Research Opportunities

Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience

The Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) is an opportunity for students who have completed their first year at Stonehill to perform full-time, high-quality research over the summer months under the guidance of an expert faculty researcher. A student in the SURE program spends 8-10 weeks of the summer collaborating with a professor - and sometimes other students - on an original research project that fits into the faculty member’s overall research program.

The experience includes postgraduate career seminars, program-wide outings, weekly lunches, and a student poster session in the fall. SURE students generally live on campus and receive a stipend for their summer work.

Recent Examples

• Julia Barry ’22, Emily Brady ’22, Michaela Fitzgerald ’23, Kelsey MacKinnon ’22, Robert McAlpine ’23, and Baily McNeill ’22 worked with Leyda Almodovar, assistant professor of mathematics, Hsin-hao Su, professor of mathematics, and Heiko Todt, associate professor of mathematics on graph labeling and DNA self-assembly projects.
• Sydney Martin ’19 and Samantha Mauro ’19 worked with Leyda Almodovar, assistant professor of mathematics, and Heiko Todt, associate professor of mathematics, on the design of self-assembling DNA complexes.
• Catello Battinelli ’18, Jason Dimmick ’18, Sarah Finnigan ’18, Kelly Powers ’18 and Matthew Young ’18 worked with Hsin-hao Su, associate professor of mathematics, and Heiko Todt, assistant professor of mathematics, on projects that included finding the edge-balance index sets of the L-product graph.

Research Presentations

• Michaela Fitzgerald ’23, “DNA Self-Assembly: Friendship Graphs” presented at the 53rd Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2022.
• MeiRose Neal ’20 and Jessica Williams ’20, “DNA Self-Assembly: Complete Tripartite Graphs” presented at the MAA Northeast Section Meeting at Babson College in November 2019.
• Samantha Mauro ’19, “Minimal Tile and Bond-Edge Types for Self-Assembling DNA Graphs of Triangular Titles” presented at the 50th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2019.
• Laura Darr ’19, “On the Edge-Balance Index Sets of Distance Two of Wheels” presented at the 49th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2018.
• William Melahouris ’18, “On the Integer-Magic Spectra of Connected and Sliced Cycles” presented at the 49th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2018.

In addition, student research has been published in Congressus Numerantium and the International Journal of Contemporary Mathematical Sciences.