Mathematical Sciences

The department’s newest faculty member, Assistant Professor Rachel Bailey, has been chosen as a fellow for Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching), a competitive professional development program from the Mathematical Association of America. Designed specifically for recent PhD graduates teaching in mathematics-related disciplines, Project NExT provides guidance on teaching, research and navigating the academic environment, preparing early-career educators to thrive in their careers.

Bailey’s research focus is analysis. “In particular, I study applications of orthogonal polynomials and most recently have been interested in applications in quantum computing and stochastic processes,” she shares. “Currently, my teaching focus is to use active learning to build confident problem solvers. I also want to promote the importance of mathematical sciences in quantitative careers.”  

Associate Professor Moinak Bhaduri has received a Simons Foundation Research Enhancement Grant for Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI) Faculty, awarded by the American Mathematical Society. Established in 2023, the grant provides $3,000 annually over three years in support of research-related activities for tenured and tenure-track mathematics faculty.

This funding has been instrumental in supporting Bhaduri’s change-point research on a variety of topics — including business ethics, climbing Mount Everest and celebrity courtroom battles — that have been featured as cover stories in the journals Chance, Significance and Scatterplot and in two different episodes of the “Stats + Stories” podcast (see here and here). The grant was also instrumental in hiring an MSBA student as a graduate research assistant to support this work. Bhaduri has also created data visualizations from these studies, which were published in the journal Nightingale and have been longlisted for this year's Data Visualization Society Information is Beautiful Awards. 

As a visiting scholar at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Associate Professor Noah Giansiracusa is part of an interdisciplinary research team exploring a variety of topics related to cyberspace, including the internet, social media and AI.  

“My original focus was the companies and algorithms involved in the distribution of digital ads, but there’s little public information available and an ongoing Supreme Court case with Google has prevented experts from speaking openly,” he says. “I’m now studying the algorithms behind social media platforms to help the wider public better understand them. I’m also working with other visiting scholars to explore ways of bringing more liability to social media by modifying the famous law known as Section 230, which protects online platforms from lawsuits.”