eye-opening experience to all of the opportunities a career in math has to offer. Six weeks of research has given me more problem solving skills than sitting in a classroom for four years would, and these skills are applicable to all kinds of situations.” - Francesca Romano (2014)
Recent student research projects
Computable Legendrian knot invariants. - Emily Casey (2013 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. M. Brad Henry)
Presented at the Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference.
Explicit formulas for multivariable Euler and Bernoulli numbers - Francesca Romano (2011 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
Published in the journal Involve and presented at the Union College Mathematics Conference and the National AMS/MAA Joint Meetings Conference
Moments in finite von Neumann algebras - Maureen Jeffery (2010 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
Published in the journal Involve.
ζ(n) via hyperbolic functions - Joseph D’Avanzo (2010 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Nikolai Krylov)
Published in the journal Involve.
The Group of Primitive Almost Pythagorean Triples - Lindsay Kulzer (2011 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Nikolai Krylov)
Published in the journal Involve and presented at the Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference.
Traffic Optimization - Lauren Peloso (2010 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Kris Farwell)
Nonresidually solvable hyperlinear one-relator groups - Nicholas Noblett (2010 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
Published in the journal Involve and presented at the Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference and the National MAA MathFest Conference.
The Burnside Group B(3,2) as a Two-Relator Quotient of C3*C3 - Matthew Farrelly (2007 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
Published in the Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Math Journal.
Andrew Warner (2006 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
The doubling operator in classical differential equations - Ryan Decker (2006 Siena Summer Scholar with Dr. Jon Bannon)
Presented at the Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference
"While interviewing at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, my interviewer was very interested in my independent research project. My math background taught me to be disciplined in my work ethic and quickly assess if an approach to solving a problem will work. These skills are invaluable in my line of work and really gave me an advantage over the other candidates.” - Matthew Farrelly (2008)
What do our students do after Siena?
Emily Casey (2014) and Francesca Romano (2014) began graduate programs in Mathematics in the fall of 2014.
Maureen Jeffery (2013) is completing a PhD in Mathematics at Syracuse University.
Lindsay Kulzer (2012) is completing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University at Albany.
Joseph D’Avanzo (2011) completed an MA in Nanoscale Engineering at SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.
Lauren Peloso (2011) is completing a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Colorado Denver.
Nicholas Noblett (2010) works for Apple and plans to go back to school for a degree in Human Resources Management.
Andrew Warner (2008) completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.
Ryan Decker (2008) is a systems and network administrator at Siena College.
Matthew Farrelly (2008) is an engineer at Knolls Atomic Power Labs and currently finishing a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at Union College.