Award-winning RSI Projects Supervised by PRIMES staff
This page lists past high school student research projects at Research Science Institute (RSI) suggested and supervised by our staff (the mentors were MIT graduate students).
Prof. Pavel Etingof has proposed and supervised the following projects:
1. Travis Schedler (1997). Mentor: Alexander Soloviev. Travis
won the 5th place
in the Westinghouse competition for this project (the 2nd place among
mathematics projects). This project gave rise to the research paper:
P. Etingof, T. Schedler, A. Soloviev, "Set-theoretical solutions of the
quantum Yang-Baxter equation," Duke Math. J., Volume 100, Number 2
(1999), 169-209,
arXiv:math/9801047
Travis went on to get a B.A. in math at Harvard and Ph.D. in math at the University
of Chicago and was the only
recipient of the
5-year AIM (American Institute of Mathematics) fellowship in 2008. He is
currently an AIM fellow and a Moore Instructor in the MIT Math Department.
2. Dmitry Vaintrob (2006). Mentor: Aaron Tievsky. Dmitry
won the top prize in the Siemens competition in 2006 and the
3rd place in the Intel
STS in 2007. He was also a
top winner for ISEF in 2007. The project gave rise to the paper:
D. Vaintrob, "The string topology BV algebra, Hochschild cohomology and the
Goldman bracket on surfaces,"
arXiv:math/0702859
Dmitry became a math major at Harvard.
3. Eric Larson (2008). Mentor: David Jordan. Eric won the
2nd prize in the Siemens Competition and the
top prize in the Intel STS. He also won a
top prize at ISEF. His project gave rise to the paper:
David Jordan, Eric Larson, "On the classification of certain fusion
categories," Journal of Noncommutative Geometry, Volume 3, Issue 3
(2009): 481-499, arXiv:0812.1603
Eric became a math major at Harvard.
4. Akhil Mathew (2009). Mentor: Dustin Clausen. Akhil won the
3rd prize in the Intel STS and also ranked 3rd in mathematics at ISEF.
His project gave rise to the paper:
Akhil Mathew, "Categories parametrized by schemes and representation theory
in complex rank," arXiv:1006.1381
Akhil became an undergraduate at Harvard.
5. Noah Arbesfeld (2008). Mentor: David Jordan. Noah became a
national finalist and then won the
6th prize in the Intel STS. His project gave rise to the paper:
Noah Arbesfeld, David Jordan, "New results on the lower central series
quotients of a free associative algebra," Journal of Algebra, Volume 323,
Issue 6 (2010): 1813-1825,
arXiv:0902.4899
Noah became a math major at MIT and a member of the
PRIMES Advisory Board.
6. Arjun Puranik (2009). Mentor: Martina Balagovic. Arjun became
an Intel finalist and a
regional finalist for Siemens.
His project gave rise to the paper:
Martina Balagovic, Arjun Puranik, "Irreducible representations of the
rational Cherednik algebra associated to the Coxeter group H_3,"
arXiv:1004.2108
Arjun became an undergraduate at Stanford.
7. Maxim Rabinovich (2008). Mentors: David Jerison, Emanuel Stoica. Maxim worked on a project in mathematical physics suggested jointly by Pavel Etingof and David Jerison. He became an Intel finalist and a Siemens semifinalist. Maxim became a math major at Princeton.
8. Anirudha Balasubramanian (2009). Mentor: Martina Balagovic.
Anirudha's project
won him the status of semifinalist
in both the Siemens competition and the Intel STS. He also ranked 2nd in
math in ISEF and got
a special prize which comes with a small planet named after him.
His research led to the paper:
Martina Balagovic, Anirudha Balasubramanian, "On the Lower Central Series Quotients of a Graded Associative Algebra,"
arXiv:1004.3735 (accepted to
Journal of Algebra)
Anirudha became an undergraduate at Harvard.
9. George Kerchev (2009) Mentor: Bhairav Singh. George did a project on representation theory. He could not compete in Intel and Siemens, because he is not a U.S. citizen. His project, however, has resulted in a paper, joint with B. Singh, which will soon be released and submitted to a research journal. George became an undergraduate at Princeton.
10. Katrina Evtimova (2008). Mentor: Emanuel Stoica. Katrina did a project on representation theory. She became a math concentrator at Harvard.
Prof. Leonid Mirny will supervise bioinformatics projects at PRIMES. He has previously supervised the following project:
1. Alex Chernyakhovsky (2008). Supervisor: Leonid Mirny. Alex performed a bioinformatics study of influenza viruses. He wrote a computer code, collected and analyzed sequences of hemagglutinin proteins of influenza viruses and studied their evolution. He was a national first-place winner in the 2008-2009 Young Epidemiology Scholars Competition, won the 2nd place in teams at the 2008 ISEF, won a number of Special Organization Awards at the 2009 ISEF, and was a 2007-2008 Siemens Competition Regional Finalist and a 2008-2009 Semifinalist. Alex became an undergraduate at MIT.
Dr. Tanya Khovanova has supervised the following project:
1. Lynnelle Ye (2009). Mentor: Tirasan Khandhawit. Lynnelle won the 2nd prize in the Siemens Competition 2009 and the 4th prize in the Intel STS 2010. Lynnelle became an undergraduate at Stanford.
Contact
With questions, contact PRIMES Program Coordinator André Dixon at