Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the application of mathematical theory and methods to other areas such as physics, biology, medicine, computer sciences, life sciences, etc. A central part of applied mathematics is that of Mathematical Modeling, the process through which a real-world problem is transformed into a mathematical problem. For a comprehensive view of applied mathematics, visit the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics SIAM Webpage.

Core basic courses in Applied Mathematics include: MTH 303 (Ordinary Differential Equations), MTH 421 (Numerical Analysis I), MTH 422 (Numerical Analysis II), MTH 507 (Introduction to Partial Differential Equations) and MTH 580 (Applied Mathematics). For a brief description of these and other courses see the undergraduate and graduate catalogs.

Applied Mathematics Faculty: Shouchuan Hu, Jorge Rebaza, XingPing Sun, Cameron Wickham.

In all applied mathematics-related courses, our students receive not only a rigorous mathematical background on every the topic, but also a wide range of classical and current real-world applications, where the beauty and usefulness of mathematical concepts and methods are highlighted. Seminars are organized where students present to the audience (faculty and students) some of the theory, methods and applications they learned in class. Applied Mathematics is a very active group at our Department.

Here is a partial list of talks presented by MTH 303, MTH 421, MTH 422 and MTH 580 students at various seminars at the Department of Mathematics :

2004

1. A Mathematical Model of Whales and Krills, by Adam Morris.
2. Cell Populations and Dynamical Diseases, by Carla Magee.
3. IS-LM Keynesian Economic Model, by Wilson Forrester.
4. Competition and Hunter Models, by Jennifer Pope.
5. Chaotic Systems and Chua's Circuit, by Dao Tran. Download

2005

6. Multiple Shooting Method for Boundary Value Problems, by Timothy Brown and Peter Hansen. Download
7. Love Dynamics and Chaos, by Elisabeth Farrand. Download
8. Modeling Excitability in Nerve Membranes, by Gayle Green and Justin Ricklefs. Download
9. Matrix Factorizations and Information Retrieval, by Jeremy Chapman, Grant Gelven and Benjamin Lakin. Download
10. HITS: An Eigenvector Numerical Method for Web Information Retrieval, by Larry Philips and John Yankowski. Download
11. PageRank: Google's Vector Space Method for Web Page Ranking, by Nathan Carlisle and Michael McDermott. Download
12. SALSA: A New Eigenvector method for Web Page Ranking, by Adam Simkins. Download
13. Interpolating Data with Cubic Splines, by David Lindell and Lewis Stone. Download

2006

14. Bifurcation to chaos, by Jaeson Day, Jonathan Carter and John Chiles . Download
15. Limit cycles and Hopf bifurcation, by Chris Inabnit, Tom Buck and Brandon Turner. Download
16. Chaos and Lorenz attractor, by Newell Reeser, Regal Ferrulli and Travis Wolf. Download
17. Difference equations and period doubling, by Christina Enneking, Kailey Enloe and Nicole Walcutt . Download
18. Bezier Curves and Postcript Fonts, by Ernest Elliot, Christopher Geers, Michael Smith and Tracey Wharton. Download
19. Discrete Cosine Transform and Image Compression, by Thomas Buck, Regal Ferrulli, Zachary Hilty and Jimmie Maggard. Download
20. Multiscale method, by Lauren Garten, Shaun Dunn and Matt Smith.
21. Why do we need multiscale method?, by Ryan Miller.
22. Homogenization, by Evan Kloeppel, Andy Samson and Matt Summer.

2007

23. SVD and Compression, by Annie Johnson . Download
24. SVD and Cryptography, by Nik Clark. Download
25. SVD and Digital Signals, by Tim Sheen. Download
26. Computation of Google's PageRank, by Tom Mangan. Download

 

2008

 27.  Extrapolation and Romberg's algorithm, by Tom Mangan. Download

 28.  Adaptive  Simpson's rule, by Nicole Typaldos. Download

29.   Gaussian quadratures, by Jonathan Carter. Download

30.   Cubic spline interpolation and applications, by Mark Coose, Joetta Swift and Micah Weiss. Download

Cubic spline interpolation	Chaos in nonlinear love triangles
Numerical modeling of ocean waves	T-Roman font using Bezier curves
Nerve axon membrane modeling	Compression using discrete cosine transform
Lorenz' strange attractor	Bifurcation in Logistic map

ANNOUNCEMENT: 

The summers of 2007, 2008, 2009, the Department of Mathematics will host NSF-sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in the areas of Abstract Algebra, Combinatorics and Applied Mathematics for students from Missouri and neighboring states, under the direction of Les Reid, Cameron Wickham, and Jorge Rebaza. For more information, visit our REU Website.