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The University of California, Irvine is proud to organize two summer research programs in mathematical biology in 2019, MathBioU for undergraduates and Math ExpLR for High School students.   Students will work for 6 weeks in small research teams and give a presentation at the end of the program. In addition, students will attend skill-building workshops that will prepare them to carry out mathematical research, including Matlab programming, mathematical modeling, giving research presentations and write a research paper.  

Research Team Advisors:

Most teams will consist of both undergraduates and High School students working together on a research project. Applications for both summer programs will be considered on a rolling basis, with a first screening for admission on Friday, March 1st, 2019, and second screening on Monday, April 1st, 2019.

Course Schedule:

All meetings, courses, workshops, and activities take place in Rowland Hall 306. The daily snack/social breaks take place in Rowland Hall 420.  See the calendar below for details.  If you or your group would like a place to meet on campus, please let Nicole Fider know and we will do our best to arrange a location for you.  

You should also plan to be on campus on Friday, August 9th, from 11:30am-5pm.  This is when your final reports will be due and your group will present its work.  The final presentations will take place from 11:30am-4:00pm, and the End-of-Program Reception will begin at 4:00pm. 

    
Monday (1-5pm)Wednesday (1-5pm)
Week 17/1/19
  • 12pm: Appointments for installation help
  • 1pm: Welcome and Introduction Lecture
  • 2pm: Skill Development 1
  • 3pm Meeting with PIs 
  • 4:15pm: Start-of-Program Reception
7/3/19
  • 1pm: MATLAB, part 1
  • 3pm: Snack/social break
  • 3:45pm: LaTex, Part 1
Week 27/8/19
  • 1pm: MATLAB, part 2
  • 3pm: Snack/social break *
  • 3:45pm: Group discussions and planning 
  • 4pm: LaTex, part 2
7/10/19
  • 1pm: MATLAB, part 3
  • 3pm: Snack/social break *
  • 3:45pm: LaTex, Part 3
  • 4:30pm: “Creating the skeleton of the paper” activity, and group planning
Week 3

7/15/19

  • 11am: Groups work on mid-course report; lunch is provided
  • 1pm: LaTex, part 4 
  • 2 pm: Short snack/social break
  • 2:15pm: Skill Development 2
  • 3pm: Guest talks
  • 4:00pm: “Flash card” activity and group planning

7/17/19   DUE: MID-COURSE REPORT DRAFT           

  • 11am Group work + lunch
  • 1pm: Skill Development 3 / Latex, part 5
  • 2:00pm: Short snack/social break 
  • 2:15pm: Group work
  • 3:30pm: Guest talks
  • 4:30pm: Ice Cream Social
Week 4

7/22/19   MID-COURSE PRESENTATIONS BEGIN

  • 1pm: Guest talks
  • 2pm: Discussion and last-minute prep for talks
  • 2:30pm: Snack/social break *
  • 3:30pm: Start presentations

7/24/19   PRESENTATIONS CONTINUE  

  • 1pm: Continue presentations 
  • 2:30pm: Snack/social break *
  • 3:30pm: Skill Development 4
  • 4:00pm: Gallery walk

DUE ON SUNDAY: MID-COURSE REPORTS 

Week 57/29/19
  • 1pm: Groups work on final papers and presentations; group planning 
  • 2pm: Q&A Panel of Graduate Students 
  • 2:45pm: Snack/Starbucks/social break* 
  • 4:00pm: Information session – Applying to Graduate School
7/31/19
  • 1pm: Groupwork on “posters”
  • 2:30pm: Snack/social break* 
  • 3:15pm: Finalize and post posters
  • 3:30pm: Poster presentations 
  • 4:30:  Group work and planning
Week 6

8/5/19

Groups work on final papers and practice final presentations

  • 2:30pm-3:30pm: Snack/social break *

8/7/19   DUE: POST-SURVEY                                     

Groups work on final papers and practice final presentations

  • 2:30pm-3:30pm: Snack/social break *

Updated 6/28/19 

*These snack/social breaks should include fun activities planned by the student groups J

 

Summary of lessons and workshops

Skill Development 1:  How to find and read articles, basics of writing a scientific paper

MATLAB, part 1: Introduction to MATLAB, including variables, vectors, scripts, scripts, functions, loops

LaTex, Part 1: Getting started, special characters, modifying text (size/color/bold/italics/underline), writing equations

MATLAB, part 2: Advanced functions and plotting

LaTex, part 2: Alignment, lists, creating document title and sections, document types

MATLAB, part 3: Applications, including solving ODEs

Latex, Part 3: How to write a scientific paper, including cross referencing equations, bibliography, and citations

LaTex, Part 4: Figures/tables using LaTex (MatLab) and how to reference them in-text 

Skill Development 2: Effective Presentations in Science/Mathematics

Skill Development 3 / Latex, part 5: Making slides in Beamer

Skill Development 4:  Making a Poster

For questions about the MathBioU undergraduate summer research program, please contact the program director Dr. German Enciso. Please write MathBioU in the subject line of your email. You can also contact program coordinator Nikki Fider (nfider@uci.edu) for any questions about the program. 
 
For questions about the complementary Math ExpLR High School summer program, please contact the program director Dr. Alessandra Pantano. Please write Math ExpLR in the subject line of your email. You can also contact program coordinator Nikki Fider (nfider@uci.edu) for any questions.