Project description: Clemson University has been discussing how to safely teach in-person classes this fall. One proposal is to have a schedule in which only a third of the students in a class would attend on any given day. It seems that it would a good thing if this were done in a coordinated fashion: perhaps setting it up so that students are assigned to A, B or C days, and only come to classes on their day. One issue with this is that this doesn't ensure that all classes have the right number of each day's students: for large classes it would be likely around the right number, but for smaller classes it could be that there's a much higher proportion, say, of A students than B or C.

Project task: given a bipartite graph matching students to classes, find a "good" assignment of students to days so that no class has too many of any days.

Skills required: no prerequisite courses: ability to code would be an advantage.

Project faculty:

• Applied Graph Theory Professor: Prof. Neil Calkin
  Email: calkin at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: Neil Calkin has a wide range of mathematical interests, especially in probabilistic methods applied to other areas. From 2002 to 2013 he was involved with running Clemson's Math REU. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge University, and earned his PhD at the University of Waterloo. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and has been on faculty at Clemson since 1997.
• Applied Statistics Professor: Prof. Billy Bridges
  Email: wbrdgs at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: Dr. Bridges came to Clemson University in 1984 after completing his PhD at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.  His primary professional interests involve the development and analysis of statistical models for survey and experimental research data.  He teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses in statistical methods, regression analysis, statistical research design, and data analysis.
• Industrial Engineering Professor: Prof. Mary E. Kurz
  Email: mkurz at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: by appointment
  Bio: Mary Beth works on applied operations research topics, working often with manufacturers like BMW, Samsung and Milliken. Her interests are in the application and implementation of systems that support decision-makers in tactical systems (like day-to-day operations, as opposed to long-term decision making).
• Operations Research Professor: Prof. Matt Saltzman
  Email: mjs at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: Matt Saltzman's interests cover operations research and computer science, with particular focus on computational optimization and large- scale computing. His degrees are from Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. He is founding president of the COIN-OR (COmputational INfrastructure for Operations Research) Foundation, developers and publishers of open- source software for operations research.
• Graduate Assistant: Amy Burton
  Email: aburto2 at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: Amy started graduate studies at Clemson in 2017. Since then she has completed her MS degree and is continuing on with her PhD. She earned her BA from Erskine College in Mathematics and Business Administration. Her research is in operations research.
• Graduate Assistant: Molly Honecker
  Email: mhoneck at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: Molly came to Clemson in 2017 for the PhD program from Florida Gulf Coast University down in Ft. Myers, Florida. She graduated from FGCU with a BS in mathematics and her research interests included statistics and algebra.
• Graduate Assistant: Blake Splitter
  Email: bsplitt at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
  Office hours: TBA
  Bio: coming soon