2007 participants and projects

Shane Cernele

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

Romy Shioda

Project title: 

Optimal Hospital Bed Allocation

Maurice Cheung

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

Chaitanya Swamy

Project title: 

Pricing Algorithms for Combinatorial Auctions

Chris Eagle

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

David Jao

Project title: 

Spectral Properties of Isogeny Random Walks

Anjie Guo

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

Joseph Cheriyan

Krystal Guo

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

C. Godsil

Project title:

Graph States

Brad Hannigan-Daley

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

D.M. Jackson

Project title: 

Quantum knot invariants

Comments:

The Combinatorics and Optimization (C and O) Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA) program is a rewarding experience and a great opportunity to learn some interesting and challenging math. If you're at all interested in mathematical research, this is one of the best ways you could spend your summer!

Marcus Shea

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

R. Shioda

Project title: 

Performance Metrics and Data Mining for Assessing Schedule Qualities in Paratransit & Real-time Transit Holding Control: A New Optimization Model

Comments:

For the Performance Metrics project, we used multiple regression tools to find a relationship between a schedule and it's rating. I built a program that is now being used by Disabled and Aged Regional Transit System (DARTS) in Hamilton. We have submitted a paper on this topic.
For the Holding problem, I modeled a bus system using a Quadratic Program. The next step is to build an event driven simulation to see if our holding decisions are more efficient that currently used heuristics. Eventually we will submit a paper on this topic as well.

Andrea Spencer

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

R. Shioda

Project title: 

Discrete Support Vector Machines

Yi Su

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

Ashwin Nayak

Cathy Jiannan Sun

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

Stephen Vavasis

Project title: 

Finite Element Modeling of Brain Tissue

Yehua Wei

Home university: 

University of Waterloo

Supervisor: 

D.G. Wagner

Project title: 

Strongly Rayleigh Matroids

Comments: 

Working as a URA for C and O is a great experience. It's like getting paid to learn what research is all about.