Past Student Research
Many students are involved in research work at Davidson beyond the scope of usual coursework, through summer research projects, research assistance to faculty, independent studies, honors projects and more.
Past students have completed research projects in mathematics as well as computer science, investigating areas such as graph theory, sports analytics, virtual reality, machine learning, and bioinformatics (in conjunction with in genomics).
Past Student Research Projects
2018-19
| Name | Project Area: Topic, specific type or product | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Megan Goodling '19 | Artificial Intelligence: On the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; Independent Study | R. Ramanujan, D. Layman (Philosophy) |
| Team of around 70 students | Cats Stats sports analytics: for Davidson College teams in men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, swimming, football, women’s soccer and baseball. | T. Chartier |
| Jacob D'Aurizio '19 | Combinatorics: Explorations in lattice path enumeration; sponsored by FS&R grant | Y. Zhuang |
| Crossan Cooper '20, Will Jones '19 | Combinatorics: Gamma-positivity in permutation enumeration; Independent Study; paper submitted. | Y. Zhuang |
| Zach Nussbaum '19 | Computer Systems and Networking: Byzantine Agreement; Independent Study. | H. Mendes |
| Blake Skelton '20 | Computer Systems and Networking: Disaster Relief and Gap-Less Surveillance Using Drone Swarms, Kemp Scholars Program. | H. Mendes |
| Mutian Chen '19 | Computer Systems and Networking: Native Code Sandboxing on Web Browsers; Independent Study. | H. Mendes |
| John Dale '20, Mutian Chen '19 | Computer Systems and Networking: Network Data Analysis. Partnership with the Hub. | H. Mendes |
| Harry Zhou '19, Matt Days '19 | Computer Systems and Networking: Simulation of Distributed Systems. Independent Study. | H. Mendes |
| Sam Thomas '20 | Computer Systems and Networking: Stacking Data Structures for Increased NUMA Locality, FS&R grant. | H. Mendes |
| Matthew LeBar '19 | Computer Systems and Networking: The relationship Voting Theory and Distributed Computing; Independent Study. | H. Mendes |
| Aidan O'Neill '20 | Computer Systems and Networking: Using remote memory in RDMA systems as if they were local; DRI fellowship. | H. Mendes |
| Altan Tutar '20 | Computer Systems and Networking: Using Transactional Memory in Skip Graphs. Independent Study & Alvarez Fund. | H. Mendes |
| Team of 3 students | Data Analytics and Statistical Modeling: of migraine headache data, in a collaboration sponsored through The Hurt Hub@Davidson | L. Heyer |
| Kenneth Martin '19 | Data Analytics: Scalable Ranking Algorithms for big data; Independent Study | T. Chartier |
| Savannah William '19 | Graph Theory: Zero Forcing Polynomials: Mapping Spiders to Paths; Honors Thesis | H. Smith, D. Molinek |
| Ryan Strauss '20 | Machine Learning: classify experimental products in the AT-TPC experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University; Independent Study | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Ryan Strauss '20 | Machine Learning: Creating a universal Monte Carlo event generator for inelastic particle scattering experiments in nuclear physics at the Jefferson Lab, VA; Independent Study | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Andrew Hoyle '21, Jose Cruz, CPCC | Machine Learning: for data formatting and analysis for the Hall B drift chamber; DRI and FS&R | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Evan Pritchard '22, Michael Robertson '20 | Machine Learning: for event simulation for the electron-ion collider, supported by Jefferson Lab, VA | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Sarah Eisenach '19 | Machine Learning: predict pharmacological properties of compounds from their structural descriptions; Independent Study | R. Ramanujan, E. Stevens (Chemistry) |
| Ryan Strauss '20 | Machine Learning: redirected walking in virtual environments; DRI | R. Ramanujan, T. Peck |
| John Blue '21, Dulce Jarquin Pacheco, J.C. Smith U. | Machine Learning: track reconstruction for the Mg-22 experiment in the AT-TPC at Michigan State University; DRI | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Abby Santiago '22, Ben Santiago '22 | Machine Learning: understanding the success of AlphaZero and deep reinforcement learning in Chess; RISE Fellows | R. Ramanujan |
| Meg Houck '20, Eleni Tsitinidi '21 | Machine Learning: using a mixture density network to interface between experimental observables and QCD theory, supported by Jefferson Lab, VA | R. Ramanujan, M. Kuchera (Physics) |
| Michael Robertson '20 | Numerical Linear Algebra: On the non-symmetric tridiagonal polynomial eigenvalue problem. | T. Cameron |
| Lawrence Guo ’20 | Probability & Graph Theory: properties of sinks in random Greatest Increase Grid (GIG) digraphs; DRI followup | L. Heyer |
| Huseyin Altisinik ’20 | Project PRONTO Software: making improvements to the Faculty Workload Tracker | L. Heyer |
| Savannah William '19 | Real Analysis: Integration and Function Spaces; Independent Study | R. Neidinger |
| Aidan O'Neill '20 | Scientific Computation: On a compensated polishing technique for polynomial root solvers; submitted to SIAM J. Sci. Comput. | T. Cameron |
| Max Li '20 | Sports Analytics: analysis of the hot hand phenomenon; DRI | T. Chartier |
| George Baldini '19 | Sports Analytics: Big Data in Sports, highlighted in ESPN Magazine article; Independent Study | T. Chartier |
| Team of 4 students | Sports Analytics: for CBS during March Madness, supply game-time analytics to John Tobias. | T. Chartier |
| Team of 3 students | Sports Analytics: for Fox Sports. supplying game-time analytics to John Tobias during women’s World Cup. | T. Chartier |
| Team of 3 students | Sports Analytics: for the United States Olympic Committee, scraping data for their analytics team. | T. Chartier |
| Michael Freeman '20 | Sports Analytics: rankability questions and predictive analytics for the Major League Baseball playoffs. | T. Chartier |
| Haley Seligmann ’20 | Synthetic Biology: analysis, 3D print design, and research comparisons for the interdisciplinary team | L. Heyer |
| Team of 5 students | Virtual Reality: DRIVE Lab (Davidson research in immersive virtual environments) | T. Peck |
| Niall Williams ’19 | Virtual Reality: Estimation and Comparison of Rotation Gain Thresholds for Redirected Walking; Honors Thesis; version published by IEEE TVCG | T. Peck |
| Katherina Seitz '20, Evan Blanpied '20 | Virtual Reality: Investigating human behavior in VR | T. Peck, J. Good (Psychology) |
| Altan Tutar '20 | Virtual Reality: Investigating the impact of virtual and real hand placement in VR; Independent Study; Best Poster Award, IEEE Virtual Reality 2019, Osaka, Japan | T. Peck |
| Sarah Hancock '21 | Virtual Reality: Investigating the participant demographics in VR experiments | T. Peck, L. Sockol (Psychology) |
| Kern Qi '21, Niall Williams '19 | Virtual Reality: Investigating the use of haptic devices to teach pre-service elementary educators physics concepts; NSF funded with NC State and UNC Chapel Hill | T. Peck |
| Team of 3 students | Web App Development: Client, staff and student portals for the Gig-Hub micro-internship program at the Hurt Hub | L. Heyer |
2017-18
| Student(s) | Project Area: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| O'Neill, Aidan '20 | Numerical Linear Algebra: On error free transformations and applications to polynomial equations; MathFest 2018 presentation | Cameron |
| Robertson, Michael '20 | Numerical Linear Algebra: Finding a needle in C; On initial estimates for the polynomial eigenvalue problem; MathFest 2018 presentation | Cameron |
| Brosius, Tyler '20 | Sports Analytics: Research on rankability of data; DRI summer fellowship | Chartier |
| Craig, Tucker '20 Cat Lori '21 |
Data Analytics: Summer research in conjunction with Tresata | Chartier |
| Keatley, Perry '18 | Sports Analytics: Basketball Analytics via Spatial Data; Independent Study | Chartier |
| Stanek, Mitchell '21 | Sports Analytics: Online article "Majorly Expecting Luck in Baseball" with Chartier and Scott Teal, Senior Data Analyst for Tableau. | Chartier |
| Team of 6 students | Sports Biometrics: Working on impact data gathered from biometric devices placed in mouth guard; subcontract | Chartier |
| Team of around 70 students | Cats Stats sports analytics: Worked with coaches in men's and women's basketball, football, baseball and women's soccer; worked on projects for teams in the NBA and Minor League baseball, and national media outlets such as ESPN. | Chartier |
| Wang, Matt '20 | Sports Analytics: Development of scalable basketball analytics tool for NCAA; Championship Analytics subcontract | Chartier |
| Guo, Lawrence '20 | Probability Theory: Properties of sinks in random Greatest Increase Grid (GIG) digraphs (implications for optimization algorithms); DRI summer fellowship | Heyer |
| Team of 5 students | Project PRONTO software: Developed two web applications: Cat Select assigns projects to maximize satisfaction based on preferences from all participants; Cats REACT allows faculty to gather quick anonymous feedback from their classes. | Heyer |
| Edman, Elise '20 | Synthetic Biology: Built three web tools to help synthetic biologists optimize various processes, as part of the interdisciplinary team. | Heyer Campbell, M. |
| Maghini, Dylan '18 | Bioinformatics: A Bioinformatics Pipeline for Analyzing MinION Sequencing of a Diverse Sequence Space; Interdisciplinary Major Thesis | Heyer Campbell, M. |
| Nussbaum, Zack '20 Dale, John '20 |
Computer Networking: Distributed consensus algorithms that can be applied to blockchain technology, tolerating arbitrary failures of up to a third of the participating agents, and can be "federated | Mendes |
| Thomas, Sam '20 | Computer Networking: High-performance multiprocessor programming, specifically focusing on priority queues and maps that respond well to the increase of the number of cores | Mendes |
| Tenpas, Nathan '19 | Real Analysis: Integration and Function Spaces; Independent Study | Neidinger |
| Williams, Niall '19 | Virtual Reality: Perception thresholds on a real-walking virtual environment | Peck |
| Blanpied, Evan '20 | Virtual Reality & Psychology: Experiment investigating human behavior and interaction with avatars in fully-immersive virtual environments | Peck Good |
| Team of 4 students | Virtual Reality & Psychology: virtual reality as a tool to mitigate stereotype threat for minorities in STEM fields. | Peck Good |
| Shook, Erica '18 | Machine Learning: Deep learning techniques to build models of the human auditory cortex, with robustness testing of these models | Ramanujan |
| Wu, Andrew '18 | Machine Learning: methods to create a Boolean Satisfiability problem generator whose output better matches naturally occurring formulas | Ramanujan |
| Taylor, Jack '18 | Machine Learning & Physics: Machine learning models to sift through data generated in nuclear physics experiments; Honors in Physics | Ramanujan Kuchera, M. |
| Becker, Andrew '18 | Machine Learning & Virtual Reality: Deep reinforcement learning for learning steering policies in virtual worlds | Ramanujan Peck |
| Tenpas, Nathan '18 | Graph Theory: Additive 3-choosability of Planar Graphs; Honors Thesis | Yerger Brandt |
2016-17
| Student(s) | Project Type: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Ashley Alexander-Lee '17, Jose Balcazar '19, Hermon Mulat '18, Anubhav Roy Battachurya '18, Katy Williams '17 | Project PRONTO | Heyer |
| Leslie Alvarado '17, Andrew Becker '18, My Doan '19, Stephanie Momot '17 | Projects in Virtual Reality & Computer Graphics | Peck |
| Dustin Atchley '17, Andy Baay '17, Nick Balanda '17 | Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Majors in Research & Senior Theses | Heyer (co-mentored with Campbell, Snyder) |
| George Baldini '19 and Tyler Hickey '16 | Sports Analytics for Tresata | Chartier |
| George Baldini '19, Kendall Thomas '19, Kristen Koehler '17, Ross Kruse '17, Jacob D'Aurizio '20, Victoria Bonagura '18 | Sports Analytics for Athlete Intelligence | Chartier |
| Chris Cardwell '17, Alec Custer '17, Kristen Koehler '17, Ross Kruse '17, Grant McClure '17, Julian Casey '18, Jason Feldman '18, Graham Haines '18, Abhi Jain '18, Hannah Sinks '18, Nate Tenpas '18, George Baldini '19, Connor Bevan '19, William Botchway '19, Tanner Carlson '19, My Doan '19, Wes Kerr '19, Sam Lucas '19, Kenneth Martin '19, Josh Mitchell '19, Kendall Thomas '19, Tyler Brosius '20, David Bunson '20, Tucker Craig '20, Jacob D'Aurizio '20, David Lee '20, Andrew Roy '20, Bryan Stovicek '20, Altan Tutar '20, Matt Wang '20 | Sports Analytics: Cats Stats | Chartier |
| Kyle Chen '19 | Efficient Data Structures for Big Data Analytics | Mendes |
| Jiarui Chu '17 | Applying Probability to Problems in Computational Geometry | Heyer |
| Will Damron '17 | Sports Analytics for Dunham's Sports | Chartier |
| Ashley Finke '17, Audrey Moore '17, Santiago Navia '17 | Independent Study on Tensegrity Structures | Molinek |
| Manu Giamoukis '17, Jejun Kang '19, Matthew LeBar '19, Louise Zhao '18 | Projects in Graph Theory & Sports Analytics | Yerger |
| Jack Goffinet '16, Joseph Jamison '18, Andrew Wu '18 | Projects in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence | Ramanujan |
| Ross Kruse '17, Grant McClure '17 | Sports Analytics Independent Study | Chartier |
| Dylan Maghini '18, Hannah Sinks '18, Altan Tutar '20 | Projects in Synthetic Biology | Heyer |
| Savannah Williams '19 | Graph Coloring Problem | Brandt |
2015-16
| Student(s) | Project Type: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Dustin Atchley '17 | Independent Study: Virtual Reality for Biology Education | Peck |
| George Baldini '19, Mike Blasey '19, Henry Duncan '17, Jason Feldman '18, Noah Furman '19, Abhi Jain '18, Athena Kalamaras '18, Wes Kerr '19, Ross Kruse '17, Grant McClure '17, Jack Lang '19, Max Schimanski '16, Nathan Tenpas '18 | Sports Analytics for Davidson College Men's Basketball | Chartier |
| Victoria Bonagura '18 | Sports Analytics for Davidson College Women's Soccer | Chartier |
| Chris Cardwell '17 & Harrison Manning '16 | Algorithm Development for FantasyDraft.com | Chartier |
| Jiarui Chu '17 | Summer DRI: Random Visibility in Groups of Geometric Objects | Heyer |
| Courtney Cochrane '16 | Summer DRI: Disease Spread Modeling through Zero Forcing and Dynamical Systems | Molinek |
| Courtney Cochrane '16 | Independent Study: Virtual Reality and Scientific Visualization with Data from Dr. Lom in Biology | Peck |
| Courtney Cochrane `16, Ross Kruse `17 & Grant McClure `17 | Analytics for NBA League Office | Chartier |
| Will Damron '18 | Analytics for Dunham Sports | Chartier |
| Megan Feichtel '16 | Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality Research | Peck |
| Jack Goffinet '16 | Novel Algorithms for Solving the Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) Problem | Ramanujan |
| Graham Haines '18 & Wes Kerr '19 | Sports Analytics for Davidson College Women's Basketball | Chartier |
| Graham Haines '18 & Tyler Hickey '16 | Sports Analytics for Davidson College Football | Chartier |
| Kai Jia '16 | Thesis Research: Matchings in Lex and Colex Graphs | Yerger and Keough |
| Mason Lin '17 | Summer DRI: Sports Analytics Applied to Finance | Chartier |
| Lingbo Lu '15 | Summer DRI: Rank Aggregation | Chartier |
| Ricky Sosa '18 | Summer RISE: Explorations in Graph Pebbling | Yerger |
| Takuya Wakayama '17 | Summer FS&R: Intermingled Ascending Wave M-Sets with Three Colors | Yerger |
| Katy Williams '17 | Project PRONTO | Heyer |
| Erica Shook '17 | NSF-funded Synthetic Biology Research: Programmed Evolution | Heyer |
| Chenxiao (Simon) Xue '16 | Thesis Research: Branching Heuristics for SAT Solving | Ramanujan |
| Chenxiao (Simon) Xue '16 | Summer DRI: Pebbling and Class 0 Graphs | Yerger |
2014-15
| Student(s) | Project Type: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Miles Abbett '14 | Summer research: Developed fantasy sports salary cap algorithm for Major League Fantasy | Chartier |
| Nancy Brown '15 | Independent study: Operations Research | Heyer |
| Spencer Chadinha '15 | Independent study: Bioinformatics research and web development | Heyer |
| Erol Cromwell '15 | Summer DRI: Machine learning and graph theoretic tools to explore the potential for computational creativity in the domain of salad recipes | Ramanujan |
| Jason Feldman '18, Abhi Jain '18, Ross Kruse '17, Grant McClure '17 | Sports analytics: for the Davidson College men's basketball team | Chartier |
| Alex Feliciano '15, Eric Hart '15, Sarah Klett '15, Ross Kruse '17 | Sports analytics: for Davidson teams and developing related high school curriculum | Chartier |
| Jack Goffinet '16 & Alden Hart '15 | Independent study: Computer organization | Ramanujan |
| Ross Kruse '17 | Summer DRI: Deep learning techniques for automatic feature induction in the domain of Pacman | Ramanujan |
| Ross Kruse '17, Grant McClure '17 | Sports analytics: for the NBA | Chartier |
| Andrew Liu '14 & Greg Macnamara ‘12 | Summer sports analytics: Ranking methods for World Cup | Mossinghoff Chartier |
| Shane Macnamara '16 | Summer and fall research: Sports ranking research and web development | Chartier |
| Nicolas Neitzel '14 | Independent study: Data analytics in NASCAR racing | Chartier |
| Thomas Reith '15 | Motif-based clustering of directed networks | Heyer |
| Kevin Roberts '15, Annie Tang '15 | Sports analytics: for a national sports retail company | Chartier |
| Morgan Spencer '16 | Summer research: Synthetic biology team modeling and analysis | Heyer |
| Elena Vasiou-Sivvipoulou '15 | Summer research: Development and analysis for NASCAR simulation software | Chartier |
| Tyler Williams '15 | Honors Thesis: An introduction to the ideal class group, and a comparison of bounds on its size | Thompson |
| Chenxiao (Simon) Xue '16 | Summer DRI: Optimal pebbling on grid | Yerger |
| Fangning (Richard) Yan '15 | Honors thesis: Expected peak sidelobe level of random sequences | Mossinghoff |
| Yuchen (Vincent) Zhu ‘15 | Independent study & research: Automated animal recognition through machine learning | Ramanujan |
2013-14
| Student(s) | Project Type: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Miles Abbett '14, James Bramlett '14, Seth Kindig '14, Andrew Liu '14, Noah Woodward '14 | Independent study: Sports analytics - focusing on different projects in basketball, baseball, and golf | Chartier |
| Miles Abbett '14, Bryan Kelly '14, Ford Higgins '14, Seth Kindig '14 | Sports application: CatsStats micro-analysis and twitter feed | Chartier |
| Micah Brown '16 | Independent study: Mathematical modeling in biology - agent-based models to illustrate concepts in first-year biology course | Heyer |
| Micah Brown '16, Jackson Spell '15 | Summer applied math/CS/Genomics research: Agent-based models of cellular processes and online tool construction for automated DNA assembly | Heyer |
| Sam Castle '15, Alden Hart '15, Jackson Spell '15 | Independent study: Machine learning | Ramanujan |
| Seth Kindig '14 | Independent study: APBRmetrics and sports analytics | Chartier |
| Seth Kindig '14 | Summer applied math research: Predicting sports outcomes with similarity scores; springboarded Seth into a one month internship with sortable.com | Chartier |
| Sarah Klett '15 | Summer applied math research: Improving least-squares ranking methods with regression | Chartier |
| Sarah Klett '15 | Independent study: Data analytics - Big data and scoring Twitter, ranking restaurants via reviews posted on Twitter, in collaboration with Twizoo, Inc. | Chartier |
| Emma Krause '14 | Independent study: Programming neural networks in MATLAB, in support of Center major in neuroscience | Heyer |
| Matt Mohorn '14 | Honors thesis: An Introduction to Graph Pebbling | Yerger |
| Thomas Reith '15 | Applied math research: Mathematical modeling and cluster analysis of networks of neurons | Heyer |
| Jackson Spell '15 | Independent study: Data analytics - Twitter sentiment analysis, in collaboration with Twizoo, Inc., founded by Davidson grad Madeline Parra '09 | Ramanujan |
2012-13
| Student(s) | Project Type: Topic | Faculty Mentor |
|---|---|---|
| Daniel Bernstein '13 | Honors thesis: Algorithmic Definitions of Singular Functions, a real analysis topic | Neidinger |
| Jonah Galeota-Sprung '13 | Applied math research: Algorithm to create salad recipes via existing recipes using artificial intelligence | Chartier Ramanujan |
| David Heilbron '13, Kyle Snipes '13, Amy Tang '15 | Applied math research: Development of bracketology algorithm based on producing odds via Colley and Massey methods | Chartier |
| Seth Kindig '14 | Applied math research: Linear programming formulation for scramble squares | Chartier |
| Cyrus Lala '13 | Applied math research: Adaptation of ranking method posed as linear programming problem | Chartier |
| Robert Lorenzen '13 | Independent study: Sports analytics with mentoring a high school student Applied math research: Variation of PageRank algorithm for recognizing spam in web networks |
Chartier |
| Jena Manilla '13 | Independent study: Social network analysis including a network at Davidson College | Chartier |
| Daniel Marchuk '13 | Applied math research: Development of applets in sports ranking for uDemy course on bracketology | Chartier |
| Brian McGue '13 | Independent study: Analysis of NASCAR with sports analytics with Donour Sizemore (Michael Waltrip Racing) | Chartier |
| Erin Osment '15 | Applied math research: Adaptation of Laplace rule of succession within derivation of Colley method | Chartier |
| Corey Poff '13 | Honors thesis: Pathology in Upper Confidence Bounds Applied to Trees, an artificial intelligence topic | Ramanujan |
| Colin Thompson '13 | Honors thesis: A Hierarchy of Chaotic Topological Dynamics, a dynamical systems topic | Molinek |
| Chang (Kyle) Yang '13 | Honors thesis: The Bordeaux 3-color Conjecture and Near Coloring, a graph theory topic | Yerger |