Dear Math Honors Students,

My apology to all of you who signed up with me for the Summer Honors
Research class 2010.
I am really sick and will be unable to teach the class according to my
doctor.

Once again I am terribly sorry being unable to teach you and to keep my
promise to you that you will be producing strong research results
publishable in a regular Mathematical Journal. Maybe some other time we
shall have an opportunity to do this.


Best
Grozdena Todorova


> Dear Math Honors Students,
>
> Dr. Todorova is ill and has been advised by her doctors to not oversee
the
> honors summer research program this summer. She told me that she greatly
regrets being unable to mentor students in the program. However, the
program will still happen, and I'll be the research mentor. Since my
research is in the areas of geometry and topology, this means that the
research will be in these areas rather than PDE. My apologies to those of
> you who were counting on doing PDE, but it just isn't feasible for me to
mentor a serious PDE project. The good news is that the project will
require minimal background, so all math honors students who are not
graduating next month will be able to participate if they choose.
>
> If you are interested, please read the information below and let me know
by Friday if you intend to participate--even if you already told Dr.
Todorova that you intended to participate.
>
> I'm still in the planning stages, but the program will likely begin in
mid
> to late June with a mini-course on metric spaces. Some of you will be
familiar with that material, and so you may help the other students with
problems. You will receive the standard NSF summer research stipend of
$500 per week, but you will be responsible for your own room and board (if
> you aren't local I can help with housing--for example Shelbourne Towers
often has available apartments and is quite a bit cheaper than
university
> housing but maybe not quite as nice). The program will last 7-8 weeks,
and
> will be much like a typical REU, with a couple of meetings with me
and/or
> a graduate student every day, and students working either together or
separately the rest of the time. Probably only a week or two will be
needed for background, and then the rest will be research.
>
> The project will involve work started by the REU I mentored last summer
with Dr. Conant, concerning homotopy critical values of metric spaces.
Specifically, students will work on some famous examples from topology
called solenoids. However, the solenoids will be studied from a new
geometric viewpoint. If you look them up on Wikipedia, for example, they
will sound much more complicated than they are. One of my co-authors
(Valera Berestovskii) and I have formulated a much simpler, more
geometric, way to describe them, which requires only some background on
metric spaces. So don't let their apparent incomprehensibility deter you!
>
> If there is interest, we may have some summer excursions for hiking,
biking, or rafting, as I do with REU students each summer.
>
> There won't be a formal academic year research program next year, but
you
> may wish to continue developing your research into a senior thesis.
>
> Again, let me know by Friday if you intend to participate. If you have
any
> questions then e-mail me (be careful if you "reply" to this--it may go
to
> the listserv).
>
>
>
> Conrad Plaut
> Professor, Director of UT Math Honors
> Math Department
> Aconda Ct. 104
> 1534 Cumberland Ave.
> University of Tennessee
> Knoxville, TN 37996-0612
>
> Office: Aconda Ct. 401A
> Phone: 865-974-4319
> http://web.utk.edu/~cplaut
>