Pi Mu Epsilon math conference is April 10-11 at SJU

The 26th annual Pi Mu Epsilon Conference will take place on Friday, April 10, and Saturday, April 11, at the Peter Engel Science Center, Saint John's University.

Pi Mu Epsilon is a national mathematics honor society that promotes scholarly activity in mathematics among academic institutions and recognizes students' mathematical achievements.

Ami Radunskaya, professor of mathematics at Pomona College, is the invited speaker for the conference.

Her first talk, "DDEs, DCs and Doses: Mathematical Approaches to Designing Cancer Vaccines" will be a discussion on how Dendritic cells may be a promising immunotherapy tool for increasing an individual's immune response to cancer using mathematical models. This talk is at 8 p.m. Friday, April 10, in Pellegrene Auditorium.

Radunskaya's second talk, "Chaos and Noise: A Look at Stochastic Difference Equations," will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 11, in Pellegrene Auditorium. This talk is designed to answer the question of what happens in the long run to the biological and physiological processes involved in self-regulating mechanisms. She will discuss whether these mechanisms have a well-defined average lifespan, what the distribution of "survival times" look like and other questions regarding longevity.

Both of Radunskaya's talks are designed for a general math audience, although no knowledge of immunology is necessary. 

There will be student presentations throughout the conference, including three from CSB students:

• Sarah Lange (CSB senior, mathematics major, St. Cloud, Minnesota), "Stochastic SIR Modeling of Disease Dynamics."
• Esther Banaian (CSB junior, mathematics major, St. Cloud, Minnesota), "Generating a Finite Group with Two Elements."
• Melania Meyer (CSB senior, mathematics and German major, Princeton, Minnesota), "Modeling a Three-Species Predator-Prey Ecosystem."