Applied Mathematics News

Applied Math senior, Billy Heidel, is completing his Capstone internship at the Maryland Insurance Administration in Baltimore this summer. He is working in the Compliance and Enforcement Division, gathering and analyzing data to find indicators of noncompliance by any insurance companies. Outliers are then looked at in greater detail. Billy reports that the office is a low stress environment where everyone is extremely friendly and supports each other in their work. Billy is interested in data analysis as a career path, so this internship fits nicely with that track.

As part of Stevenson’s Summer Science Scholars Research Program (S3RP), math professor Dr. Ben Wilson and rising Applied Mathematics junior, Joshua Lang, are doing research this summer in the field of information theory. Using concepts such as entropy, they are working to compute the predictability of several musical compositions as a parallel of the work done by Claude Shannon in 1948 in which he computed the entropy of written English. Entropy measures the average information produced by letters in a text based on letter and n-gram frequencies. They are analyzing the predictability and information entropy of various musical compositions and randomly generating new musical compositions based on their n-gram note frequencies.

Congratulations to Jess Rega, who just graduated in May, on being named to the 10-member Middle Atlantic Conference All-Academic Team this week for her performance on the Stevenson women’s outdoor track and field team and her academic success. Jess has received many awards: she captured the shot put championship at the MAC outdoor track and field championship in early May and was named USTFCCCA All-Region in the shot put for the fourth time in her career.

Warmest congratulations to Rebecca Gruver on her graduation with a BS in Applied Math and on her receiving the John Mitchell Graduation Award. The John Mitchell Award is presented at Commencement to the student who has best demonstrated outstanding service to his or her community in a way that exemplifies the values of Stevenson University’s mission. Rebecca served SU by being a Student Coordinator and Tutor at the Academic Link, serving in Mission I’m Home throughout her years at SU and her participation in our weekly Math Tea.

Faculty and Staff in the Math and Physics Department were excited to share our graduating seniors’ special day with their friends and family. Here are some of our favorite pictures.