Category Archives: People

genki
Outreach, Undergrad courses, Undergrad posts

Math 100 students fight pollution in Ala Wai Canal

As part of a project for their Math 100 course–taught by math faculty members Monique Chyba and Sarah Widiasih Post and gradaute students Moriah Aberle, Shubham Joshi, John Dukes, Christa Gogue– undergraduate students worked to combat pollution in in the Ala Wai Canal in Honolulu.  In mid-October, students made 1972 genki balls, which are balls of dense soil that contains nutrients and beneficial microorganisms, guided by their professors, TA’s, and volunteers from the  Genki Ala Wai Project.  In class, students performed computations with scientific notation and analyzed data to understand the positive effects that these genki balls could have on the ecosystem of the canal.  The balls were released into Ala Wai Canal on November 9, and the event was covered by UH News and by KITV.

 

“Quantitative reasoning and critical thinking are incredibly important skills to develop to understand and adapt to environmental as well as societal changes,” said Professor Monique Chyba.  “Math 100 is designed to teach those skills in context, students are exploring how to mathematics are interconnected with relevant aspects of their life regardless of their majors. The Genki balls project served as a bridge to expose the students to the benefits of a mathematical approach to maximize the impact of actions in environmental issues. “

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People, Research, Uncategorized

Meet Forrest Glebe

Forrest Glebe is a new postdoc in our department.

DE:  Let me first say: welcome to our department! What type of mathematics are you interested in?

FG: I am interested in operator algebras and group theory. So far I have studied so-called “stability properties” of groups. My research has been to come up with explicit “almost representations” of the group that are “far” from actual representations.

 

DE: Do you have a favorite open problem?

FG: One open question I’m interested in is whether or not all groups are MF (matricial field). Roughly the MF condition says that all groups have enough “almost representations” to separate points in the group. This is the operator norm version of the more famous problems, “Are all groups hyperlinear?” and “Are all groups sofic?”

 DE: What’s your opinion? Do you think this could be true or are you looking for counterexamples?

FG: I think this is probably too good to be true, but who knows?

 

DE: What types of courses are you most excited to teach?

FG: When I first took an intro to proofs class it really changed the way I thought about math. I’m teaching 331 next semester, and I’m excited about it!

 

DE: What have you liked the most about Hawai’i so far?

FG: I’ve really enjoyed the sunrise and sunsets so far!

 

DE: Can you tell us something about yourself that might be surprising?

FG: In high school I was a theatre kid.  I was Professor Plum in our school’s adaptation of the film Clue.

 

DE: Thank you!

 

 

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People

Sue Hasegawa

On September 30, after 38 years within the department, Susan Hasegawa retired.  The department held a party in her honor on September 27 which was attended by many faculty, students, and staff.  Many individuals contributed to a retirement gift for Sue, took photos, and signed a memory book.

 

 

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Outreach

Cubes in space

Four Maui High students, with guidance from University of Hawaiʻi professors, have created an experiment to measure how plastic degrades under ultraviolet light.

It was selected by the Cubes in Space program — a competitive, international opportunity for students to send their experiments on a high-altitude NASA balloon flight.

The carefully designed and highly researched experiments must each fit into a tiny 4 by 4 by 4-centimeter cube.

Monique Chyba and Yuriy Mileyko are among the professors working with the Maui students.

Full story from HPR