news

Michelle Delcourt wins Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award

Primary tabs

School of Mathematics' undergraduate student Michelle Delcourt was nominated by Undergraduate Coordinator Doron Lubinsky and won the 2011 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher College Award.

Michelle Delcourt has a truly outstanding undergraduate research record. It includes REU stints at Clemson University in 2008 (on combinatorics and computational number theory); at Louisiana State University in 2009 (on zeta functions and invariants in algebra and geometry); and Georgia Tech in 2010 (on additive combinatorics). The research that grew out of the first REU, has been accepted for publication in the prestigious and internationally recognized journal, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

There are at least three other papers, that have been submitted to refereed mathematics journals. Michelle has also presented several talks and poster presentations to seminars and conferences. In particular, Michelle's poster presentation at the 2010 Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America in San Francisco in January, was awarded a prize as one of the leading presentations.

 

Some recent research with her advisor, Professor Xingxing Yu of Georgia Tech's School of Mathematics, has focused on directed graphs, and solved a problem posed in the American Mathematical Monthly. Prof. Yu emphasizes that Michelle initiated that research, after she noticed that techniques Prof. Yu taught in his graph theory class might be applicable. It has since developed into further research and a senior project. A current project, on sum set bounds on graphs, is the focus of a paper with graduate student Sarah Fletcher.

In addition to her own research activities, Michelle has played a very important role in outreach activities for mathematics within Georgia. She is the Puzzlemeister and Vice President of Georgia Tech's Club Math. Michelle helped to organize the 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 High School Mathematics Competition, even designing the T-shirts for the 2008, 2009 and 2011 competitions. For the 2010 T-shirt, Michelle obtained permission from the famous mathematician Sir Roger Penrose to use a Penrose tiling. In addition, she has helped to mentor prospective College of Science students.

In summary, Michelle has been involved with research at all levels - as part of a research team, as an individual initiating investigations, and as a mentor. She has solved significant problems - posed in the literature and posed by others. Michelle Delcourt has a very bright research future.

Status

  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:math-csg1b
  • Created:03/21/2017
  • Modified By:nmcleish3
  • Modified:04/07/2017

Categories

  • No categories were selected.

Keywords