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Overview
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Embracing the Mathematics Clinics at CGU and at the highly regarded undergraduate Claremont Colleges, the Claremont Mathematics Clinic has proven to be an effective "two-way street" between applied mathematicians at the colleges and scientists and mathematicians in industry or government laboratories in need of amplified mathematical experience.
In the 170-plus year-long projects that have been completed by Clinic teams over the last two decades, students and faculty have gained an opportunity to apply their mathematical skills to an impressive variety of real-world, current problems. Client scientists and engineers who propose projects benefit from useful, relevant solutions. Recent projects led to two patents and a computational model that outperforms the current industry standard.
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Goals
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Mathematics Clinic goals are to:
 provide students with experience for a career in industry
 or government
provide students with experience far beyond normal
university training
sustain a curriculum attuned to real-world applications
foster an ongoing dialog between faculty and scientists,
bring industrial trends to campus, and alert industry to
new techniques developed in academia
allow business and industry to draw upon the intellectual
and physical resources of The Claremont Colleges
develop specific projects to be addressed by joint teams of
faculty members, students, and industry
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Description
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Clinic teams address problems of sufficient magnitude and complexity that their analysis, solution and exposition require substantial effort over the course of an academic year or full-time involvement over a summer. If problems require expertise from disciplines other than mathematics--such as engineering, physics or economics--advanced undergraduate or graduate students from these disciplines may join the Clinic team. The Mathematics Clinic works closely with its counterpart, the Engineering Clinic at Harvey Mudd College.
The creative resources of the Mathematics Clinic often far exceed those normally available even to a fairly large organization.
The Claremont Colleges' mathematics programs stress creative thinking. This means that students and faculty members are exceptionally well equipped to address problems. Many faculty members have considerable background in industry.
The Clinic includes specialists actively engaged in research in nearly all phases of applied mathematics, with established reputations in areas such as mathematical modeling of physical and economic systems; differential and integral equations; numerical analysis; Monte Carlo methods; operations research; scheduling; mathematical programming and optimization; probability theory; applied statistics; and computer science.
Recognizing the value of the Mathematics Clinic, the National Science Foundation has provided two major grants: one to develop the Clinic, and the other to bring new mathematicians to Claremont. To date, 52 post-doctoral mathematicians have participated in and benefited from the Clinic experience.
Students receive credit for their work in the Mathematics Clinic.
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Sample
Projects
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Some of the more than 170 projects conducted by the Mathematics Clinic over the last 30 years are:
Modeling Junction Capacitance
Information Sciences Institute -- 2001-02
Modeling Wind Turbine Power Generation
Southern California Edison -- 2001-02
Depth from Defocus
Newport Corporation -- 2000-01
Modeling of Short Channel MOSFET Devices for Use in
VLSI Simulations
USC Information Sciences Institute -- 1992-93
Genetic Algorithms
Hughes Aircraft Company -- 1992-93
Sizing an Artifact Neural Network
Naval Health Research Center -- 1991-92
Mathematical Analysis of Parameter Extraction from a Non-Linear
MOSFET Model
Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- 1987-88
Vibrating Element Densitometer
ITT Barton -- 1982-83
Automatic Word Recognition
Interstate Electronics -- 1981-82
Evaluation of Nuclear Safety Code Efficiency Schemes
Department of Energy / Atomics International -- 1979-80
Caltech President's Fund Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Computing Techniques
Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- 1977-78
Mathematical Modeling of Air Pollution Transport
Rockwell International Science Center -- 1974-75
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Clinic Faculty
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The areas of expertise of The Claremont Colleges faculty members who participate in the Mathematics Clinic cover an impressive range of mathematical applications. In addition to those faculty members listed below, more than 50 post-doctoral mathematicians from such institutions as Purdue University, Indiana University, The University of Guelph (Canada) and Trinity College (Ireland) have served as Mathematics Clinic advisors during year-long visits to Claremont
John Angus: Probability, statistics, neural networks, genetic algorithms,
computer-intensive methods in statistics.
Ellis Cumberbatch: Fluids, solids, transistor modeling, asymptotics.
Richard Elderkin: Mathematical modeling, differential equations.
Henry Krieger: Probability, statistics, operations research.
Mario Martelli: Non-linear analysis, chaos, applied mathematics.
Hedley Morris:
Janet Myhre: Statistics, operations research, simulation.
Ali Nadim: Applied mathematics, fluid dynamics, scientific computing
Ami Radunskaya: Dynamical systems, stochastic processes,
applications of dynamical systems to instrument modeling, sound
generation, interactive composition.
Adolfo Rumbos: Partial differential equations, bifurcation techniques.
Jerome Spanier: Numerical analysis, Monte Carlo methods, fractional
calculus, transport and diffusion applications.
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