News Releases

Bernard Lipat and Rusty Laracuenti of Jersey City, both juniors majoring in mathematics at New Jersey City University, became the first NJCU math students to ever present at a major national conference when they were featured at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the largest annual mathematics meeting in the world.

More than 7,200 mathematicians, exhibitors, and students from 36 countries attended the annual conference, the 95th annual meeting of the MAA and the 118th annual meeting of the AMS, in Boston.

Misters Lipat and Laracuenti, who presented on “Modeling the Effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Meltdown on the Marine Environment,” were accompanied by their NJCU faculty mentors, Dr. Yi Ding of Jersey City, a professor of mathematics, and Dr. Zhixiong Chen of Livingston, an associate professor of mathematics.

The NJCU students also received an Outstanding Presentation award during the meeting’s Undergraduate Student Poster Session. Their poster placed in the top 15% of the 2012 competition, a record-breaking showcase of more than 300 projects judged by a panel comprised of more than 200 professional mathematicians.

Among the institutions represented at the conference were Boston University, Brown University, California State Polytechnic University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Rice University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Smith College, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, University of Michigan, Virginia Tech, and Yale University.