REU Site: Research Experience for Undergraduates in Algebra and Discrete Mathematics at Auburn University

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This NSF award will support 8 undergraduate students for 8 weeks at Auburn University in each of the summers 2020-2022 to conduct research in algebra and discrete mathematics. The program is a continuation of successful NSF funded REU programs conducted by the proposers at Auburn in 1999, 2000, 2005-2008, and 2010-2019. Almost all of our alumni who are no longer undergraduates went to graduate school, slightly more than half in mathematics and the others in mathematics education, computer science, statistics and statistical sciences, including mathematical branches of biology. This shows that our program has positive impact on undergraduates and various mathematical disciplines. Our goal of having half of the participants to be women, our effort in recruiting minority students, and our focus on the American Southeast support NSF's vision of developing a diverse workforce. In 2013-2017, a number of our recent and not-so-recent alumni participated in the Masamu Program, NSF Award No. 1343651, by going to Southern Africa for the annual Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association conference, workshop, and Masamu Advanced Study Institute for the purpose of fostering US-Africa collaborative research with Sub-Saharan African mathematicians; this participation will continue. This project is jointly funded by the Workforce Program in the Mathematical Sciences and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).Our REU focuses on some of the current research problems in algebra (computational algebra, Groebner bases) and discrete mathematics (graph theory, graphs and hypergraphs, number theory, information and coding theory). The pattern of activities will be as before: intensive introduction to problems and problem areas in the first 2-3 weeks, capped by an obligatory "ice-breaker" presentation by each participant in the 3rd week, followed by a "research institute" phase in the remaining 5 weeks, capped by a final presentation by each participant. During the research institute phase there will be frequent talks given by faculty and graduate students of the department, visiting mathematicians, and the participants themselves, but the main feature of that phase will be research carried on by the participants, in various combinations with faculty, graduate students, and by themselves. The purpose of the program is to give the participants an authentic experience of mathematical research with the goal of exciting students about going to graduate school and pursuing academic research careers. As in past years, research results will be published in books or refereed journals and presented at research conferences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.