Claremont, Calif. (February 10, 2014)—Pitzer College Student Karly Brint ’14 won an Outstanding Presentation Award for her poster Torified Rational Links at the 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and American Mathematical Society. Only the top 12-15 percent of the posters in the 2014 MAA Undergraduate Poster Session win the Outstanding Presentation Award.
Brint’s research examines a certain class of links, called Torified Rational Links, with a focus on bounds for stick number. These bounds are found by supercoiling the Torified Rational tangles and attaching the coil to an outer skeleton, similar to that of a rational link. The bounds obtained using this model are compared to the known upper bound for the stick number of any link using relationships between crossing number and the maximal and minimal degrees of the variables in the HOMFLY polynomial.
Brint majors in mathematics and minors in French studies at Pitzer College.
The MAA Undergraduate Student Poster Session showcases more than 300 projects. The Joint Mathematics Meetings is the largest annual mathematics meeting in the world, and offers a variety of sessions that are designed to appeal to undergraduates.
