The objective of the program is to provide an opportunity for eight carefully selected undergraduate students to learn firsthand the nature of mathematical research. The participants will conduct independent investigations, under the guidance of experienced researchers, on problems in combinatorics and number theory.
Duration: mid June - mid August 2008-2010; Stipend: $3550. Allowances: Travel up to $500; living expenses $1500; cost of on-campus apartment housing. Deadline for applications: mid February each year. Exact dates and more information is available at the program web page.
The site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.
The purpose of this project was to provide a research experience in discrete mathematics for eight of the nation's most talented undergraduate mathematics students during each of the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2010. The principal investigator and two graduate student research assistants, who are alumni of the program, supervised the work. In addition, 20 program alumni per year visited for a week or more to interact mathematically and socially with the official participants. Twenty research papers written in the 2008-2009 programs have been published or are in press in professional level peer reviewed journals. Seven papers written in the 2010 program have been submitted for possible publication. Nearly all of the participants have presented their research at the annual joint meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. Of the 151 participants in Duluth REU program who have received their Bachelor's degrees from 1977 to date, 137 have gone to graduate school. Of these, 105 have gone to MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, or Stanford, and 109 have won graduate fellowships. Ninety-three participants now have the Ph.D. degree. In the twenty years that the Association for Women in Mathematics has awarded the Schafer Prize for excellence in mathematics by a woman undergraduate, fourteen participants from the Duluth research program have won the award and nine have been named runner up. In the fifteen year existence of the Morgan prize for outstanding research by an undergraduate given by the three leading professional mathematics organizations the Duluth program has had nine winners.
