Seven Southwestern students — economics and studio art double major Asin Allavudeen ’27, economics and business major Cody Diez Jennings ’27, biochemistry major Jade Cindy Foka ’28, computer science and psychology double major Alyanna Martinez ’27, computer science and economics double major Juan Martinez Varela ’27, political science major Emma Sanchez ’29, and economics and business major Elias Sarwana ’27 — were selected to compete in the 2026 HSI Battle of the Brains (BOTB), held September 28–October 2 in Austin. This national interdisciplinary competition challenges student teams to tackle a complex business and technology problem in just 24 hours, requiring them to research the problem, develop an innovative and technically feasible solution, and create a business plan and presentation. The week also includes company visits, professional development, and recruiting opportunities with major employers, including Dell Technologies, Thrivent, CrowdStrike, eBay, The Home Depot, and Electronic Arts. Solutions are evaluated by industry experts on both their business and technical merits, with the seven highest scoring teams advancing to the finals. Southwestern was selected as one of those finalists and earned the highest business score in the competition! In addition, Diez Jennings received a scholarship from eBay, marking the second consecutive year a Southwestern student has received an eBay scholarship through the competition. The team was supported throughout the selection, preparation, and competition process by the Office of Student Life, Office of Academic Affairs, Director of the A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center & Head of Distinctive Collections Megan Firestone, Director of Student Engagement Jacorey Patterson, Assistant Dean of the Faculty & Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair, Board of Visitors Member Zoe Thompson, and team advisors: Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development Adrian D. Ramirez, Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings, and Professor of Business Debika Sihi.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony participated in the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot Expansion Conference for Minority Serving Institutions, held August 10–11 in Portland, OR. Anthony presented a poster, “An AI-powered Academic Advising Chatbot,” highlighting a Spring 2026 computer science capstone project completed with Frank Desilets ’26, Alyanna Martinez ’27, Emilio Salas ’26, and Evan Williams ’26. The conference was funded by the National Science Foundation and organized by the Computing Research Association.

The Mathematics and Computer Science Department was well represented at MathFest, the Mathematical Association of America’s (MAA) Annual Summer Meeting, held August 5–8 in Boston. Faculty, students, and an alumna presented research, led professional development sessions, and received national recognition. Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Pedagogy, Identity, and Community: A Decade of NExT,” discussing the impact of Project NExT and his progression from participant to leader at the Texas Section NExT level. Mathematics majors Ioana Burlacu ’26 and Ashlyn Cadena ’27 presented “Perimeter-minimizing rectangles using density M|x|^p + N|y|^q” in the MAA Undergraduate Poster Session. Their research was supervised by Ross as part of SURF 2025. Garey Chair and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr co-organized the session “Rewriting Who Counts” and presented “Women Count!,” highlighting courses she has taught at Southwestern. As Chair of the MAA Council on Prizes and Awards, Marr also participated in the Meeting of the MAA Congress and presented several prizes and awards during the conference. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton co-organized the session “Innovative Modeling Approaches to Teaching and Applying ODEs” and presented “Modeling-First DE: Learning to Teach, and Teaching to Learn” with fellow professional development leaders in differential equations. She also participated in an all-day working session for an upcoming book by MAA OPEN Math, a National Science Foundation-supported project focused on improving mathematics instruction through active-learning professional development. Mathematics and computer science graduate Emma Kathryn Groves ’17, now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, was a co-author of the presentation “Teaching to the Surface: Using Physical Models to Move Multivariable Calculus Beyond Formulas.” Finally, Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura and co-authors Annalisa Crannell and Marc Frantz received the Daniel Solow Author’s Award for their 2019 inquiry-based learning textbook, Perspective and Projective Geometry, published by Princeton University Press.

Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and physics majors Dominic Mashak ’27 and Brooke Ramey ’27 attended the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in San José, Costa Rica from July 13–17. Mashak and Dr. Schrum presented their poster, “Multi-Objective Evolutionary Design of Molecules with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical Properties,” which was co-authored with Professor of Physics Steven Alexander. Additionally, Ramey and Mashak presented their poster, “Late Acceptance Hill Climbing for the Discovery of Stable Two-Dimensional Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides,” also co-authored with Dr. Alexander. Southwestern University computer science alumnus Alejandro Medina ’24 was also in attendance to present his poster, “Motif Diversity in Human Liver ChIP-seq Data Using MAP-Elites,” based on research conducted with his advisor at Baylor University as part of his Ph.D. studies. All posters have associated four-page extended abstracts published in the GECCO Companion to the Proceedings.

Southwestern was well-represented at the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region Conference at McNeese State University on April 24, with eight students presenting their software engineering capstone work. While only some members from each capstone team traveled, all are named here for their contributions. Two of those students also presented their research. All projects were supervised by Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony. The research poster by Evelyn Harrington ’26 and Camille James ’26 on “What Differentiates a BA from a BS in CS? Insights from Liberal Arts Colleges in the CCSC:SC Region” won 4th prize in the poster competition. Evelyn and Aaron Garza ’26 also presented “Chunch Volunteer Management System,” done in collaboration with teammates Reid Williams ’26 and Eleanor Wagner ’26. Camille also presented “Pantry Inventory Review and Tracking Enhancement (PIRATE)” with Nhi ‘Amy’ Tran ’26, done in collaboration with teammates Cade Doehler ’27 and Aidan Fitzgerald ’26. Alyanna Martinez ’27 presented “SU University Knowledge Assistant,” done in collaboration with teammates Frank Desilets ’26, Emilio Salas ’26, and Evan Williams ’26, which won 5th prize in the poster competition. “Matching with your Pirate Crew,” presented by Aidan Balakrishnan ’26, Ben McKallip ’26, and Matthew Volkin ’26, was done in collaboration with teammate Tanner Klein ’26.

The Southwestern Mathematics and Computer Science Department had a strong involvement at the 105th Annual Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held at Baylor University in Waco on March 27 and 28. Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross was honored as the recipient of the 2026 Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. Ross also helped organize sessions as a co-leader of Texas NExT, a professional development service that helps early-career mathematics faculty refine their teaching practices. Atkin Junior Professor and Associate Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer gave the closing invited address, titled “Using Loops to Make Good Maps.” Garey Chair and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presided over the meeting as the MAA Texas Section Chair. She also sponsored a team of five students in the Math Bowl competition: biochemistry major and math and neuroscience double minor Elizabeth Ayalew ’28, biology and physics double major Linh Nguyen ’29, physics and math double major Brooke Ramey ’27, math major Joshua Rodkey ’29, and biochemistry and math double major CeCe Sullivan ’29. Sullivan also won a book through a raffle. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton and Assistant Professor of Instruction of Mathematics Will Tran also attended. Marr and Ross also attended the Meeting of the Texas MAA Executive Committee, over which Marr presided, and the Meeting of Department Liaisons.

Physics major Dominic Mashak ’27, along with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and Professor of Physics Steven Alexander, had their research, “Multi-Objective Evolutionary Design of Molecules with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical Properties,” accepted to the 2026 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), taking place July 13–17 in San José, Costa Rica. The peer-reviewed research will be presented as a poster at the conference, and a four-page extended abstract will be published in the companion to the proceedings.

Computer science majors Camille James ’26, Alyanna Martinez ’27, and Nhi ‘Amy’ Tran ’26 competed in Southern Methodist University’s 8th annual ASA DataFest from March 27–29. The team analyzed a large real-world dataset and presented their findings and insights to judges and fellow competitors.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the LEVEL UP AI Workshop in Phoenix, AZ on January 7 and 8, which stands for Launching an Educational Vision to Expand Leadership, Understanding and Progress in Artificial Intelligence. The workshop, supported by the National Science Foundation and organized by the Computing Research Association, focused on ways to enhance and expand undergraduate Artificial Intelligence education to help create an AI-ready workforce.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and co-authors Ananya Das of Middlebury College and Christine Chung, Charles Lincoln, Krishh Tipnis, and Kate Vento, all of Connecticut College, had their paper accepted to PRIMA 2025: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. Students Charles and Kate presented the paper on “Metric Distortion of STV on the Line and the Impact of Voter Turnout” at the conference in Modena, Italy. The paper, available here, analyzes the ranked choice voting mechanism Single Transferable Vote, provides theoretical results on metric distortion, or how much worse an elected candidate is than the socially optimal choice, and considers how distortion is impacted by voter turnout. It also studies the impact of voter turnout on the 2021 New York City Democratic Primary Election, which used ranked choice voting.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) conference with SURF research student Olivia Kilday ’28 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from November 12–14, to present their peer-reviewed research paper, “Text-to-Level Diffusion Models With Various Text Encoders for Super Mario Bros.” Computer science majors Emilio Salas ’26, Bess Hagan ’25, and Reid Williams ’26 were also co-authors on the paper, and the oral presentation was given by Olivia. The research details the creation of software models that create levels for the original Super Mario Bros. based on text descriptions. The AIIDE conference is a prestigious conference with an acceptance rate under 25%, which is sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

Computer science and theatre double major Aidan Balakrishnan ’26, computer science and mathematics double major Tanner Klein ’26, and computer science major Matthew Volkin ’26 participated in the Association of Computing Machinery’s South Central USA Regional Programming Contest on November 8, solving seven out of 13 problems. Their team, the pi-rates, placed 4th among the 20 teams in the South Central USA Division. They participated in the competition at the University of Texas at Austin site, but were in competition with teams at other sites throughout the South Central USA Region. Teams in the Mid-Atlantic USA Region and Southeast USA Region competed on the same day, and across the entire conference, the pi-rates placed 17th out of 94 teams. The team was coached by Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

For the first time, Southwestern University was represented at the 2025 HSI Battle of the Brains, a premier national competition that brings together top student talent from across the country to solve real-world business and technology challenges. Southwestern’s inaugural team included eight exceptional students: Asin Allavudeen ’27, Santiago Cuevas ’26, Cassidie Gomez ’26, Julyssa Hernandez ’27, Yeva-Mariya Hayko ’26, Anna Hulett ’28, Alyanna Martinez ’27, and Juan Carlos Martinez Varela ’27. Selected through a competitive internal application process, the students participated in a 24-hour cross-disciplinary challenge integrating computer science, marketing, finance, and sustainable business strategy. They also engaged in professional development workshops led by industry leaders from Dell Technologies, eBay, Thrivent Financial, Capital One, and The Home Depot. Southwestern’s team earned first place in the Video Marketing Challenge, an interactive activity sponsored by Kickin It ATX that tested their creativity and collaboration under a time constraint. In addition, Juan Carlos Martinez Varela was awarded scholarships from both Dell Technologies and eBay in recognition of his outstanding academic and professional accomplishments and his ability to make a lasting impression on company representatives throughout the event. Special thanks to the faculty and staff who coordinated the team’s participation: Hispanic Academic Success Coordinator Amalia Merino, Director of the Center for Career & Professional Development Adrian D. Ramirez, Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings, and Professor of Business Debika Sihi. Gratitude is also extended to the blind judges who assisted with the internal selection process, Assistant Vice President of Admission Christine Bowman, Director of Admission Jaime Gonzalez, and Professor of Kinesiology Scott McLean, as well as Visual Content Producer Todd White for photography and videography of the event.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum ’06 had his peer-reviewed article, “Text-to-Level Diffusion Models With Various Text Encoders for Super Mario Bros,” accepted for publication and oral presentation at the 21st Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2025), to take place in November 2025. The article is co-authored with Dr. Schrum’s SURF students Olivia Kilday ’28, Emilio Salas ’26, Bess Hagan ’25, and Reid Williams ’26. AIIDE is a highly selective venue with an acceptance rate under 25%. Videos and other content associated with the publication are available online here, and a pre-print of the accepted article is on arXiv here.

Three faculty and an alumna participated in the 2025 MathFest, a national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in Sacramento, CA from August 6–10. Professor and Duncan Chair of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura presented “Linear Algebra Class Projects to Research Projects.” Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Trying, Flailing, Tweaking, Succeeding: A Grading Journey” and served on a Project NExT panel titled “Navigating the Shifting Tides of Academia in 2025.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Cholera Models with Pathogen Growth for Student Engagement in Undergraduate Differential Equations and Beyond.” She also co-organized the contributed paper session, “In the Real with Applications of Differential Equations for Learning,” jointly sponsored by SIMIODE and CODEE. Futamura, Marr, and Shelton also each provided professional service in monitoring MAA minicourses. Mathematics and computer science graduate Emma Kathryn Groves ’17 was a co-author on a presentation “Assigning Interconnected Projects in a Dynamical Systems Course.” She also co-organized the contributed paper session “From Theory to Practice – Applying Literature-Based Teaching Practices in the Real Classroom.” Dr. Groves achieved her Ph.D. in 2023 and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum recently attended the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Málaga, Spain to present his peer-reviewed paper, “A Quality Diversity Approach to Evolving Model Rockets,” co-authored with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby. The article, freely accessible here from the ACM Digital library, describes the use of AI methods inspired by evolution to create designs for model rockets. An informative video about this joint research is also available here.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper, titled “Bachelors of Arts versus Bachelors of Science Degrees in Computer Science,” with Edward Talmage at Bucknell University and Andrea Tartaro at Furman University. The paper was published in the proceedings of the 29th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northeastern Conference. It finds that there is a lack of consistent definitions for each degree within computer science, but that insights can be gained along several dimensions for liberal arts institutions that offer both degrees.

Computer science majors Timothy Berlanga ’25, Rudy Guerra Jr. ’25, and Kyle Keleher ’25 attended the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region Conference at McNeese State University on April 5. They won first place in the poster competition for their work “Better Picks: Using Machine Learning to Make Smarter Sports Betting Decisions.” This project, done along with Kade Townsend ’25 in the Computer Science Capstone taught by Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony, built upon ideas first developed in the artificial intelligence course taught by Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby had their paper, “A Quality Diversity Approach to Evolving Model Rockets,” accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. For this paper, evolutionary computation algorithms studied by Dr. Schrum were applied to the problem of designing model rockets, like those built by Dr. Crosby’s students in his Introduction to Engineering class. The designs evolved by Dr. Schrum’s program were simulated in a computer, and the most promising designs were built by physics and computer science double-major Kade Townsend ’25, before being launched and evaluated in the real world.

Camille James ’26 presented a poster in the mathematics and computer science section of the 128th annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences in Waco from February 28-March 1. This work on “Distortion of Single Transferable Vote on a Line” with Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony investigated improving the gap between the existing upper and lower bounds of this measure of social welfare.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony, SU alum Sara Boyd ’20, additional faculty and student co-authors from Connecticut College and Middlebury College, and an independent researcher published the paper “Maximizing Rides Served for Dial-a-Ride on the Uniform Metric” in the journal Theory of Computing Systems  as part of the Commemorative Issue for Gerhard Woeginger, a leader in algorithms and combinatorial optimization. The online version is available here.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony attended the 21st International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering in Valencia, Spain, in September. She presented a paper co-authored with Mark Mueller ’24 on “Course scheduling made easier: A user-friendly web-based timetabling tool using PyGLPK,” which is available here. The article details how, using ideas from operations research, it is possible to develop an integer linear program capturing constraints on course schedules, use Python and PyGLPK to find a solution, and package that within a more user-friendly and publicly available web interface.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper, titled “New Bounds on the Performance of SBP for the Dial-a-Ride Problem with Revenues,” that was presented on September 5 at ATMOS 2024, the Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modeling, Optimization, and Systems. The paper, published in the Dagstuhl Open Access Series in Informatics, has co-authors Christine Chung of Connecticut College, Ananya Das of Middlebury College, and David Yuen.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper in the journal Optimization Methods and Software. “Maximizing the number of rides served for time-limited Dial-a-Ride” shows that for a particular variant of the offline Dial-a-Ride problem, no polynomial-time algorithm will serve the optimal number of requests, unless P = NP. It then describes k-Sequence, an approximation algorithm that repeatedly serves the fastest set of k remaining requests, and bounds its performance. The paper can be read here.

Computer Science majors Caleb Highsmith ’24, Alejandro Medina ’24, Travis Rafferty ’24, and Noah Zamarripa ’24 presented a poster on “SNITCH: Southwestern’s Newest Innovation to Cultivate Honor” which earned 3rd place at the 34th Annual Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region on April 5 in Nacogdoches, TX. Their work, done in Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony’s capstone course, develops a web-based tool allowing a person to upload assignments and make judgments about the likelihood of the result having been generated by AI, with machine learning models that are constantly being evaluated and are automatically configured based on their performance. Travis also presented a poster on “Using Multi-Objective Quality Diversity to Evolve Complex Machines in Minecraft” that was joint work with Joanna Lewis ’24 done through a SCOPE project with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-presented “BA versus BS Degrees in Computer Science” at the Innovations and Opportunities in Liberal Arts Computing Education-affiliated event at SIGCSE 2024, the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education in Portland, OR. The working group considered the computer major requirements of 100+ liberal arts colleges, highlighting commonalities and differences in the BA and BS offerings as well as some of the implications for programs and students.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and her co-authors, Christine Chung of Connecticut College, Ananya Das of Middlebury College, and David Yuen, published their article “Earliest Deadline First is a 2-approximation for DARP with Time Windows” in the proceedings of the International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications.

Alejandro Medina ’24 recently presented at the 2023 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in Dallas. The poster on “Evaluating an Earliest Deadline First Algorithm for a Dial-a-Ride Problem” resulted from research done with Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, from July 15-19 with his former SCOPE students, Melanie Richey ’23 and Mark Mueller ’24. Melanie and Mark jointly presented their paper, “Evolving Flying Machines in Minecraft Using Quality Diversity,” co-authored with Dr. Schrum and fellow student Alejandro Medina ’24, based on their SCOPE research experience in Summer 2022.

Students Alejandro Medina ’24, Melanie Richey ’23, and Mark Mueller ’24 attended the South Central Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges at Stephen F. Austin State University to present two research posters based on their SCOPE 2022 summer research with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum. The poster “Using Quality Diversity to Evolve Flying Machines in Minecraft” describes the use of artificial intelligence to generate flying machines in Minecraft and won 3rd place in the Student Poster Competition. The poster “Interactive Evolution of Novel Shapes in Minecraft” described an interactive system for automatically generating large artistic structures in Minecraft and received Honorable Mention.

Kate Nguyen ’24 and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored “Non-majors Explore Less Well-Known Contributors to Computing,” which was presented at the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’23).

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum served as associate editor of a Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Games on the topic of Evolutionary Computation for Games. Schrum worked with several external editors on the issue, which is being published in March 2023. These fellow editors were also co-authors with Schrum on a Guest Editorial for the issue. The issue also contains a peer-reviewed contribution from Schrum, external collaborators, and some of Schrum’s former SCOPE students, Kirby Steckel ’21 and Benjamin Capps ’22. The article “Hybrid Encoding for Generating Large Scale Game Level Patterns with Local Variations” was already available via Early Access on IEEE Xplore but has now been officially published.

Arden Neff ’25 presented a poster at the 126th annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences in San Angelo, Texas, on March 3-4, 2023. In this work, begun as a community-engaged learning project in the Fall 2022 Operations Research course, Neff and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony investigated the use of operations research for issues relevant to small agricultural businesses. The poster, “Optimizing Grape Harvest Timing and Yield using Linear Programming,” won first place in the Mathematics and Computer Science poster section.

Computer science major Chris Ojonta ’23 attended the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT/Association for Computing Machinery (CMD-IT/ACM) Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, held September 7–10 in Washington, D.C. Ojonta received a full scholarship to support his attendance in recognition of his accomplishments in computer science. He interacted with numerous undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from a variety of backgrounds at the event and explored career and graduate school opportunities.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and the Texas Alpha chapter of Alpha Chi National College Honor Society were awarded the prestigious designation of Notable Chapter for the 2021–2022 academic year. This award acknowledges Schrum and Texas Alpha’s high level of involvement and Southwestern’s commitment to and support for Alpha Chi’s high academic standards and their mission to make scholarship effective for good. Schrum ensured that multiple benchmarks of exemplary chapter health were met and exceeded.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony, Alejandro Medina ’24, and Mark Mueller ’24 participated in the 19th International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering, held virtually September 25–28. Medina presented the group’s paper titled “Prioritizing Self, Team, or Job: Trends in Sincerity in Cooperative Polls.”

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum had an article appear on IEEE Xplore in advance of being published in IEEE Transactions on Games. The article, titled “Hybrid Encoding for Generating Large Scale Game Level Patterns with Local Variations,” represents a long collaboration with coauthors Sebastian Risi and Vanessa Volz that started at the 2019 Schloss Dagstuhl seminar Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games: Revolutions in Computational Game AI. The following summer, Schrum’s SCOPE students Kirby Steckel ’21 and Benjamin Capps ’22 made significant contributions to the project, which led to their inclusion as coauthors of the article. The article explains a novel technique for generating video game levels based on available training data and high-level patterns. A preprint of the article is available online.

Members of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science attended the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (Texas MAA), held March 31–April 2 at the University of North Texas, the first in-person Texas MAA meeting since 2019. 

• Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “An n-bubble Result on a Dense Number Line.” Ross also participated in the professional development program of the Texas New Experiences in Teaching (NExT), held in conjunction with the Texas MAA meeting. 
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “From Cars to Competition to Cholera: Math Models in Differential Equations.” As section representative to the national governing body, the MAA Congress, Shelton also led events at the executive committee meeting, the business meeting, and more.
• Emily Thompson  ’22 presented “Using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) to Create Models of Complex Curves,” which was the result of her mathematics capstone from fall 2022, supervised by Shelton. 
• Mel Richey ’23 and Kevan Kennedy ’24 attended the conference. 

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was a coauthor on a poster titled “Unplugged Parallelism for First-Year CS Majors” at the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’22). Anthony also participated in the affiliated event Dream Big: Addressing Computing for the Social Good in the CS Curricula.

Senior computational mathematics major Emily Thompson’22 presented “Using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) to Create Models of Complex Curves” at the 16th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, held virtually October 30. The work is from her ongoing mathematics capstone project supervised by Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented a paper titled “Questions of Sincerity in Cooperative Polls” at the 18th International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering held virtually October 24–27. The paper was coauthored with Miryam Galvez ’23 and Chris Ojonta ’23, who were research assistants with Anthony during fall 2020. Using Python to analyze the responses of simulated polls, the authors demonstrated that there are reasons to question how the idea of sincerity from voting theory transfers to the approval voting that takes place in cooperative polls. The paper was published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented a paper titled “Using the UCSC Genome Browser in a Database Course” at the 30th Annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Rocky Mountain Conference, held virtually October 15–16. This work was based on a lab activity Anthony designed and piloted in the spring 2018 database management course and has used in every subsequent offering. The peer-reviewed article will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented an article titled “Serving Rides of Equal Importance for Time-Limited Dial-a-Ride” at the July 2021 International Conference on Mathematical Optimization Theory and Operations Research in Irkutsk-Baikal, Russia. The work, coauthored with Ananya Christman, Christine Chung, and David Yuen, shows that in certain situations such as paratransit services, no polynomial-time algorithm can be guaranteed to serve the optimal number of requests; however, the paper then provides approximation algorithms with reasonable guarantees for many practical settings. 

Physics and mathematics major Gerardo Gonzalez ’22 gave a talk at the 2021 spring meeting of the American Physical Society (Texas Section) titled “Transition Probabilities for a Relativistic One-Electron Atom.” Most of the research presented during this talk resulted from a 2019 SCOPE project that Gonzalez completed with Professor of Physics Steven Alexander. They are currently working on a paper that will describe their calculations.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton has a peer-reviewed paper, “Mathematical Modeling Projects: Success For All Students,” published in the journal PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. DOI: 10.1080/10511970.2016.124932. The paper appeared online in February 2017 and will appear in the April 2018 print issue (Volume 28, Number 4).

Associate Professor of Math and Computer Science Jacob Schrum has had two peer-reviewed submissions accepted to the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, which will be held virtually in July 2021. Both submissions were written by undergraduate coauthors who participated in SCOPE during the summer of 2020: Benjamin Capps ’23 had a full paper, titled “Using Multiple Generative Adversarial Networks to Build Better-Connected Levels for Mega Man,” accepted for publication in the proceedings and will present the paper orally at the conference. Kirby Steckel ’21 had a poster paper accepted to the conference. A two-page extended abstract of his paper, “Illuminating the Space of Beatable Lode Runner Levels Produced by Various Generative Adversarial Networks,” will appear in the companion to the proceedings and will be presented at the conference’s virtual poster session.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton and Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross had a peer-reviewed paper, “Supermarkets, Highways, and Natural Gas Production: Statistics and Social Justice,” published in the journal PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. This work began with a 2016 ACS Workshop on Math for Social Justice.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton is a co-principal investigator with a newly awarded three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. This will support the mission of the mathematical community SIMIODE to encourage and support faculty in using modeling to motivate learning of differential equations in context. The award will fund faculty development, practitioner workshops, and more.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was a faculty scholar at the National Science Foundation RESET (Re-Enter STEM through Emerging Technology) 2021 Conference March 4–6, 2021. The conference focused on supporting the re-entry of women in STEM, especially in emerging technology fields, such as cybersecurity, data science, mobile development, and cloud computing.

Miryam Galvez ’23 presented at the 124th annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences, which was held virtually February 26–27, 2021. The poster in the Mathematics and Computer Science section, titled “Using Python to Question Sincerity in Doodle Polls,” is the result of collaborative work with Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and Chris Ojonta ’23 and was made possible by Southwestern’s Research Assistant funds and Sam Taylor Fellowship funds. A video describing the poster can be found here.

Elyssa Sliheet , class of 2019, won an award for an Outstanding Poster in the Student Poster Session of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) in San Diego, Calif. Jan. 9–13, 2018. Her work, “Shift Operators on Directed Infinite Graphs,” was conducted at an NSF-funded summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) with several other undergraduates under advisor Ruben Martinez-Avendao of Universidad Autónoma Del Estado De Hidalgo. There were over 500 posters in 16 topical categories at the JMM poster session. Awards were given for the top 15% in each category. Her travel was funded by the Southwestern Student Travel Fund, the MAA Student Travel Fund, and the NSF.

President Edward Burger was an invited speaker at an American Mathematical Society Special Session on Diophantine Approximation and Analytic Number Theory in Honor of Jeffrey Vaaler on Jan. 12 at the national Joint Mathematics Meetings held in San Diego, Calif. There he spoke on “Applications of orthogonality within non-archimedean and human contexts.” On Jan. 23, he delivered a public address on the future of undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University as well as met with their president and engaged with their Commission on Education to assess their plans for the future.

Members of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science joined the virtual 2021 Joint Mathematics Meetings, with national meetings of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), and more:

• Zariah Whyte ’21 and Evan Alexander ’22 presented the poster “Isoperimetric Problems on the Real Number Line with Prescribed Density” in the MAA Student Poster Session on Geometry. The presentation was based on work with Assistant Professor of Mathematics John D. Ross in SCOPE 2020.  
• Assistant Professor of Mathematics John D. Ross presented “On Curves That Generate Symmetric Lambda-Hypersurfaces” in the AMS Special Session on Analysis and Differential Equations at Undergraduate Institutions. 
• Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer presented “Marked Length Spectrum Rigidity with Partial Data” in the AMS–AWM Special Session on Women of Color in Topology and Algebra.
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Student Engagement in Modeling Drugs, Disease, and More.” 
• Shelton co-organized the AMS Special Session on Adopt, Adapt, Assign Modeling Activities in Differential Equations.
• Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr also attended.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer co-organized Black in Math Week, November 8–13, a social-media event to promote visibility and community among Black mathematicians. In one of the events for the week, Sawyer cohosted an episode of the podcast Relatively Prime about Black math educators. Black in Math Week is a part of a series of ‘Black in X’ weeks, which began with Black Birders Week to normalize Black people as a part of science communities after someone called 911 to report a Black birdwatcher in Central Park. You can find the Twitter account here and the podcast episode here.

Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented their paper “Directed Zagreb Indices” at the (virtual) 18th Cologne–Twente Workshop on Graphs and Combinatorial Optimization (CTW 2020). The presentation and slides are available here . Their paper will be published in the AIRO Springer Series  CTW 2020 Proceedings  in March. 

Professor of Mathematics Kendall Richards and Jordan Smith  ’20 coauthored the article “A Concavity Property of Generalized Complete Elliptic Integrals,” which has been accepted for publication in the journal Integral Transforms and Special Functions.  This collaboration began in an independent study last spring and continued into the summer. This fall, Smith began his graduate studies in mathematics at Baylor University.

Garey Chair and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr has been named the codirector of the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Summer Program. EDGE was founded in 1998 and is a program for women about to enter Ph.D. programs in mathematics; it has now supported more than 100 women in earning their Ph.D.s. Marr is a proud member of EDGE 2002 and will codirect the program with fellow EDGE 2002 member Raegan Higgins, from Texas Tech University. Learn more here.

Eric Oden ’16 and coauthors Sanaz Aliari Kardehdeh, Bruce Golden, and Eric Oden received the Trevor Evans Award of the Mathematical Association of America for their article “ Experimental Graph Theory, ” which is accessible to undergraduates and was published during the preceding year in the journal Math Horizons  (2019). Oden majored in mathematics and physics at Southwestern and is currently in the Ph.D. program in applied mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton, with coauthor Brian Winkel, professor emeritus of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, developed a peer-reviewed classroom module, published by SIMIODE. The module implements mathematical modeling in differential equations. “3-034-S-CarSuspensions” is the student version, and “3-034-T-CarSuspensions” is the teacher version. This work was supported by National Science Foundation grant #1940532.

Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr coauthored a paper with colleagues from India, Slovakia, and Indonesia that is now online as part of the Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography. The article, “Note on In-Antimagicness and Out-Antimagicness of Digraphs,” was written at the 2014 International Workshop on Graph Labeling in India.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthon y coauthored a paper with Christine Chung from Connecticut College that will appear in a June 2020 volume of Theoretical Computer Science . The article, “ Equilibria in Doodle Polls under Three Tie-Breaking Rules ,” considers price of anarchy and price of stability in approval voting scenarios such as Doodle polls.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton has joined the editorial board for the CODEE Journal. The CODEE Journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access publication distributed by the CODEE (Community of Ordinary Differential Equations Educators) and published by the Claremont Colleges Library. It features original materials that promote the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross has joined the editorial board for the MAA Reviews. This outlet publishes reviews of undergraduate and graduate texts in mathematics and is hosted by the Mathematical Association of America. Ross joins the board as an associate editor of analysis.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony had a poster accepted to the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’20). While the March 2020 presentation in Portland, OR, was cancelled day-of because of COVID-19, the poster is now displayed in the revised virtual conference. The peer-reviewed work on “Introducing Parallelism to First-Year CS Majors” (with coauthors D. Cenk Erdil, Sacred Heart University; Olga Glebova, Georgia State University; and Robert Montante, Bloomsburg University) resulted from work begun at a weeklong training in August 2019 by the National Science Foundation–supported Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum has had two peer-reviewed papers accepted to appear in the proceedings of the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. Both papers were sparked by research collaborations with coauthors that began at the 2017 Dagstuhl Seminar on AI-Driven Game Design . SU computer science major Jake Gutierrez  ’22 later contributed to this line of research as part of SCOPE 2019, and major work finalizing the projects occurred as part of the 2019 Dagstuhl Seminar on Revolutions in Computational Game AI .

• “Interactive Evolution and Exploration within Latent Level–Design Space of Generative Adversarial Networks” was written along with Gutierrez and four other collaborators: Vanessa Volz, Jialin Liu, Simon Lucas, and Sebastian Risi. It presents a method for interactively designing video-game levels for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda  using techniques that emulate the style of levels from the original games.
• “CPPN2GAN: Combining Compositional Pattern–Producing Networks and GANs for Large-Scale Pattern Generation” was written with Vanessa Volz and Sebastian Risi and focuses on a way of scaling up the levels generated by our method to very large spaces. This particular approach to encoding game levels still emulates levels from Mario and Zelda but can generate content of arbitrary size that is connected in a cohesive way.

Computer science major Jake Gutierrez ’22 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum have had their peer-reviewed paper “Generative Adversarial Network Rooms in Generative Graph Grammar Dungeons for The Legend of Zelda” accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 2020 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Congress on Evolutionary Computation, which will be part of this year’s World Congress on Computational Intelligence. This research started as part of SCOPE 2019 and continued into fall 2019 with a human-subject study, which involved members of the SU community evaluating video-game dungeons created by the artificial-intelligence methods developed for the paper.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross and Professor of Mathematics Kendall Richards ’ book Introductory Analysis: An Inquiry Approach  was released by Taylor & Francis–CRC Press. The text is an inquiry-based exploration of the real number line, seriously examining fundamental topics in the field of real analysis. Beyond the main content, the text features an extended prologue that introduces readers to inquiry-based proof writing, as well as a suite of extended explorations into advanced special topics in the field. An early version of this text was read by SU math majors Morgan Engle  ’18 and Elyssa Sliheet  ’19, and improvements were made based on their suggestions.

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science was active at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, with national meetings of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), and more. It is the largest meeting of mathematicians in the world. The meetings were held in Denver, CO, January 15–18, 2020.

• Sarah Friday ’21 and Jordan Smith ’20 presented “Diagonalizing the Undiagonalizable,” research based and expanding on a 2019 SCOPE project with Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura. Aaron Waclawczyk ’21 was a coauthor who helped extend the SCOPE work. The presentation was in the AMS contributed-paper session on algebra and algebraic geometry.
• Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 presented her mathematics capstone project titled “The Costs and Rewards of Pursuing Different Postsecondary Degrees“ as part of the undergraduate poster session. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr supervised the project.
• Marr presented “Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory” in the MAA contributed-paper session “Tell Me a Story: Connections between Mathematics and Performed or Print Narrative.” D’Andre Adams ’21 and Beckelhymer are coauthors.  The presentation was based on their 2017 SCOPE research and their subsequent publication.
• Marr  coorganized the MAA contributed-paper session on re-envisioning the calculus sequence with coorganizers Robin Cruz, College of Idaho; Tom Halverson, Macalester College; Joel Kilty, Centre College; Alex M. McAllister, Centre College; and Chad Topaz, Williams College.
• Marr  was a coauthor of the talk “Calculus: Origins, Reforms, and New Directions” with Robin Cruz, College of Idaho; Tom Halverson, Macalester College; Joel Kilty, Centre College; Alex M. McAllister, Centre College; and Chad Topaz, Williams College.
• Marr and Assistant Professor of Mathematics John D. Ross presented the preliminary report “A Re-Envisioning of the Calculus Sequence for the Modern Student” with coauthors Joel Kilty, Centre College, and Alex M. McAllister, Centre College.
• Ross  presented “Exploring Big Ideas in Calculus 1 through Bite-Sized IBL Lessons” in the MAA contributed-paper session on inquiry-based learning and teaching.
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton copresented “Building Community through Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations (SIMIODE)” in the MAA poster session on projects supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Undergraduate Education. Her coauthors were the coprincipal investigators of their NSF grant: Brian Winkel, SIMIODE and emeritus professor from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; Richard C. Harwood, Newberg University; Audrey Malagon, Virginia Wesleyan University; and Patrice Tiffany, Manhattan College. The NSF grant partly funded Shelton’s attendance. Shelton served on the SIMIODE Board of Contributing Advisors, as well as participated in a meeting of her NSF grant coprincipal investigators.
• Shelton  coorganized the AMS special session “Wall-to-all Modeling Activities in Differential Equations Courses.” Her coorganizers were Janet Fierson, La Salle University, and Brian Winkel, SIMIODE.
• Shelton  participated in the meeting of the national MAA Committee on Sessions of Contributed Papers.
• Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Safia Chettih presented the preliminary report “A Combinatorial Model for an Honest ∞-Operad” in the AMS special session on computational and categorical methods in homotopy theory. Her coauthors were L. Bonatto, University of Oxford; A. Linton, University of Southampton; S. Raynor, Macquarie University; M. Roberston, University of Melbourne; and N. Wahl, University of Copenhagen.
• Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics John M. Osborn also attended.

Computer science majors Anna Krolikowski ’20, Sarah Friday ’20, and Alice Quintanilla ’20 coauthored a peer-reviewed paper with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum that was accepted to the EvoMUSART: International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art, and Design. Their paper, “Quantum Zentanglement: Combining Picbreeder and Wave Function Collapse to Create Zentangles,” presents a computational approach to generating art reminiscent of Zentangles. Examples of generated art are available here.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura coauthored an IBL-style textbook titled Perspective and Projective Geometry  (Princeton University Press, 2019), with her colleagues Annalisa Crannell, of Franklin & Marshall College, and Marc Frantz, of Indiana University. The textbook introduces students to geometry through perspective drawing, leading students to discover ideas through hands-on activities, including drawing, analyzing Renaissance paintings and photographs, and GeoGebra constructions. The textbook also guides students to develop rigorous proofs for their conjectures and can be used as an introduction to proofs course for undergraduate math majors.

Computer science major Sara Boyd ’20 has been selected as a finalist of the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award for 2020. This award program recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding potential in an area of computing research. Boyd’s award recognizes published work she has done with Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony, an REU at the University of Texas at Arlington, as well as project work in several computer science courses.

Computer science alumna Kathryn Reagan ’16 was named as the November spotlight member of the global organization Women Who Code. Read the profile here.

Devon Fulcher ’19, Sara Boyd ’20, and Anna Krolikowski ’20 represented Southwestern University at the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Competition’s South Central USA Regional Competition between schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, on November 9 at the University of Texas–San Antonio. There were 60 teams of three students each trying to solve 12 problems as quickly as possible. SU’s team, the Pirates, solved four problems this year, beating 18 other teams. It has been over a decade since a team from Southwestern has solved that many problems in the competition.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science Pedro Diaz Gomez, Hazel Hedrick ’20, Joe Roybal ’21, Matt Sanford ’20, Kirby Steckel ’21, and Thomas Zschiesche ’22 participated in the cybersecurity workshop and competition at the 9th Texas Security Awareness Week, November 1–2, organized by the University of Texas at Dallas. Two teams competed in the competition, with Sanford and Hedrick winning first place and Steckel and Roybal winning third place. The students credit their preparation for doing so well in the competition. Congratulations to our students for their teamwork, professionalism, dedication, and effort in getting this exciting result!

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura was the inaugural speaker at the newly formed Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Club at Anderson High School in Austin, TX. She shared her experiences and reflections on getting her Ph.D. in mathematics as a Japanese woman and spoke about her research in math and art.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, along with coauthors Annalisa Crannell of Franklin and Marshall College and Marc Frantz of Indiana University, published an article “An (Isometric) Perspective on Homographies” in the Journal for Geometry and Graphics (vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 65–83).

Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 was selected by the American Statistical Association to present “Tingle Therapy: An Analysis of ASMR Users’ Subjective Relief” at StatFest at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston on September 21, 2019. Beckelhymer received a scholarship for travel and lodging. In addition to presenting, Beckelhymer was able to network with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in statistics, as well as interview with recruiters from numerous Ph.D. programs around the country. 

Professor of Mathematics Kendall Richards and coauthors Elyssa Sliheet ’19 and Roger Barnard had the article titled “On Sharp Bounds for Ratios of K-Balanced Hypergeometric Functions” accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society (https://doi.org/10.1090/proc/14751; the hard-copy publication will appear in 2020).

Computational mathematics and psychology major Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 and computer science major Sara Boyd ’20 recently attended the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in San Diego, CA. Each received full scholarships, from IBM and Two Sigma respectively, to support their attendance in recognition of their accomplishments in computer science. Along with meeting Dr. Richard Tapia, they got to interact with numerous undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities, exploring career and graduate-school opportunities.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented a paper titled ““Maximizing the Number of Rides Served for Dial-a-Ride” at ATMOS 2019, the Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modeling, Optimization, and Systems, in Munich, Germany, as part of ALGO 2019, the major European event for researchers, students, and practitioners of algorithms. The paper, which will be published in the Dagstuhl Open Access Series in Informatics, has as coauthors Sara Boyd ’20; Christine Chung from Connecticut College and her students Ricky Birnbaum, Patrick Davis, and Jigar Dhimar; Ananya Christman from Middlebury College; and David Yuen.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Conference on Games in London, U.K., to present the paper “Desirable Behaviors for Companion Bots in First-Person Shooters,” coauthored with Adina Friedman ’19. Friedman started this research as part of her 2018 SCOPE experience. The full paper has been published in the conference proceedings.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross published an article titled “On the Existence of a Closed, Embedded, Rotational Lambda-Hypersurface” in the Journal of Geometry.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was the recipient of a $5,000 grant from the National Science Foundation–supported Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources. The Center helps faculty incorporate parallel and distributed computing into courses for students in their first two years of undergraduate study. As part of the grant, she spent a week with faculty members from around the country at the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving training on parallel and distributed computing content and educational evaluation methodology.

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science was active at MathFest, a national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held this year in Cincinnati, OH, July 31–August 3, 2019.

• Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 led an activity titled “Domino Antimagic Squares” in the MAA Workshop Create and Recreate: A Celebration of Women in Recreational Mathematics.
• Marr copresented “Beyond Leaky Pipes: Fostering Pathways and Persistence in the Mathematical Sciences” with Joel Kilty and Alex M. McAllister, of Centre College, and Ranthony A.C. Edmonds, of Ohio State University, in the session “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Mathematics,” which they also coorganized.
• Beckelhymer participated in the Mentoring Workshop for Women.
• Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura organized and led a minicourse, “Visualizing Projective Geometry through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with her collaborator Annalisa Crannell, of Franklin & Marshall College. This was the sixth offering of the highly successful national expert class, sponsored by the MAA special-interest group on Mathematics and the Arts.
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “DE and Social Justice: A Cholera Model with Bacterial Reservoir,” coauthored by Emma Kathryn Groves ’18 and Associate Professor of Education Sherry Adrian, in the session “Showcase of Modeling to Motivate Differential Equations,” coorganized with Patrice Tiffany and Rosemary Farley, of Manhattan College, Riverside, NY.  Shelton and Tiffany are among the coprincipal investigators on a grant from the National Science Foundation that sponsored the session.
• Shelton participated in the full-day meeting of the national governing body, the MAA Congress, as the new representative from the Texas Section of the MAA. Shelton was elected as recorder for the MAA Congress (2020–2022), and she participated in the MAA Section Officers Meeting.
• Shelton coorganized the general contributed poster session with Steven McKay, of Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, as members of the national MAA Committee on Contributed Paper Sessions.

D’Andre Adams ’21, Daniela Beckelhymer ’20, and Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr had their paper “Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory” published in the July edition of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. This research was conducted as part of SCOPE 2017. The article is available here.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton was interviewed for a post of the Mathematical Association of America Blog for work under a grant from the National Science Foundation, NSF Award no. 1724796 under IUSE: EHR 15-585 for 2018–2021. The coprincipal investigators in the grant are Brian Winkel, director of SIMIODE (Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations); R. Corban Harwood, George Fox University in Newberg, OR; Audrey Malagon, Virginia Wesleyan University, Virginia Beach, VA; and Patrice Tiffany, Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY. Rosemary Farley from Manhattan College has also been integral to this work. In the second year of the grant, Shelton coorganized and coled a faculty-development workshop, held at George Fox University, July 22–27. Twenty-seven participants from across the U.S. became MINDE (Model Instructors in Differential Equations) Fellows to enhance their teaching of undergraduate differential equations in a modeling-first approach. The workshop was sponsored by SIMIODE , a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, and Manhattan College.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was a participant in the WeTeach_CS Summit 2019, a three-day event that educates, empowers, and inspires K–12 computer science teachers, advocates, administrators, professional-development providers, university instructors, and policy makers to advance the goal of computer science for all in Texas and beyond.

In June, recent graduate Will Price ’19 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Congress on Evolutionary Computation in Wellington, New Zealand. 

• Price presented research on his coauthored paper with Schrum, “Neuroevolution of Multimodal Ms. Pac-ManControllers under Partially Observable Conditions,” based on his SCOPE 2018 research, which resulted in a first-place entry in the Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team Competition.
• Schrum presented a paper coauthored with SCOPE 2018 student Bryan Hollingsworth ’20 titled “Infinite Art Gallery: A Game World of Interactively Evolved Artwork.”

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was participated in the 2019 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution & Design (SEED) workshops at Syracuse University, training faculty to use SEED labs to demonstrate cybersecurity exploits and countermeasures. She can be seen in the local video coverage here.

Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 was selected to participate in The Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications/Math Alliance Workshop on Career Paths in the Mathematical Sciences June 6–8, 2019, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, MN.  Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr nominated Beckelhymer for the program.

Professor of Mathematics Kendall Richards recently published an article titled “A Note on Inequalities for the Ratio of Zero-Balanced Hypergeometric Functions” in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society  (series B, vol. 6, May 2019).

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Summit of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), in Nashville, TN, May 14–16, as part of their ongoing work with NCWIT’s Extension Services Learning Circles. In keeping with the theme of the summit, “Where Conversations Lead to Change,” they met with change leaders at other schools, participated in interactive workshops designed to help interrupt bias, and heard from plenary speakers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds on improving diversity and inclusion in computing.

Computer science major Adina Friedman ’19 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum have had a peer-reviewed publication accepted to the IEEE Conference on Games, to take place in London, U.K., August 20–23. The publication, “Desirable Behaviors for Companion Bots in First-Person Shooters,” describes research that began as part of SCOPE in summer 2018 and was followed up in fall 2018 with a human-subject study involving 30 members of the SU community. The videos, code, and other content associated with the study are available online.

Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr received a $6,000 Mathematical Association of America’s Tensor Program for Women and Mathematics grant that will fund the Hidden No More lecture series for the 2019–2020 academic year. This grant (and some support from the Mathematics and Computer Science Department) will bring six women from underrepresented groups with doctorates in mathematics and computer science to campus over the academic year for a lecture series in which each speaker will tell her journey to math or computer science and also share the type of research she does.

Computer science major Adanna Court  ’19 was selected and funded by Facebook to attend their 2019 Data Challenge on May 3–4, in Menlo Park, CA. Ten teams of three to four participants each were tasked with determining the optimal location and type of business for San Francisco based on the data set provided. Using R  and Python , they were able to manipulate the data and create graphs to support the recommendations they provided, which they presented to the judges. In addition, teams made recommendations to Facebook about how to use that data set to improve one of their products. Court’s team focused on WhatsApp.

Sara Boyd ’20, Devon Fulcher ’19, and Daniel Maldonado ’19 received an honorable mention for their submission in the 35th annual COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling, advised by Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony. During the contest, they spent five days working on a problem that required them to elect, configure, optimally pack, geoposition, deploy and operate a set of midsize unmanned aerial vehicles that would supplement existing relief medical supply chains on Puerto Rico. Their honorable mention designation put them in the top quarter of the 14,108 teams that participated. Learn more.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton has been elected as representative of the Texas Section of the Congress of the Mathematical Association of America. This three-year national leadership position will begin in July 2019.

A paper coauthored by Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton, Associate Professor of Education Sherry Adrian, and Emma Kathryn Groves ’17, titled “A Model of the Transmission of Cholera in a Population with Contaminated Water,” which was accepted for publication in November 2018, has been published in the CODEE Journal, vol. 12.  The article was downloaded across 15 countries in its first 25 days of online availability.

Lauren Gillespie  ’19 has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that will finance three years’ worth of graduate school attendance. Gillespie will be using the funds to seek a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University.

Southwestern had strong representation at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges South Central Conference at the University of Texas at Dallas on April 5. Students presented the following posters:

• “Voluntunity: Building a Volunteer Opportunity Website with Django” by TaylorAxtell ’19, SaraBoyd ’20, LaurenGillespie ’19, Danielle Orbach ’19, and Colin Scruggs ’19, part of their computer-science capstone work with Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony.
• “Creating a User-Friendly System to Facilitate Tracking and Entry of Internship Hours” by Adina Friedman ’19, William Price ’19, Elyssa Sliheet ’19, Isabel Tweraser ’19, and Jacob Yager ’20, also part of the computer-science capstone.
• “Verification of Welfare Transactions on the Blockchain” by Adanna Court ’19, Devon Fulcher ‘19, Bobby Garza ‘19, Alexander Hoffman ‘20, and Daniel Maldonado ‘19, also part of the computer-science capstone.
• “Project Pen and Paper: Operations Research for Prospective Students” by Katie Dyo ‘19, Devon Fulcher ‘19, Alexander Hoffman ‘20, Daniel Maldonado ‘19, and Greg O’Brien ‘19, work that originated in the Operations Research course in Fall 2018 taught by Anthony.
• “Desirable Behaviors for Companion Bots in First-Person Shooters” by Adina Friedman ‘19, based on her SCOPE 2018 summer research with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.
• “Evolving Custom Convolutional Neural Network Architectures in SZ-Tetris” by Devon Fulcher ‘19, also based on SCOPE 2018 research with Schrum. This poster won fourth place in the undergraduate poster competition.
• “Infinite  Art Gallery: A  Game World of Interactively  Evolved Artwork” by Bryan Hollingsworth ‘20, also based on SCOPE 2018 research with Schrum. This poster won third place in the undergraduate poster competition.

Students Boyd, Court, Friedman, Fulcher, Garza, Hoffman, Hollingsworth, and Orbach, as well as Schrum, attended the conference.

Southwestern University had a strong showing at the 2019 Texas Section Meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held March 28–30 at Tarleton State University, in Stephenville, TX.

• Katie Dyo ’20 presented “Women’s Golf: An NCAA Comparison Using Mathematical Modeling,” preliminary results from her signature work with Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton. Dyo is a mathematics major and data-science minor, and she is a member of the SU Women’s Golf Team.
• Claire Harding ’19 and Madison Godleski ’19 presented “Rocket Projections,” supervised by Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorff. Harding is a physics major, and Godleski is a physics major with a mathematics minor.
• Daniela Beckelhymer ’20, Charlie Ellison ’20, Hannah Freeman ’20, and Gerardo Gonzalez also attended the meeting.
• President and Professor of Mathematics Edward Burger gave the invited address, “Making up Your Own Mind through Practices of (Mathematical) Effective Thinking.”
• Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr co-led and participated in the Mathematics Learning by Inquiry organizational meetings, held in conjunction with the Texas MAA meeting.
• Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross attended the professional-development program of Texas New Experiences in Teaching (NExT), held in conjunction with the Texas MAA meeting. Ross also supported the student attendees.
• Professor of Mathematics Kendall Richards and Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Osborne participated in the Texas MAA meeting.

Student lodging, registration, and meals were provided by the Fleming Student Travel Fund and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Southwestern students accounted for five of the 57 presentations, along with 20 other colleges and universities.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross was invited to speak at Trinity University’s mathematics seminar on March 19, 2019. His talk, “Isoperimetry and Geometric Optimization,” discussed recent research as well as general strategies for solving geometric optimization problems using the calculus of variations.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum has had two peer-reviewed publications accepted to appear in the 2019 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, each with student coauthors. Will Price ’19 is the primary author on “Neuroevolution of Multimodal Ms. Pac-Man Controllers Under Partially Observable Conditions,” which describes his first place entry in the international Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team Competition in 2018. Bryan Hollingsworth ’20 is the primary author on “Infinite Art Gallery: A Game World of Interactively Evolved Artwork,” which describes a game that was part of a human-subject study at Southwestern last fall.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony ,  Christine Harbour  ‘16, and Jordan King  ‘15 published an article in the February 2019 issue of Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing  titled “Greedy Is Good: An Empirical Evaluation of Three Algorithms for Online Bottleneck Matching.” This paper is a culmination of work that was begun in 2014–15 with support from the Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates program of CRA-W, the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and Associate Professor Emeritus of Computer Science Barbara Owens attended the 50th SIGCSE, the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, in Minneapolis, MN, Feb. 27–March 2, 2019. Anthony was a discussion leader for a birds-of-a-feather session on “Modernizing the Mathematics Taught in Computer Science,” an associate program chair, and the chair of a session on physical computing. Owens presented “The SIGCSE Story: Getting the Scoop,” about the ACM History Committee, as well as the Computing Educators Oral History Project.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton coauthored a paper, “Pharmacokinetic Models for Active Learning of Differential Equations,” which was published online by the journal PRIMUS. Shelton’s coauthors are Beulah Agyemang-Barimah ’17, currently a graduate student in computational biology at Cornell University, and Theresa Laurent, of St. Louis College of Pharmacy. This peer-reviewed paper will appear in a print version of a special issue on modeling in differential-equations courses. Some of the work that led to this paper was funded by Southwestern’s grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation.

Professors of Mathematics Alison Marr and Fumiko Futamura coauthored and published a paper titled “Taking Mathematics Abroad: A How-to Guide” in the journal PRIMUS. This paper fills a gap in the literature on developing and teaching mathematics abroad, with examples and advice from the authors’ experiences teaching a variety of interdisciplinary courses in the SU London semester program.

Computer science and chemistry double major Lauren Gillespie ’19 has been awarded an Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher award from the Computing Research Association. Only students in North American universities may compete for the award, and only four such awards were given, with other awardees coming from such prestigious universities as Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. Gillespie’s award recognizes work she has done in the field of evolutionary computation since 2016, first as a SCOPE student under Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and most recently as part of a Research Experience for Undergraduates at Michigan State University under Dr. Charles Ofria. In addition to the recognition, this award will provide Gillespie with $1,500 to attend a research conference of her choice.

Art generated by the interactive evolution system AnimationBreeder was featured on the cover of SIGEVOlution (volume 11, issue 4), the newsletter of the Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation. AnimationBreeder is a system developed by Southwestern University students Isabel Tweraser ’19 and Lauren Gillespie ’19 as part of SCOPE summer research supervised by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum. Also in the newsletter is a short description of the art, as well as a reference to the publication describing this research, which was cowritten by Tweraser, Gillespie, and Schrum.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented a paper on the “Inefficiency of Equilibria in Doodle Polls,” coauthored with Christine Chung of Connecticut College, at the 12th Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications. She also chaired a session on combinatorial optimization at the conference.

President Edward Burgerand Professor of Art Victoria Star Varner presented an invited joint lecture in the Bridges Lecture Series at the University of Waterloo, Canada, on the connections between their original research in math and art on Nov. 21. The Bridges Lecture Series “aims to rediscover points of affinity among academic disciplines…and to bring them back into productive dialogue; to raise questions that are essential to scholars in Arts, Science, and Mathematics; and to provide specialists and non-specialists alike with compelling and enriching information that uncovers the possibilities and opportunities that exist on the bridge between disciplines. Our guiding goal is to coax audiences out of their intellectual comfort zones, and to transcend narrow discipline-specific avenues of academic inquiry.”

Computer science majors Bobby Garza, class of 2019, and Sabin Oza and Matt Sanford, both class of 2020, competed in the 2018 ACM ICPC South Central USA Regional Programming Contest at Baylor University. In this competition, students work together in teams of three to solve challenging programming puzzles for five hours. Though the team did not advance to the World Finals, they are proud of their performance. Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was the coach for the team.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross participated in the professional-development program of the Texas New Experiences in Teaching (NExT) project, held at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, TX, Nov. 2–3, 2018. Texas NExT is sponsored by the Texas section of the Mathematical Association of America.

Five math majors presented at the Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), held at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, TX, Nov. 2 – 3, 2018.

• Aiden Steinle, class of 2020, presented “Staying in Shape with Real-World Mappings.” Steinle’s work was supervised by Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Mathematics and Computer Science Fumiko Futamura.
• Gillian Glover , class of 2019, presented “Make Money with Linear Algebra: A Model of Portfolio Analysis.” Glover’s math capstone is an extension of work supervised by Dr. Futamura.
• Stan Kannegieter , class of 2019, presented “The Kissing Disease and Differential Equations.”
• Will Price, class of 2019, presented “Ms. Pac-Man Eats AI for Breakfast.” Price’s math capstone is an extension of his SCOPE 2018 research under Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.
• Mercedes Gonzalez, class of 2021, presented “Restrictions on HOMFLYPT and Kauffman Polynomials Arising from Local Moves.” Gonzalez presented work from a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program, supervised by Dr. Sandy Ganzell from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton supervised the math capstone work of Glover, Kannegieter, and Price, and she moderated a session of presentations at the TUMC.  
• Other attendees included Zariah Whyte, class of 2021, and Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross.
• Student lodging, registration, and meals was provided by National Science Foundation award no. DMS-1834888 for 2018. Additional funding was provided by a Faculty–Student Project award, the Fleming Student Travel Fund, and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Southwestern students accounted for five of the 57 presentations given by students representing 21 colleges and universities.

Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented a talk titled “Envisioning a New Calculus Sequence”  in the “Innovation/Ideation” session at the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ Transforming STEM Higher Education Conference, held Nov. 8–10, in Atlanta, GA. This talk was based on work that has taken place over the last year as part of an ACS grant titled “Supporting Diversity and Inclusion in Mathematics and the STEM Disciplines,” which is a joint project with Joel Kilty and Alex McAllister at Centre College.

Computer Science and Chemistry double major Lauren Gillespie, class of 2019, received a Student Presentation Award for her poster “Comparing Direct and Indirect Encodings Using Both Raw and Hand-Designed Features in Tetris” at the 2018 SACNAS National Diversity in STEM conference organized by the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. The poster was based on SCOPE research with Gabriela Gonzalez ’16 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton led two sessions at the Student Contest Using Differential Equations Modeling (SCUDEM) on Oct. 27, 2018, at the local host site for this international competition, the Highland Campus of Austin Community College. Shelton supervised all participants in inquiry-oriented learning with a modeling scenario that she recently had published in the repository at Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations (SIMIODE). She gave a faculty development session for the coaches, sharing two more of her published modules.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton, Associate Professor of Education Sherry Adrian, and Emma Kathryn Groves’s ’17 coauthored paper, “A Model of the Transmission of Cholera in a Population with Contaminated Water,” has been accepted for publication in the special issue Linking Differential Equations to Social Justice and Environmental Concernsof the Journal of the Community of Differential Equations Educators(CODEE). Groves and Shelton worked on the mathematical model in SCOPE 2015. Adrian and Shelton worked on the connections with social justice.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony presented a paper coauthored with Valentin Cantu Jr. ’18 at the 27th Annual Rocky Mountain Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges held Oct. 12–13, 2018, in Socorro, NM. The paper, “Modernizing the Mythical Man-Month,” provides an alternative way of presenting concepts from a classical reading in the field: while the software engineering ideas are still relevant, the authors suggest using language that is more inclusive and examples that are more relatable to students in the 21st century. It will be published in the December 2018 issue of the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges.

Computer Science major Adina Friedman, class of 2019, attended the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) Symposium for Texas Researchers (TACCSTER) at the Pickle Research Campus in Austin, Texas, Sept 20–21. TACC is home to four supercomputer clusters, including Stampede2m, the most powerful supercomputer at any U.S. university. TACC collaborates with thousands of researchers across the country using applied high-performance computing to enable scientific discovery. Friedman was exposed to talks, panels, and posters from researchers currently using TACC resources in the areas of machine learning, cloud computing, and others.

Elyssa Sliheet, class of 2019, and Sara Boyd, class of 2020, attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Houston, Texas, Sept. 26–28. The Grace Hopper Conference is the largest meeting of women technologists in the world. The program included inspiring talks by female leaders in industry as well as talks by academic researchers and educators. There was also a massive Career Fair allowing women to seek jobs with tech companies, including some of the biggest names in industry (e.g., Google, Microsoft, and Amazon). Both students had all travel expenses funded by competitive travel scholarships. Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum also attended the conference, as did alumna Kathryn Reagan ’16.

Current Math and Computer Science double-major Elyssa Sliheet, class of 2019, attended the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in Orlando, Fla., Sept. 19–22. Sliheet attended several sessions on topics such as the importance of diversity and inclusion in the field of computer science and ethics in the applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Sliheet’s travel was funded by a competitive travel scholarship.

Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth, serving as President of the South Texas Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German, hosted the Association’s annual convention at Southwestern University on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018. Collaborating with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum, she taught hands-on workshops on integrating STEM and German. Welcoming high school and college German teachers from the region to SU’s campus is a community outreach initiative that supports articulated curricular development, mentoring, and resource sharing while increasing the visibility of our campus and our programs in Modern Languages and Literatures. Recognized for her outreach initiatives and appointed as an Ortslektorin (local lecturer) for Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service), a professional network of 850 members worldwide, Berroth recently received a $600 resource grant from the DAAD and the German government to build a collection of contemporary German literature.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton published three peer-reviewed classroom modules with coauthors Theresa Laurent of St. Louis College of Pharmacy and Beulah Agyemang-Barimah ’17. The modeling scenarios are differential equations models of absorption and elimination of aspirin, caffeine, and digoxin in the human body. Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations (SIMIODE) published teacher and student versions for each of the three models.

Sara Boyd, class of 2020, Bobby Garza, class of 2019, Alexander Hoffman, class of 2020, Stan Kannegieter, class of 2019, Daniel Merritt, class of 2020, and faculty sponsor Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony participated in the Binance Dexathon decentralized exchange coding competition to improve on Binance’s current blockchain implementation this summer. Along with learning more about the blockchain and practicing their software skills, the students also gained valuable experience in project management and working with teammates in remote locations. For their submission, Binance awarded the team a 10,000 BNB grant.

Though not in attendance, Southwestern faculty and students won two awards at the 2018 Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games held August 14 – 17 in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

• Computer Science and Math double-major Will Price, class of 2019, won 1st place in the Ms. Pac-Man track of the Ms. Pac-Man Vs. Ghost Team Competition. This competition allows individuals to program controllers for both Ms. Pac-Man and the Ghosts in a challenging, partially observable version of the classic video game. Price’s winning Ms. Pac-Man entry was developed as part of SCOPE 2018 under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum, and is an extension of Dr. Schrum’s own dissertation research on Ms. Pac-Man.
• Schrum and collaborators from around the world won 1st place in the Short Video Competition for their video describing work on their recent paper, “Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network.” The purpose of the competition is to describe interesting research relevant to the conference in an informative and watchable manner.

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science was active at MathFest, a national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in Denver, Colo., Aug. 1 – 4, 2018.

• President and Professor of Mathematics Edward Burger gave the invited plenary talk, “Think. Create. Connect: To Make Meaning and Make a Difference” to Project NExT, New Experiences in Teaching, a professional-development program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences.
• Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura and Robert Lehr ’15 received the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award for expository excellence for their article “A New Perspective on Finding the Viewpoint,” published in the October 2017 issue of Mathematics Magazine.
• Lehr won an award for his presentation “Perspective Drawing: How to Find the Immersion Point,” in the Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) student session.  He will begin his first year at the University of Texas School of Architecture this August. PME funded his attendance at the meeting.
• Futamura copresented an expert class, the MAA Minicourse “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College.
• Futamura was a panelist for the Project NExT panel discussion on “Building a Diverse and Inclusive Mathematics Major.” She discussed the EQUIP program and shared her experiences in cobuilding and coteaching in the program.
• Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Hidden No More Lecture Series,” based on her minigrant from the National Science Foundation.
• Marr coauthored “Re-Envisioning the Calculus Sequence,” based on her grant from the Associated Colleges of the South with Alex M. McAllister, of Centre College, and Joel Kilty, of Centre College.
• Marr served as a moderator for the Town Hall “Shaping and Fostering an Equitable Community in Our Departments.” The results of this Town Hall discussion will be published in the Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter, MAA FOCUS, and Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton and Emma Kathryn Groves ’17  copresented “Incorporating Biology Topics Into Mathematics Undergraduate Experiences.” Groves just completed her first year in the Mathematics graduate program at North Carolina State University. She began work on mathematical models of cholera during her HHMI-funded SCOPE in 2016 with Yinlin Dai ’16, supervised by Shelton. Shelton also shared some of her work funded under the W. M. Keck grant at Southwestern.
• Shelton participated in a Data Science Workshop and joined a focus group of the MAA Committee on Faculty and Departments by invitation.
• Shelton participated in events for SIMIODE, including a meeting of the coprincipal investigators of their grant from the National Science Foundation, which partly funded Shelton’s attendance.
• Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Implementing Mastery-Based Quizzes and Tests in a Calculus Course.”

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton was active in two workshops under the grant through the National Science Foundation for which she is a co-principal investigator. The workshops were held at Manhattan College in the Bronx, N.Y., July 15–28, 2018.

Isabel Tweraser (Computer Science and Music double major) and Lauren Gillespie (Computer Science and Chemistry double major), both class 2019, travelled to Kyoto, Japan, with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum to attend the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. Several notable events occurred at the conference:

• Dr. Schrum and coauthors from other institutions won the best paper award in the Digital Entertainment Technologies and Arts track for their paper “Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network.” This paper has also garnered much attention from several media outlets, such as The Register, Science Magazine, and Fast Company.
• Tweraser presented the paper “Querying Across Time to Interactively Evolve Animations,” co-authored with Gillespie and Dr. Schrum.
• Dr. Schrum presented the paper “Evolving Indirectly Encoded Convolutional Neural Networks to Play Tetris with Low-Level Features.”
• Dr. Schrum addressed the entire conference as a representative of SparkCognition, Inc., in a short talk titled “AI Is Not Just Evolution; It’s Revolution.”
• Tweraser was recognized at a recipient of an ACM-W scholarship, which provided her with free registration and paid for a portion of her travel costs to the conference.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony had a publication accepted for the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, which was presented in Stockholm, Sweden, in July 2018. The extended abstract on “How Bad is Selfish Doodle Voting?” was co-authored with Christine Chung of Connecticut College.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was a panelist at the Google Faculty Institute held at Google’s Sunnyvale, Calif., campus in June 2018. The institute brought together approximately 200 faculty members and numerous Googlers to learn about changing cloud technology and discuss its incorporation into the classroom. This year’s institute had a particular focus on Machine Learning, including considerations about fairness in machine learning.

Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura gave an invited talk titled “Perspectives of a Mathematician Artist” to around 90 high school students at the Mathworks Honors Summer Math Camp at Texas State University on July 13, 2018.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “An Undergraduate Mathematical Modeling Capstone” at the SIAM Conference on Applied Mathematics Education (ED18), July 9–11, 2018, in Portland, Ore.

Two Southwestern students will present posters at SACNAS 2018, the national diversity in STEM conference organized by the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. Computer Science and Chemistry double major Lauren Gillespie ’19, who has been awarded a travel scholarship to attend the conference, will present her poster “Comparing Direct and Indirect Encodings Using Both Raw and Hand-Designed Features in Tetris,” based on SCOPE research with Gabriela Gonzalez ’16 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum. Ian Orantes-Orellana ’19 will present a poster titled “Photobleaching Lifetimes of Cy5-Alkyne and Cy-5 Alkyne Fluorescence” co-authored by Gillespie, Mauro Garcia ’18 and Visiting Professor of Chemistry David Cooper.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Stolper co-authored a state of the art report (STAR) “State of the Art of Sports Data Visualization” with researchers from around the globe which he presented at EuroVis 2018 in Brno, Czech Republic. The report will be published in the journal Computer Graphics Forum. The survey covers past work in sports visualization in both research and journalism categorized by the type of data (box score data, tracking data, and meta-data) and addresses future research in sports visualization research including new forms of sports data, the growth in volume of sports data, the rise of non-competitive sports data, and the ethics of studying sports data.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and her 11 co-authors had a piece published in the May 2018 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society about their experiences at the Workshop on Increasing Minority Participation in Undergraduate Mathematics this past summer in Park City, Utah. The piece is available here.

Elyssa Sliheet, Class of 2019, and Daniela Beckelhymer, Class of 2020, attended the Infinite Possibilities Conference for Women of Color in Mathematics and Statistics in Washington, D.C., April 14–15, 2018. Sliheet presented a poster on her REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) research “Shift Operators on Directed Infinite Graphs” and Beckelhymer presented a poster on her SCOPE research with Associate Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr “Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis of Interactive Gamebooks using Graph Theory.” Beckelhymer won a prize for Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation at the conference.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura was invited to give two talks, one on April 13 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, titled “How to Mathematically Immerse Yourself in Art,” and the other on April 17 at the Phi Beta Kappa event (En)Lightning Talks Houston titled “When Artists Become Mathematicians.” The (En)Lightning Talk was a 5-minute talk, complete with a countdown clock and an M.C. ready to hit a gong when time ran out. Futamura finished her talk in 4 minutes and 58 seconds.

Music and Computer Science double-major Isabel Tweraser, class of 2019, has been awarded a $1,200 ACM-W scholarship to help her travel to Kyoto, Japan, to present her peer-reviewed conference paper “Querying Across Time to Interactively Evolve Animations” at the upcoming Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. The paper was co-authored with Lauren Gillespie, class of 2019, and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum. ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery, and ACM-W scholarships are specifically aimed at helping female students attend research conferences in hopes of encouraging them to pursue further research opportunities in the future.

Thirteen students and four faculty traveled to Dallas, Texas, April 5 – 7 to attend and give talks at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Texas Section Mathematical Association of America held at El Centro College.

• Associate Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr co-presented “Starting Inquiry-Based Learning Consortia”
• Associate Professor of Mathematics Gary Richter presented “Revisiting a Limit as X approaches 0, the limit of sin(x)/x = 1”
• D’Andre Adams, class of 2020, and Daniela Beckelhymer, class of 2018, presented their SCOPE 2017 research with Dr. Marr titled “Choosing Your Own Adventure: An Analysis of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory”
• Morgan Engle, class of 2018, presented her SCOPE 2017 and capstone research supervised by Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton and Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Becca Edwards titled “Influence of ENSO on United States Gulf Coast Ozone Using a Surface Ozone Climatology”
• Sam Vardy, class 2018, presented a pedagogical talk supervised by Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross titled “Taking on Statistics with R(Our) Power”
• Taylor Axtel, class of 2019, Alan Carr and Charlie Ellison, both class of 2020, presented research supervised by Associate Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, “3-D Matrices: How Do They Work?”
• Music major Jacob Wilson, class of 2020, presented a musical composition from Dr. Futamura’s Explorations in Mathematics course “Frieze Patterns in Music”
• Aiden Steinle,  class of 2020, presented research supervised by Dr. Futamura, “Staying in Shape with Real World Mappings.” Aiden won an award for Best Presentation in Geometry.
• The other four student attendees were Keyshaan Castle, class of  2020, Katie Dyo and Elyssa Sliheet, both class of 2019, and Bonnie Henderson, class of 2018. Dr. Futamura and Dr. Ross also attended the meeting, with Dr. Ross participating in the Texas Section Project NeXT meeting.

Senior Physics and Computational Math double-major Yash Gandhi, class of 2018, has been awarded an H. Y. Benedict Fellowship from Alpha Chi National Honor Society. Alpha Chi is a national honor society that was founded at Southwestern University in 1922, and is only open to the top 10% of juniors and seniors. Furthermore, only two Alpha Chi members from each university may be nominated to be awarded one of 10 fellowships awarded nationwide. The $3,000 in fellowship money will be used to help Yash attend graduate studies in Computer Science next year. Full press release here.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Stolper, along with co-authors at Microsoft Research and Georgia Tech, had a book chapter titled “Data-Driven Storytelling Techniques: Analysis of a Curated Collection of Visual Stories” published in the edited volume Data-Driven Storytelling published by AK Peters/CRC Press. The chapter details design patterns that data-driven journalists have been using to present their work.

Nine Computer Science and Computational Math majors traveled to present research posters at the South Central Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges held April 6 at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

• Valentine Cantu, Yash Gandhi, Marissa Madrid-Ortega,and Kolton Noreen,all class of 2018, won 2nd place in the poster competition for their research “Looking AHEAD: Developing an Advising Hub for EQUIP And DRAFT,” which was done as part of their senior capstone in software engineering along with students Kristen McCrary and Angus Strickland,both class of 2018, under the supervision of Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony.
• Will Price,class of 2019, and Matt Sanford,class of 2020, won 3rd place in the poster competition for their research “Dynamic Graph-Level Operations (DGLOs),” which was done as part of SCOPE 2017 under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Stolper.
• Bobby Garza,class of 2019, presented “Encryption Using Nonlinear Dynamics,” which was also done as part of SCOPE 2017 under the supervision Dr. Chris Curry, former Coordinator of FIrst-Year Physics Labs.
• Sarah “Darwin” Johnson,class of 2020, presented “Evolution of Board Game Playing Agents,” which was done as part of SCOPE 2017 under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.
• Alice Quintanilla , class of 2020, presented “Evolving Artificial Intelligences to Compete in Real-Time Strategy Games,” which was done as part of SCOPE 2017 under the supervision of Dr. Schrum.
• Assistant Professors of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and Chad Stolper also attended the conference.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum has had four full-length peer-reviewed papers accepted to appear in the proceedings of, and be presented at, the 2018 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), to take place July 15-19 in Kyoto, Japan. The four papers are:

• “Querying Across Time to Interactively Evolve Animations,” written with Music major and Computer Science minor Isabel Tweraser, and Computer Science/Chemistry double-major Lauren Gillespie, both class of 2019. This work deals with the simulated evolution of artistic animations, and includes the results of a human-subject study conducted at SU. The various pieces of art generated by users can be seen on here. This research will also be presented at this year’s Research and Creative Works Symposium.
• “Evolving Indirectly Encoded Convolutional Neural Networks to Play Tetris With Raw Features,” written solely by Schrum, but extends previous research conducted as part of SCOPE 2016 with students Lauren Gillespie, class of 2019, and Gabriela Gonzalez ’16. This previous work was presented at GECCO last year. Though both papers evolve artificial agents to play Tetris, the new results are a vast improvement, due to the use of Convolutional Neural Networks.
• “Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network,” joint research with several researchers in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Games from around the world. The work began as part of a research seminar on AI-Driven Game Design held at the Castle Dagstuhl Leibniz-Center for Computer Science. One session at the seminar focused on “Game Search Space Design and Representation.” Schrum joined several researchers from this group to explore interesting ways of generating new levels for the game Super Mario Bros. based on existing game levels.
• “Divide and Conquer: Neuroevolution for Multiclass Classification,” joint research with Data Scientists as SparkCognition, Inc., an AI-startup in Austin where Schrum works as a part-time consulting scientist. The paper is associated with a product called Darwin, which uses simulated evolution to solve various types of Data Science problems. The paper specifically explores how Darwin can solve classification problems using ensembles.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura organized students and faculty to create a hyperbolic crochet coral reef for a table at the Hot Science Cool Talks event on coral reefs at the University of Texas on Feb.16. To prepare for the event, she gave talks on hyperbolic geometry and crochet at SU for the 107 Lecture in Mathematics and for the Art Association, and taught students, faculty and staff how to crochet hyperbolic planes that incidentally look like coral. Nine students, faculty and alumni contributed: Kari Darr ’19, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Linda DiLullo, Christi Ho ’18, Abigail Jendrusch ’19, Jacob Jimerson ’19, Chris Nissen ’18, Aiden Steinle ’18, Natalie Young ’19. Christi, Jacob and Aiden attended the event, teaching the public about hyperbolic geometry and how to crochet. The coral reef will be on display in the entrance to the Smith Library from March 20 to the end of the semester.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony was a panelist on the “Teaching with the Cloud” panel at Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) 2018, the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, in Baltimore, Md., in Feb. 2018.