With her blue dry erase marker and notes in hand, Hayley Mattson stepped up to the whiteboard and began explaining the mathematics behind a bid-ask spread. She had spent the last nine months researching this model - which determines the winner in the stock market's version of survival of the fittest - and others.
Mattson is one of 10 students to benefit from a $700,000 grant given to BYU's Information and Decision Algorithms Laboratory (IDeA Labs) from the National Science Foundation in 2006. Applications have already begun trickling in from students hoping to take her and her peers' places next year
In addition to the funding from NSF, the labs receive donations from industrial partners and other groups they work closely with.
The NSF review panel chose IDeA Labs' proposal over its competitors because of its potential to function as a national model for how mentoring can be done in the computational and mathematical sciences.
Last year, IDeA Labs directors Jeffrey Humpherys and Sean Warnick received about 15 applications, and they expect to double that number this year.
"The applicant pool is looking really strong this year," Humpherys said. "We took 10 really strong people last year. ... This year I think we are going to have 12, maybe even 15 really strong students who are highly motivated and extremely energetic. And we feed off of that energy as faculty."
IDeA Labs' NSF program takes up to 12 students, who each receive a $10,000 scholarship, and immediately immerses them in an intense summer workshop known as the Computational Science Training for Undergraduates in the Mathematical Sciences, where they learn the computational skills necessary to begin developing their respective research projects. The following year, they continue to pursue their research ideas, with the eventual submission of a final paper for journal publication.
"To take everybody in and have them learn together, to have a group that feeds off each other and works in tandem, that structure could be something we see more of," Humpherys said.
Students can apply online at idealabs.byu.edu by March 14.
Photo Courtesy of Autumn Buys