Presenters & Advisers
Kirsten Hutchison '06 and Derek Pouliot '06
Abstract Mathematics
Math majors Kirsten Hutchison and Derek Pouliot spent ten summer weeks searching for unexplored based rings and disproved Kaplansky’s 1973 Conjecture in the process.
A based ring, a collection of characters that can be added and multiplied, is worth studying, according to Pouliot, because there's still a lot to be discovered about them. "It's something that hasn't been the focus of a lot of research," he says, "even at the graduate level."
At the suggestion of their faculty mentor, Associate Professor Dmitri Nikshych, the pair applied for and was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) which enabled them to work on computations and write a computer program that searches for based rings.
Hutchison and Pouliot presented their findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Asheville, North Carolina.
