Math Majors and Professors Present at Georgia Conference

Angela Brobson ’23 (Nisbet Honors) and Jovana Mitic ’23 (Nisbet Honors) recently traveled to Berry College in Rome, Georgia with Dr. Barrera, Dr. Mangum, and Dr. Sorrells to present research at the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America’s conference.

Angela’s presentation, “Malicious URLs”, stemmed from a semester-long class with Dr. Sorrells that partnered with a large, national bank. This project aimed to help this bank classify URLs as either malicious or benign. Through this class, Angela learned how to clean data and apply data science classification methods like random forests.

Angela said, “I really enjoyed my first in-person math conference; being able to present was beneficial because it allowed me to work on summing up a semester’s worth of work into 13 informative, and understandable, minutes.”

Jovana’s presentation, Data-Driven Retention and Advertising for Camp Kippewa, covered her summer data science internship advised by Dr. Mangum. This work helped Camp Kippewa examine its camper data to identify which campers were most likely to become returning customers and what type of advertising the camp should create. Jovana was prepared to tackle this internship after completing Data Science I and II in the department.

Jovana credits her Converse professors for encouraging her to apply to the conference. “I became more confident and comfortable with giving presentations,” Jovana said. “I made new connections with a lot of people in the field I want to go into, and gave me valuable experience to talk with graduate schools.”

While at the conference, Angela and Jovana were also able to meet other students through the Mathematical Treasure Hunt, Math Jeopardy, poster sessions, and more.

Drs. Barrera, Mangum, and Sorrells also presented at the conference. Dr. Barrera’s talk, entitled On the asymptotics of some strongly damped beam equations with structural damping, detailed research he is preparing for an upcoming publication.

Dr. Sorrells presented Modeling DNA Self-Assembly with Graph Theory, a long-term project that has included Chiara Mattamira ’20 (Nisbet Scholar), Kayla Noon ’20 (Nisbet Scholar), and Chloe Griffin ’22 (Nisbet Honors). Both Chiara and Chloe were also able to publish their work on this project with Dr. Sorrells.

Dr. Mangum discussed Group Activities for a Mid-Level Biomathematics Course. This course’s activities were designed to promote critical thinking and class discussion of current events through the lens of biomathematics.