CURI Academic Year Student Research Gandini

Job Title: CURI Academic Year Researcher

Classification:Student Employee (non-exempt)

Name and Address of Employer:St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Ave Northfield MN 55057

If the position requires the student to work off campus provide the name and address here:

Department Name: CURI

Unit Number (5 digits): 16118

Length of Position:See Employment Authorization

Contact Person/Supervisor:Faculty advisor

Wage: $13

Description of the Position: (Purpose of the Position): Students work together with a faculty member on scholarly or artistic pro

Faculty Mentor: Francesca Gandini

Project Description:We will study the intersection posets of subspace arrangements arising from graphs of group actions. For the regular action of a supersolvable group we know that the poset is shallable a property that gives a labelling of the poset with nice geometric structure. We conjectured that this is true for all permutation actions. If not what additional conditions on the group are needed What about any action of a supersolvable group

We will start investigating the conjecture with small groups and simple actions by attempting to find an explicit shelling of the posets. One way to approach the problem is to construct a labelling of the vertices from the coset poset (i.e. the poset for the regular action) and try to use it to build a shelling on a subposet. Computationally in GAP (a Computer Algebra System) we have some rudimentary code that can generate the posets. If we can improve the code we can make the pictures more useful in finding a nice labelling of the vertices.

Prerequisites: Abstract Algebra I some coding experience.

Additional useful coursework: Topology Abstract Algebra II Advanced Linear Algebra Discrete Math Combinatorics Number Theory Software Design Algorithms

Transferable Skills: Research and presentations.

Duties and Responsibilities:Each project has its own timing as determined by the individual faculty mentor. See theCURI Digital Olaf databasefor individual project descriptions and details or talk to the Faculty mentor.

Qualifications: (Education/Experience/Skills)A student interested in applying for the CURI academic year program must be enrolled as an on-campus St. Olaf student. There is no GPA requirement that must be met in order to apply for the program but a students academic record will be considered during the selection process. Skills are dependent on individual projects.

If you dont have a work award and select No to the application questions your application will be automatically rejected by the system. If you apply and are rejected please contact Erin Eltonga to resolve this for you.

This job description is for general information purposes. It is not intended to list all duties and responsibilities of the position. This job description is subject to change at any time by St. Olaf College with or without prior notice.