Institution: Texas A&M University - College Station

Reporting Year: 2021-2022

Advisor: Philip Yasskin

Advisor's Email Address: yasskin@tamu.edu

Has There Been a Change in Chapter Advisor During the Past Year?: No

Permanent Faculty Correspondent: Donna Hoffman & LaKortney Hyson

Permanent Faculty Correspondent's Email Address: donnalh@tamu.edu & lhyson@tamu.edu

Officers: Fall 2021: President - William Frendreiss Vice President - Logan Knudsen Treasurer - Lauren Vanhelden Webmaster - Mathew James Spring 2022: President - William Frendreiss Vice President - Logan Knudsen Treasurer - Kevin Le Webmaster - Mathew James

Chapter Website: http://sites.google.com/tamu.edu/tamumathclub/

Number of New Members: 12

Number of Continuing Members: 150, but ~25 come to meetings

Activities: One of our meetings, we had an then-undergraduate student named Sithija Manage (now a statistics PhD student at Cornell) give a talk about his research conducted at an REU at UNC-Greensboro over summer 2021. The nature of the talk made the meeting more relaxed and the speaker was able to describe his research in a manner that undergraduates would understand. Additionally, his statistical research had a more applied side to it that futher appealed to a broad audience. On one of our activity nights, we played a cup-stacking rendition on the Tower of Hanoi algorithm problem. This was one of our most populated meetings, and was helpful in that we had lots of audience participation. We first began with the classic problem of a tower of height 'n' and three slots to stack. Using nesting cups instead of a traditional toy, we were able to give every member of the audience a chance to work out the problem individually or in small groups. Then we reconvened and discussed the solution to the shortest-time algorithm. Finally we discussed open problems and generalizations to 4+ stacking slots.

Do any of your chapter members plan to attend or present at the PME National Meeting this year? 

Do you have any news about current students or recent graduations? For example, scholarships or other awards, acceptances to graduate school, paper presentations at conferences, etc.
Two of our students, Timothy Bates and William Frendreiss, presented their undergraduate research at the TX-LA Undergraduate Research Conference in Houston, TX, on March 26-27th. Timothy's presentation was entitled "Uniform Acceleration Radiation and the Equivalence Principle," and was conducted with Dr. Stephen Fulling at Texas A&M. William's presentation was called "Cuspidal Projections of Eisenstein Series" and was part of a joint work done at the 2021 Clemson Number Theory REU under the supervision of Dr. Hui Xue. One of our students, Cosmas Kravaris, was awarded the Astronaut Foundation Scholarship. Additionally, we was accepted to and will be attending Princeton's prestigious PhD program.

If you were awarded a PME Lectureship, Conference, or Prize Grant within the past year, please briefly describe the results.