REU Program at the University of Washington

The University of Washington summer REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program has been running since 1988. The program has continued to grow in size (this year there were thirteen students and four TAs) and national prominence. Jim Morrow, the director of the program, was one of two math REU directors invited to a Pan-REU workshop in September in Washington, DC, and he gave a presentation to a reception for the House Science Committee held in the Rayburn Building. The program has attracted the best students in the United States, with five recent participants receiving Goldwater Scholarships and two nominees this year (2005-6) for a Rhodes Scholarship. In addition REU alumni make up the bulk of the Department's stellar Mathematical Contest in Modeling Teams. This year eleven of the twelve participants in the contest are alumni of the REU program.

The program lasts eight weeks. Students do original research on problems related to the inverse problem in electrical networks. In 2005 students found new results on directed networks and new proofs of theorems on dual graphs and embeddings of graphs in Riemann surfaces. One of the REU students will present his work on extending germs of harmonic functions on graphs at the annual meeting of the MAA in January. There were five women and eight men in the program with one of the women supported by a Phelps Fellowship. The four TAs are alumni of the program. The TAs were three graduate students (at UCLA, Rutgers, and MIT) and one advanced undergrad who is currently a TA for Math 334. A website, http://www.math.washington.edu/~reu/, has detailed information about the program, including an archive of students' papers going back to 1988. The current program was awarded funding for 2005-07 by the National Science Foundation. In addition it is supported by the VIGRE grant and Department of Mathematics funds.

Jim Morrow