Over April 10-11, more than 90 students from universities across the South gathered in Troy University’s John Robert Lewis Hall for the 19th annual TROY MathFest, a free conference that enables undergraduate students to share their research.

The only undergraduate student math conference in Alabama, TROY MathFest was started in 2004 by Dr. Ken Roblee, College of Science and Engineering Assistant Dean and mathematics professor. The conference has been held every year except 2007-2009 and 2020.

“I hope that participating students get the experience of attending a real math conference with all the benefits and opportunities that it brings,” he said. “They will get to connect with a group of their math peers across the Southeast, attend, and possibly give, talks given by their peers, learn new math, connect with math graduate school representatives, attend keynote lectures by prominent mathematicians and to try their skills and knowledge against others in the calculus and Kahoot competitions.”

Elizabeth Scott, a graduate school representative at Florida State University, has attended seven MathFest conferences and said she keeps coming back each year because of the welcoming, but research-minded atmosphere.

“The appeal, from the graduate program point of view, is to be able to recruit and be in touch with the cream-of-the-crop of the Southeast’s math students. These are the students are who interested in research, who are presenting their research and who are graduate-minded,” she said. “A huge benefit for me being able to bring my undergrads is they get to present their posters and give talks in a very supportive, friendly environment that’s just fun. We have so much fun being here, and they’re impressed by the other students’ talks and the keynotes. They’re really engaged and it brings a lot of enthusiasm to their studies.”

Sophia Mena, a senior applied mathematics major at Florida State University, attended MathFest for the second time and said it’s a great way to gain experience presenting research as an undergraduate.

“Everyone is very welcoming, very nice, but gives very good critiques that help a lot when preparing to present at larger conferences,” she said. “This year has gone as well as the first one. More students from my university came this year, so it’s been an even better experience.”

Mena said she hopes to continue her studies in applied mathematics in graduate school and eventually work in the industry. Her research, titled “Regime-Switching Panel Dynamics of Directional EEG State Probabilities,” focuses on predicting the probability of the next latent brain state.

“Even if you don’t venture out and talk to the grad school representatives, you still get to see everything that’s available in the math field and how vast it is. You get ideas of what you may want to pursue if you’re still undecided,” she said. “It also makes the math world feel much smaller than what it is—these are going to be the same people applying to the same grad schools, and it’s nice to already know people and know that we’re all really hard working. It’s motivating seeing how accomplished everyone else is and knowing you’re here with them.”

In addition to TROY’s Applied Mathematical Sciences graduate program, five graduate schools were represented including: Georgia Southern University, McNeese State, University of South Alabama, Florida State University and Georgia State University.

This year’s keynote lectures were delivered by Dr. Lara Pudwell of Valparaiso University and Dr. Janet Osaye of Troy University.

Lectures were delivered by Drs. Shashidhar Belbase and Nick Newman; Cruz Fuller; Dr. Navid Bahadoran; Nathan Terry Walker; Anna Grinshpon; Alireza Fiujlaali; Adam Baig; Steven Rodriguez; Alexis Martinez; Jessica Carlos; Adrianna Ledra; Evelina Gustafsson; Daultyn Bradley; Kaitlin Noles and Lexie Stucky; Gavin Hoskovec; Wilfred Robert-Fajimi; Bogeon Lee; and Dr. Hoa Dinh.

Information about next year’s event will be released at a later date.

About the Keynote Speakers

Pudwell, Full Professor and Dixon W. and Herta E. Benz Professor, is a nationally-known speaker who has mentored many undergraduate students in the Valparaiso Experience in Research by Undergraduate Mathematicians (VERUM) program, coauthored a book on mentoring undergraduates in research and has worked on a summer math camp for middle school students, among others.

Osaye, Associate Professor, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Johannesburg and focuses her research in the areas of Graph Theory, discrete mathematics, network modeling and data science. Previously serving as Assistant Professor at Alabama State University and as Visiting Assistant Professor at Auburn University, she is also the founder of Girlsmatics Foundation, a STEM non-governmental organization for girls in Nigeria which was motivated by her involvement with AIMS Ghana’s outreach programs for high school students in Biriwa, Ghana. She is also the co-founder of Pieurl Consulting Services, an analytics and management firm based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Funding for the conference is provided by the National Science Foundation grant “NSF Conferences and Workshops in the Mathematical Sciences.”