November 2014

The City of Destiny 
is Calling You
PNW MAA and NUMS 
to team up at
University of Washington Tacoma
April 10-11, 2015

April 2015 PNW MAA Meeting at
University of Washington Tacoma

The 7th annual Northwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium (NUMS) will be held in conjunction with the 2015 Spring meeting of the PNW MAA Section at the University of Washington Tacoma on April 10-11.  NUMS is a regional mathematics conference providing a venue for undergraduate and high school students to present mathematical research. Registration and lunch for NUMS presenters is free; plus they will have the opportunity to participate in the MAA meeting.  Limited travel support for student speakers is available.

Friday April 10 will include morning Section NExT activities, afternoon minicourses, and an invited public lecture that evening. Saturday April 11 will be a full day with invited lectures, MAA special sessions, contributed talks, NUMS presentations, a career panel, an evening banquet, and more. Proposals for special sessions and abstracts for contributed talks will be called for in the winter. 

The invited speakers for this meeting are the current incoming MAA president Francis Su of Harvey Mudd College, 2014 PNW MAA Distinguished Teaching Award Winner Tevian Dray of Oregon State University, and mathematical artist Gwen Fisher of beAd Infinitum. 

UW Tacoma is in the heart of downtown at the terminus of the transcontinental railroad. Walk across the Chihuly Bridge of Glass or consider visiting one the nearby museums including the Tacoma Art Museum, The Museum of Glass, the Washington State History Museum, or the LeMay—America’s Car Museum. Housing options will include nearby hotels. 

For more information contact Jenny Quinn, jjquinn@uw.edu, (MAA) or Nathan Gibson, gibsonn@math.oregonstate.edu (NUMS) or visit sections.maa.org/pnw/meeting  or  nums.math.oregonstate.edu.  
NUMS organizers gratefully acknowledge funding from the MAA through the NSF-RUMC (NSF Grant DMS-0846477).

SECTION NEWS

Alaska

The University of Alaska Anchorage recently changed the name of its mathematics department to The Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Longtime faculty member Len Smiley retired at the end of last year. He came to UAA in 1981 after receiving his PhD in several complex variables from Notre Dame. During his tenure, he was very involved in curriculum development and institutional governance. He is now an affiliate faculty member of the department, and will continue as a problems editor for the American Mathematical Monthly.

UAA welcomes one new tenure track faculty member, Eric Andrews. He graduated from Western Michigan University with a dissertation focused on Combinatorics and Graph Theory. He studies Eulerian and Hamiltonian properties in graphs, graph decompositions, and structures. He is also interested in graph coloring problems (vertex and edge) and distance and domination in graphs and their applications. When not in the classroom or doing research he likes to play tennis or racquetball and do almost anything outdoors.

We mourn the passing of longtime colleague Jan Vandever. She was a professor of mathematics at UAA’s Mat-Su campus in Palmer, Alaska.  She was with UAA for 10 years.

The UAA Department of Mathematics and Statistics also has an active job search for a tenure track position to start Fall 2015. For more information, please see www.uakjobs.com.

Montana

Professor Brandon Rupinski joined the faculty of Rocky Mountain College in 2014 as a member of the Department of Mathematics. His areas of specialization are in Combinatorics and Graph Theory. He received both his B.S. in 2011 and his M.S. in 2012 from Western Carolina University.His previous teaching experience was at Western Carolina University where he spent the last two years. His interests include Math History, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations. 

Oregon

Juan Restrepo joined the Department of Mathematics of Oregon State University in August 2014 as a full professor through the Provost’s Tenured Faculty Diversity Initiative.  He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1992 and also holds degrees in Engineering Acoustics, Electrical Engineering, and Music.  His research specialties are geophysical fluid dynamics, scientific computing, and uncertainty quantification.   He most recently held a position as full professor at University of Arizona with joint appointments there in Mathematics, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physics.  Dr. Restrepo has a strong record in promoting science and advising young scientists from under-represented groups, and will be bringing his energy, enthusiasm, and expertise to assist the Mathematics Department in its efforts to increase student diversity in its undergraduate and graduate programs.

Nancy Ann Neudauer of Pacific University is the Visiting Mathematician at the national offices of the MAA this autumn. paperMatroids on Groups? (written with Pacific alumnus Jeremy LeCrone) was published in the College Mathematics Journal in March. January she was granted a Fulbright Specialist Award to teach a graduate course with Rob Beezer at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in South Africa. year she will teachat AIMS Centres in Tanzania, Ghana, and South Africa.

Ian Besse$10,000 grant last year from the Center for Coastal Margins Observation andat OHSU in part to run a 2 week intensive biomathematicsworkshop in2014 in which students worked on advancing the understanding ofblooms in the Columbia River estuary.was an interdisciplinaryat the intersection of mathematics,science, and biology.

Michael Boardmanto the AP Calculus Working group at ETS to assist in developingAP Calculus exams.textbook, College Calculus, coauthored withRoger Nelsenof Lewis & Clark College, has been accepted for publication by the MAA and should be available lateryear.

Christine Guentherin the midst of her $35,000 Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians from the Simons.is also chairing theCommittee onin the Mathematical Sciences and has recently had her“Short-time existence for the second order renormalizing group flow indimensions”for publication in the Proceedings of the.paper was coauthored withJim Eisenbergthe University of andKarsten Gimre, a Ph.D.at Columbia University and graduate of Pacific.

More than 60 high school students came to campus to see abyLiz McMahonof Lafayetteon the Mathematics of SET. As defending champions of the Kryptos contest and theIntercollegiate Ginormous Blokus Tournament, Pacific students got second inlast spring. plan toboth trophies this year. 

Congratulations to WOU Mathematics major Andy Fry who won the Pi Mu Epsilon Outstanding Scholarship second prize at the 2014 Northwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium for his talk on Abelian Sandpiles. Andy also attended the San Diego State University Mathematics REU to study Numerical Semigroups in the summer of 2014.

Congratulations also to the 2013-14 Charlie Dolezal and Ernie and LaVerne Cummins Scholarship Winners: Lorena Avila Perez, Camarie Campfield, Andy Fry, and Jillian Johnson.

The Willamette University Mathematics Department is one of 20 sites worldwide to build a level-3 Menger sponge as part of the MegaMenger project.  It consists of approximately 70,000 business cards. Collectively, the 20 Menger sponges form a level-4 Menger sponge.  

Willamette is also pleased to welcome Spencer Sitton to the department as a Visiting Assistant Professor.  Spencer comes to Willamette from Utah State University in the area of Differential Geometry. of academics Professor Sitton enjoys spending his time hiking, mountaineering, and, in particular, rock climbing. , Spencer! 

The WOU Mathematics Department held its 10th Annual Sonia Kovalevsky Day in February 2014. It was their biggest SK Day ever with over 100 students and 15 teachers in attendance.

Stuart Boersma of Central Washington University and Cheryl Beaver of WOU organized the fourth annual KRYPTOS competition in 2013-14. This year the competition featured ninety-one students forming 49 teams representing colleges, universities, academies, and institutes from Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois,India, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Mongolia, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania,Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. 

WOU Mathematics faculty member Stanley Leung completed his M.S. in Statistics from Colorado State University in June 2014.

Kendall Rosales (B.S. Mathematics and M.S. Mathematics; both Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) joined the WOU Mathematics faculty as a full-time instructor.
Laura Waight (B.S. Mathematics and MAT; both WOU) has joined the WOU Mathematics faculty as a part-time instructor. 

In 2014, Reed College has two new hires: Kyle Ormsby, assistant professor in topology and Adam Groce, visiting assistant professor in computer science. In 2013, they hired Angelica Osorno, assistant professor in topology and Albert Kim, visiting professor in statistics.
At the end of school year 2014 Reed had two retirements: Rao Potluri (after 41 years at the college) and Joe Roberts (after 62 years at the college).

This month, Reed student Maddie Brandt, senior, received Honorable Mentionthe Alice T. Schafer Prize for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics. 

Valerie Peterson of the University of Portland has published two papers. "State complexes and special cube complexes" appeared in Topology Proceedings in April 2014, and "The rank of recurrence matrices," co-authored with Visiting Assistant Professor Chris Lee of the University of Portland, appeared in the College Mathematics Journal in May 2014.

Matthias Kullowatz has jointed the faculty of UP.  He has taught mathematics and statistics at the University of Portand previously, as well as at Portland State University, Washington State University, and the Portland Jewish Academy. In the past five years, he has worked in various capacities with students ranging in age from three years old to 60 years old. He earned his Bachelor’s from Lewis and Clark College and his Master’s from Portland State University, where he got into teaching as a graduate assistant. Matthias spends his free time both playing sports and analyzing statistical trends in sports. In 2013 he started a website dedicated to the analysis of Major League Soccer—a sport where future success is paradoxically predicted from metrics other than goal scoring—and he is currently working to gather and analyze data on the University of Portland’s Men’s soccer team.

Hannah Callender has published four papers this year: Cracking the ActiLife Filtration Algorithm: Converting 30 Hz Data to Counts (Physiological Measurement),
Mathematical Modeling of Integrin Dynamics in Initial Formation of Focal Adhesions (Involve), Undergraduate Research as a Capstone Requirement (Involve), and Keys to Successful Mentoring of Undergraduate Research Teams with an Emphasis in Applied Mathematics Research (Proceedings of the 6th annual International Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research).

Washington

Central Washington University’s mathematics department hired five new faculty recently: three adjuncts and two tenure-track. Tyler Suronen comes to CWU from Western Washington University. Tyler earned both his Bachelors (2011) and Masters (2014) from WWU. Outside the classroom Tyler enjoys chess and biking. 

Drewcilla Walter has lived in central Washington for about 14 years and she most recently taught at Yakima Valley Community College from 2003 to 2009. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from West Texas A&M in 1995 and her Master’s degree from Tarlton College (Texas) in 1996. When Drew is not teaching math she enjoys quilting and crocheting. CWU’s third adjunct hire is Frank Underdown. Frank earned his Ph.D. at Michigan Tech in 1999. He has taught at Columbia Basin CC and at the Richland branch of WSU. Frank is currently working on improving communication bandwidth. Outside of math Frank and his wife enjoy kayaking and other outdoor pursuits. 

CWU’s two newest tenure-track hires are Jean Marie Linhart and Brandy Wiegers. Jean Marie earned her Bachelors degree from the University of Chicago in 1990 and her Ph.D. in applied math from University of Texas in 1999. She worked in industry from 1999 to 2008 and then she taught at Texas A&M from 2008 to 2014. Her research specialty is in mathematical biology and ecology. Jean Marie is an avid bicyclist and enjoys geocashing. 

Brandy Wiegars has a BS in Biological Systems Engineering from the University of Idaho and she earned her Ph.D. in applied math from U.C. Davis in 2008. Before coming to CWU she worked at the Mathematical Research Institute in Berkeley and she taught at San Francisco State University.  Her research interests lie in the field of Mathematical Biology. Brandy is also a founding director and current evaluator for MATH CIRCLES.

CWU’s math department chair from 2012 to 2014, Tim Englund, is now an Associate Dean for the College of the Sciences. Tim expects to return to the math department in two or three years. Aaron Montgomery is serving as the interim chair this year. 

At the 2014 Mathematical Competition in Modeling (MCM), teams from CWU earned rankings in the top 10 percent of more than 6,700 universities and colleges from all over the world. Both CWU teams earned a Meritorious ranking – one of the highest honors teams can receive. The two MCM teams chose different problems. Theteam of John-Paul Mann, Nathan Minor, and Benjamin J. Squire chose Problem A, the Keep-Right-Except-To-Pass-Rule. Adam Brand, Albany Thompson, and Nathaniel Deardorff chose Problem B, College Coaching Legends. Both teams were coached by
Professor Jim Bisgard.

Green River Community College is delighted to welcome two new tenure-track faculty members.
Allison Beckwith is from northeastern California. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in math from Saint Mary’s College of California and her Master’s from the University of Washington. Since graduating, Allison has been doing what she loves: teaching at Lassen Community College in her hometown as a full-time temporary instructor, as an adjunct at Shoreline and North Seattle Community Colleges, and as an adjunct at Lassen through snail mail correspondence.

Adriana Mendoza earned her Bachelor’s degree in Math from Central Washington University and her Master’s from Oregon State University. In her last year at OSU she worked together with a group of faculty on a project to revise the teaching methodologies of college algebra for greater student success. She is a recipient and actively engaged in Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program for women.

Both are excited to start pursuing their passion for teaching at Green River Community College, and we are excited to have them!
Dr. Shiv Karunakaran is a new Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Washington State University. He earned a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis on Mathematics Education from the Pennsylvania State University. His current research focus is on comparing the proving processes of undergraduate and graduate students of mathematics. Prior to Penn State, he earned a masters degree in mathematics from Miami University of Ohio and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Wabash College.

The annual Theodore G. Ostrom Lecture brings internationally renowned   mathematics scholars to the WSU campus each spring. The lecture honors Professor Emeritus Ostrom, who retired from WSU in 1981 after 21 years on the faculty. 
The 2014 Ostrom Lecture was presented in April by Dr. James P. Keener, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of Utah. He discussed mathematical models for the methods organisms use to make decisions. Classic work in the field shows how certain biological processes can be understood via the mathematics of diffusion and reaction. What is not well understood is the mechanism by which measurements and decisions are made. In his talk he discussed a model of quorum sensing (population measurement) by bacteria and a model of length measurement of flagella by bacteria. This shows how organisms use the properties of molecular diffusion coupled with appropriate chemical reactions to make decisions that enable them to survive.

This year, WSU inaugurated a postdoctoral program by welcoming Dr. Kazuo Yamazaki to a three-year position in the department.He studies equations of fluid flow, and other applications of partial differential equations. He received his Ph.D. this past May from Oklahoma State University. 
The new postdoctoral positions will allow recent Ph.D.s to come to WSU to work with senior researchers, while gaining experience teaching. These feature a reduced teaching load to enable the postdoctoral fellow to develop a vibrant and robust research program.

The University of Washington Bothell will be celebrating the mathematics major’s first birthday this fall, introducing its founding Mathematics Society officers (Skip Lester - President, Dylan Johnson - Vice President, Kalee Flenniken - Public Relations Officer, Jianya Liu - Treasurer, David Von Derau - Webmaster), and welcoming new faculty to our program. It is an exciting time to be on the UWB campus! The bios of our new faculty are below.
Dr. Emily Gismervig received her B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno in 2004, and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009. After receiving her Ph.D., she served as a teaching postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona.While at Arizona, she was named a 2010 Project NExT Fellow.Project NExT is a national program for recent mathematics Ph.Ds that provides mentoring and workshops on teaching and other aspects of the profession. She worked with the ACE program at UC Santa Cruz to improve retention among first generation college students majoring in STEM, then served as an adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara University and Foothill College.Dr. Gismervig will teach in the First Year and Pre-Major Program (CUSP), and will contribute to the Mathematics degree program at UW Bothell.

Dr. Milagros Loreto earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Simon Bolivar University in 2006 and her M.S. and B.S. in Mathematics there in 1999. In 2007, she was appointed as post-doctoral research assistant at the Mathematics Department in Duke University, where she combined numerical optimization techniques to study the behavior of physical models such as the urine concentrating mechanism of the rat medulla kidney to maximize urine concentration. Her research, focused on numerical optimization methods and mathematical physiology, has resulted in several journal publications. Before joining the UWB, she worked as Assistant Professor at Florida Memorial University. She was awarded Scholar of the Year in 2012 and Teacher of the Year in 2013 in the Mathematics and Computer Science division at Florida Memorial University. Along with her strong research background in applied mathematics, she has experience in mentoring undergraduate students in research. She demonstrates excellence in teaching and has experience with and great passion for reaching out to diverse learners. Additionally, she has considerable experience and success in working with developmental mathematics and has worked directly with Quantways (which is being used in CUSP mathematics at UWB).

Dr.Robin Angotti earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education with a minor in Statistics at North Carolina State University in 2004her M.S.B.S.in Mathematics from East Carolina University in1988 respectively. She was an Assistant Professor at East Carolina University prior to moving to Seattle. Her research has been focused on the use of technology to enhance students’ mathematical thinking, statistics education, and multiple representations of functions. When away from the university, Dr. Angotti's interests include cycling, kayaking, climbing, paragliding and back-packing in the Cascade mountains.

Andrew Berget brings Western Washington University additional expertise in discrete mathematics. His research area is algebraic and geometric combinatorics. After completing his studies at the University of Minnesota, Andy completed a post-doc at the University of California, Davis, and then held a temporary position at the University of Washington.
Kimihiro Noguchi is our new statistician, with particular interests in nonparametric statistics and time series. Kimi completed his undergraduate and masters work at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and then completed his doctorate at the University of California, Davis. He comes to us from a post-doctoral position at Colorado State University.

Professor Jerry Johnson has retired after almost 30 years of service to Western Washington University. Jerry was central to both elementary and secondary mathematics education at Western, mentoring faculty and students and developing our strong, distinctive programs in those fields. His boundless energy and enthusiasm were evident in the many events he organized to stimulate interest in mathematics amongst K-12 and college students and the wider community, and in the many professional development opportunities he provided teachers across the state and the nation. He received numerous grants and honors, reflecting his stature as a nationally recognized leader in mathematics education. He was perhaps proudest of being the long-overdue recipient of Western’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010. He continues to contribute to the profession through his popular weekly MathNEXUS report, which features links to a variety of sources and news reports relevant to a general interest in mathematics and its teaching. He expects soon to be able to provide public access to an extensive and innovative website providing numerous resources for classes in the History of Mathematics, another area of great expertise and interest of his.
Pacific Northwest Section NExT 
at Missoula Meeting

June, 2014

By Mark Fitch, UAA

Thursday morning, June 26th, dawned bright and calm and mathematics faculty from around the Pacific Northwest gathered in the Payne Family Native American Center at the University of Montana to discuss their trade.

Topics of interest this year included writing letters of recommendation, transitioning to leadership positions, academic honesty, statistics education, and alternative general education courses. I personally left having more ideas on how to write letters for our students applying for REUs and graduate school. 

The discussion on how to transition to leadership positions benefited from the experience of many Project NExT participants who are or have served in varied positions as well as everyone remembering good and bad examples of leadership in the academy. Who will soon forget the tale of a skills survey that included the conclusion “You are not well suited to leadership unless you work in the academy in which case you are better off than your peers”?

In an era of increased access to information, suggestions on assignments less conducive to cheating were quite helpful; even more important were suggestions on how to help students avoid inappropriate actions. As always, hearing what others are doing with their courses, including statistics and non-algebra entry level courses, provided great ideas.

Just as multiple rain showers passed over during the day, these sessions showered us with ideas to take home and improve our own work and programs.

PNW Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient: 
Tevian Dray

By Tom Dick

Professor Tevian Dray is truly deserving of the honor represented by the Pacific Northwest MAA section’s Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching.  

Tevian is simply an outstanding teacher, whose influence on college teaching through his curriculum and professional development efforts has gone far beyond the direct impact he has had on students in his own classes.

Here at Oregon State University, Tevian has been recognized repeatedly for his excellent teaching.  He has been awarded both the Frederick Horne and Loyd Carter awards (presented annually for outstanding and inspirational teaching in the OSU’s College of Science), and the University Honors College has recognized him with both its Outstanding Faculty and Eminent Faculty distinctions.  Most recently, Tevian was presented with the university-wide Elizabeth P. Ritchie Distinguished Professor award for his long career of exceptional teaching.

Tevian has worked with a wide array of students, from first-term calculus students to mathematics and physics majors to advanced graduate students to inservice elementary and secondary teachers.  With all audiences he has been highly successful and he has established himself as a mathematical communicator of the highest order.   The curriculum development he has pursued through the NSF funded Vector Calculus Bridges project has influenced college and university mathematics instructors nationwide.  Indeed, when I used these materials myself some years ago, I found my own knowledge of vector calculus enriched and enhanced in ways I could not have imagined.

In my first year as chair of OSU’s mathematics department, Tevian approached me to volunteer to chair our teaching committee.  His intent was to provide our new graduate teaching assistants with far more ongoing support than offered through our initial teaching workshop before fall term.  He pioneered a teaching seminar throughout the academic year, bringing in guest speakers from across campus to discuss methods and strategies for effective and successful teaching.  Most importantly, the seminar allowed him to impart his own enthusiasm and deep caring for high quality teaching of mathematics to the “next generation” of mathematics faculty. 

Professor Tevian Dray’s selection for the Distinguished Teaching Award is a fitting tribute to a talented and dedicated mathematician and teacher.   Congratulations!

Upcoming Meetings:

2014 nth Annual Combinatorial Potlatch
2015 Oregon Academy of Sciences (see p. 4)
2015 PNW MAA meeting at University of Washington Tacoma April 10-11 (see p. 1)
2015 NUMS April 10-11, Tacoma (see p. 1)
KRYPTOS5 April 16-20, 2015 (see p. 4)

http://sections.maa.org/pnw/events/ (section)
http://www.maa.org/subpage_4.html (national)

Editor’s Greetings

Welcome to all of the new faculty in our region!  

After four terms as newsletter editor (8 years!), I will be stepping down after the spring newsletter this year.  It is an interesting position, and you get to know about a lot of section members.  If you are willing to take over, please let the section Chair, Brian Blitz, know.  You can find his email in the Chair’s Report above.  

Colin Starr, Editor
cstarr@willamette.edu

PNW MAA Chair’s Report
By Brian Blitz

Hey PNW-MAAers,

I hope everyone is enjoying their fall; it sure is getting dark up here.  Last year there was a committee to update the bylaws, the section voted on them at the Montana meeting, and the MAA approved them at MathFest.  One of the changes was to remove the Liaison Coordinator officer position; however, the national MAA still maintains a list of liaisons for each school in the section, so we will still be communicating with the liaisons through emails.   

The Section Officers Meeting at MathFest was mostly concerned with the centennial celebration of the MAA at next year’s MathFest, August 5-8 in Washington D.C.  Each section will end up getting a new banner and there will be more invited speakers at this MathFest.  

Finally, I would like to thank all the members that volunteer their time and energy to make our section vibrant and effective.  Please let me know if you have any concerns or if you are interested in getting more involved with the section.  In particular, this year I will be appointing a new newsletter editor, so let me know if you are interested in that officer position.

Brian Blitz

bgblitz@uas.alaska.edu

Oregon Academy of Sciences 
2015 Meeting 
University of Portland 
Saturday, February 28

Dear Colleagues, 

We are pleased to announce that the 74th annual meeting of the Oregon Academy of Science (OAS) will be hosted at the University of Portland on Saturday, February 28th, 2015. Along with 10 minute contributed talks, the meeting will feature a poster session, a lecture by Bob Butler on the Cascadia subduction zone, terroir tasting, a 150-mile radius "Eat Local" dinner, and a lecture by Scott Burns entitled "The Mystique of Terroir: Geology, Soils, Climate and Wines in the Willamette Valley and the Columbia River Gorge". 

We are looking forward to revitalizing the Math, Stats, and Computer Science section at this year's meeting. All Oregon-based mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and their students are invited to contribute talks or a poster. Registration opens on November 15th and abstracts are due on February 2nd. A newsletter is forthcoming with more details about the meeting, as well as some general information about the OAS, its mission, and its history. For more information about OAS, see our website at 

http://www.oas.pdx.edu/ 

Anyone interested in subscribing to the mailing list or having any questions should send an e-mail to Christopher Lee (leec@up.edu). Please feel free to spread the word about the meeting, we would love to see Oregon's mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists well-represented! 

All the best, 

Christopher Hallstrom 
Christopher Lee 
Chairs, OAS Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science section 

KRYPTOS5: A Series of Cryptanalysis Challenges
April 16 – 20, 2015

KRYPTOS5 is a contest open to undergraduate students.  The theme of the contest is centered around the breaking, or cryptanalysis, of ciphers (secret writing). Each challenge presents contestants with a brief scenario together with some ciphertext (encoded message). The goal is to discover the original English plaintext message! 

Clues to help break the cipher may be contained in the actual ciphertext or in the details of the accompanying scenario.

While it is not the intent of this contest to test overly technical aspects of cryptanalysis or advanced mathematical algorithms, some familiarity with basic codemaking and codebreaking is certainly helpful. Some useful sources include:

•	Challenges from last year's contest. 
•	The American Cryptogram Association.
•	Wikipedia entries for Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
•	The Code Book by Simon Singh.
•	Secret History: The Story of Cryptology by Craig Bauer
•	Codes and Ciphers by R.F. Churchhouse
Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing by Martin Gardner
We had over 100 students from around the Pacific Northwest participate last year and many have been clamoring for more!  Please announce this contest to your students!

Visit: http://www.cwu.edu/math/kryptos/ for more information.  Registration will open about a month before the contest begins next Spring.

KRYPTOS is sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Section of the Mathematical Association of America together with Central Washington University and Western Oregon University.

n-th Annual Combinatorial Potlatch at Western Washington University
Saturday, November 22, 2014 

The n-th Annual Combinatorial Potlatch will be hosted by Western Washington University on Saturday, November 22, 2014 in Bellingham, WA.  

Potlatch Page: http://buzzard.ups.edu/potlatch/index.html 

Conference:  http://buzzard.ups.edu/potlatch/2014/potlatch2014.html 

There is no advance registration required, nor any registration fee.The first talk will be mid- to late-morning, to allow for travel, followed by a no-host lunch and two talks later in the afternoon.Many participants stay for dinner locally. 

Combinatorial Potlatches have been held for many years at various locations around Puget Sound and southern British Columbia and are an opportunity for combinatorialists in the region to gather informally for a day of invited talks and conversation. All are welcome.  Please forward this announcement to anyone, especially graduate students, who might be interested.

Program Committee: Nancy Neudauer, Pacific U <nancy@pacificu.edu> 
Communications Committee: Rob Beezer, U of Puget Sound <beezer@ups.edu> 
Local Arrangements: Amites Sarkar, Western Washington University, amites.sarkar@wwu.edu 

Not getting section emails?

At the most recent section meeting, a number of participants said that they were not receiving MAA emails such as solicitations for news for the newsletter.  Many were surprised to learn that they needed to "opt in" to these emails per the MAA's new policy.  If you wish to opt in now, click here to go the MAA's  mailing list sign-up page.  After you enter your email address, you will be asked to submit it, and then instructions will be emailed to you about how to proceed.
To receive member and section news, you need to check the first box in the list (“member news”).  (Many members may have checked only the “general” box at the bottom.)
It generally takes one to four weeks for the change to take effect.