The main goal of the UNCG Regional Mathematics and Statistics Conference is to provide a venue for promoting education and research in the field of mathematics and statistics specifically tailored for undergraduate and graduate students to present results of their research and to allow students of all levels to interact with and learn from each other. Our conference has started as an annual undergraduate student conference 2005 and expanded to include graduate researchers since 2009. The conference has now established a tradition of attracting active student researchers and their faculty mentors from the North Carolina and Virginia. With the support of NSF, we hope to attract diverse group of participants from the whole Southeastern Atlantic region.
The opportunity for personal interaction among students and between students and faculty is a hallmark of our conference. These interactions enhance the research infrastructure and are essential for the success of (student) research and for training a new generation of mathematicians and statisticians. Moreover, women and minorities currently underrepresented in mathematical research are especially encouraged to participate in the conference and in the past students from these underrepresented groups accounted for about half of the supported participants.
The Seventh Annual UNCG Regional Mathematics and Statistics Conference was a one day, student centered conference held at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro on Saturday 11/05/11. There were two plenary lectures, "Excitable tissues in fluids" presented by D. Laura Miller from UNC (Chapel Hill) and "Prediction Models in Health Sciences" presented by Dr. Heejung Bang from University of California-Davis. There were 47 other presentations, all delivered by students (33 undergraduate and 14 graduate). In the morning, there were two series of 4 parallel sessions with 4 talks each. In the afternoon, there were 4 parallel sessions with 4 talks each. The topics of the talks ranged from pure mathematics to the application of mathematics and statistics in biology and other sciences. The conference was attended by 88 undergraduate, 40 graduate students, 34 faculty and 2 high school students. 72 of the participants (44%) were women. Many students left the conference encouraged to work further on their research. Some of the graduate students had participated in earlier editions of the conference and as such they proved excellent role models for the students that were relatively new to research in mathematics and statistics. Faculty also interacted with other faculty as well as with students and we all learned about challenges and successes of each other's work. The conference strengthened collaborative networks among faculty working with undergraduate students from UNCG and other regional campuses.
