StFX students Carter Clifton and Taylor Rose took top honours in statistics at the Science Atlantic Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science (MSCS) Conference, held Oct. 23-24 at the University of New Brunswick. Mr. Clifton won first place for Undergraduate Research, while Ms. Rose received the Science Communication Award.
Science Atlantic MSCS is an annual regional event for students, researchers, and faculty across Atlantic Canada.
StFX had a full delegation in attendance.
Dr. Darien DeWolf of the Department of Math & Statistics and six students, Carter Clifton, Taylor Rose, April Hilchie, Jennie MacLean, Nina Dort, and Ewan MacDuff attended the conference. All students competed in the conference’s mathematics problem solving competition, and Mr. Clifton and Ms. Rose each gave research presentations.
Mr. Clifton, a fourth year student, spoke on his opioid mortality models. His talk was entitled, "Modelling Opioid Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and was a research project supervised by Dr. Ryan Lukeman.
Ms. Rose, a second year student who is also a lobster fisherman, spoke on models predicting lobster yield using data she collected from lobster fishermen in Cape Breton. Her talk was entitled “How weather affects daily catch in LFA 27,” a project supervised by Dr. DeWolf.
“This is great visibility for research at StFX at a regional scale,” says Dr. DeWolf.
He noted the students also attended all plenary presentations, given by prestigious scholars on topics ranging from programming in the era of AI, connections in mathematics and graph theory, and exploring the world through data and models. They also attended student sessions and were able to learn mathematics at an accessible level.
“This gives them insight into what work can be done beyond their own degrees if they choose to do graduate work in Atlantic Canada,” Dr. DeWolf says.
“Of course, there are also the intangible benefits of encouraging our students to engage beyond our own circle and connect with peers from other Atlantic institutions. Our departure was delayed as students exchanged contact information, and it was clear that each student left with a sense of fulfillment and renewed appreciation of the discipline and community.”
Attending a conference like this builds up the confidence of the students, he says, as he noted having second year students present at regional conferences is quite the boost to their professional development.
“Attending the MSCS conference at UNB Saint John was an extremely rewarding and proud moment in my academic career,” Ms. Rose says.
“I had the opportunity to meet so many knowledgeable people who showed real interest in my research, offering valuable opinions and insights on how I can continue to improve and expand my research. Coming from a small fishing community in Cape Breton, I was extremely proud to share a little bit about an industry that is such an important piece to both my academic career, and my life itself. Commercial lobster fishing isn’t something that is always recognized in academic settings, so to get the opportunity to share the experience of myself and local fishermen was exciting.”
Ms. Rose says having people approach her after her presentation expressing their interest in the topic made it so much more meaningful. “I’m very grateful to StFX, particularly my data science professor, Dr. Darien DeWolf for inspiring my passion for research and opening doors to opportunities I had not imagined.”
Mr. Clifton says he really enjoyed seeing the other student presentations. “I find it very interesting to get a peek into other fields of research. It is fascinating to see people talk about and explain problems they are studying. As someone who wants to pursue graduate studies and hopes to become a professor, an opportunity to give a research talk is always valuable to me. I feel more confident every time I give a presentation, and this time is no exception.”
He says he also enjoys sharing his research experiences with other students and hearing their thoughts on his project. “The math competition was a really neat experience. I spoke with students from other schools afterwards about their approaches to a number of the problems and it was really neat to see how many different ways people tried to solve the questions.”
Ewan MacDuff says he found the conference valuable in several ways, including the chance to meet up with old friends from math departments around the Maritimes and to make new ones. Seeing what work is happening now is always great, he says, and as an aspiring teacher, seeing what techniques people use in their presentations to make the material easier to understand is extremely helpful.
