Lewis University

Lewis University computer science and cybersecurity students finished as the top team in Illinois and 10th overall the 120 schools at the November 12-13 Department of Energy Cyberforce Competition.

Eight students mentored by Lewis Mathematics faculty presented their research in August at Mathfest, the second-largest annual mathematics conference in the world, and the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Indianapolis. Mathematics major Zachary Campbell won the Janet L. Andersen Award for Undergraduate Research in Mathematical or Computational Biology and was awarded one of MathFest's Outstanding Poster Awards. Sulyok mentored Campbell in his presentation, "Mathematically Modeling Recurrent C. difficile Infections in Long-Term Care Facilities." Stephenson and Sulyok co-advised mathematics majors Chuckie Gentile and Mackenzie Welsh and data science and computer science double major Nuvia Hernandez, who presented "Development of Agent-Based Models for Evaluation of Precision Nutrition Interventions through a Socioeconomic Lens." Mathematics majors Philiffe Tebalan and Evan Burns, who Harsy mentored, also presented their work, "Graph Theoretical Modeling of Self-Assembling DNA of the Double Cone Graph." Harsy also mentored Kaitlyn Buck, a mathematics major from the University of Texas at Austin, and Rawdah Abdullah, a Dominican University mathematics major. Buck's poster presentation, "Multi-Dimensional Graphs Modeling Self-Assembling DNA Nanostructures" was honored with one of Mathfest's Outstanding Poster Awards. Abdullah's presentation, "Optimal Tile-Based Self-Assembly of DNA Using Graph Theory," was funded by the PUMA STEM program.

One of Lewis University's student teams earned first place at the 2024 Association of Colleges of the Chicago Area (ACCA) Calculus Competition. The winning team consisted of Benyamin Bamburac, Ruben Franchini and Leonardo Ramos. Lewis University's second team, who earned 12th place, included Mackenzie Welsh, Chuckie Gentile and Tyler Ranieri. The ACCA Calculus Competition typically sees 35 teams compete with other ACCA teams by completing short answer and multiple-choice questions within 90 minutes. The ACCA is a consortium of 15 private liberal arts colleges that promotes collegiate education in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, psychology, sociology/anthropology, and business/economics.