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Blerta Shtylla ’05 (Tirana, Albania) conducted research in separate mathematics and bioengineering programs this summer after being chosen for each among pools of outstanding national candidates.
Earning selection in a group of students ranging from undergraduate to postdoctoral, Shtylla spent two weeks in May in the Program for Women in Mathematics held by the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University. She then used a summer fellowship from the Mayo Clinic to study in the bioengineering department at the Mayo Graduate School. In a field of 675 applicants, she was one of about 65 undergraduate students to be offered the fellowship this year.
The Program for Women in Mathematics brings together research mathematicians with women undergraduate and graduate students for an intensive 11-day workshop on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. Founded in 1994, the program includes lectures and seminars on a focused topic, mentoring, discussions on peer relations, and an introduction to career opportunities.
A previous independent study in the mathematics department made the topic of the program, Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, especially interesting to Shtylla. She learned mathematics through daily lectures and attended talks given by distinguished mathematicians who were fellows of the institute.
“The program was a great opportunity to get to meet a lot of successful women mathematicians, because the participants ranged from undergrads like me to postdoctoral students,” she explains.
Following her two-week experience in May, Shtylla, who has a minor in biotechnology/bioengineering, participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program sponsored by Mayo Graduate School. Students from around the United States come to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to work with both young and established scientists on a broad range of biomedical research questions. The fellowship awards each of them $4,000 for 10 weeks. From this stipend, students are responsible for their own travel, housing and meals.
Shtylla worked on problems concerning image correction in magnetic resonance imaging with Armando Manduca, associate professor of biophysics and assistant professor of radiology in the department of physiology and biomedical engineering.
Programs have been implemented to automatically correct MRI images corrupted by patient motion before the image goes to doctors, but sometimes the algorithms within the program fail. Shtylla looked at ways to implement an algorithm with a lower chance of failure.
“My project was aimed at working on motion correction algorithms,” she explains. “More specifically, at implementing an optimization algorithm called Simulated Annealing for automatic motion correction in MRI.”
“This experience was a great opportunity to try to use the skills learned in the classroom to solve real-world problems,” she adds.
She is continuing her work this semester through a general survey of magnetic resonance imaging and its different applications as an independent study in the electrical and computer engineering department.
This wasn’t the first time Shtylla spent a portion of her summer focused on mathematics research. Last summer, she presented results of her work on knot theory as one of three Lafayette students sharing their research at the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics. She conducted the research with Louis Zulli, assistant professor of mathematics,in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates. Hosted by Lafayette, the program involved four students from Lafayette and others from Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Boston University, Shaw, St. Joseph’s, California State-Long Beach, and North Carolina State.
”Blerta’s talk was outstanding,” says Zulli. “She discussed complex mathematics clearly, with pose and enthusiasm.”
Shtylla says Research Experience for Undergraduates was a great learning experience that exposed her to new areas of mathematics. Her participation in the program was funded by Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program, in which students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
She is a recipient of the Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize, awarded to sophomores who have demonstrated scholarship as first-year students, and has been inducted into Pi Mu Epsilon, the mathematics honor society.
“The fact that I am at Lafayette and have had the chance to explore and learn and challenge myself continuously is a highlight in itself,” she says. “I have always had a lot to do, but the best thing is that I have really enjoyed what I am doing, so it’s never felt like too much.”
A pre-med student, Shtylla served an externship three years ago through Career Services with a pediatrician in New Jersey. “That gave me a great opportunity to witness a doctor in action and to make a decision about my future career plans,” she says.
This semester, she is conducting a yearlong honors thesis in mathematics on Newton’s Method and the effects of perturbations on the convergence of the method. A perturbation is a variation in a designated orbit, as of a planet, resulting from the influence of one or more external bodies.
Shtylla is the social chair for Pi Mu Epsilon, Student Government representative for the Enrollment Planning Faculty Committee, a member of the International Students Association, and a returning resident adviser.
She recently discussed her research experiences on campus as part of a series sponsored by the mathematics department, What I Did this Summer (WITS). Joining her at the WITS session was Maureen Jackson ’06 (Japan), who worked for six weeks (two three-week sessions) as a teaching assistant for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY) program hosted by Lafayette. Jackson was involved with the course Mathematical Modeling, which covered a wide variety of math topics, including graph theory, fair division, symmetry, and voting systems. She worked with an instructor in a class with 13 students, primarily in grades eight through ten.
CTY selects students within the 97th percentile on standardized tests normally taken in school. Candidates for admission participate in an additional set of standardized tests used to measure mathematical and verbal reasoning. All classes are taught well above grade level. Rather than assign grades, instructors write detailed evaluations describing each student’s progress and achievements in the course and outlining areas for further growth.
After taking three education courses at Lafayette, Jackson was almost positive she wanted to teach. Her experience this summer confirmed this, she says, as she put into practice what she had been learning.
“I learned so much about teaching because I gained experience in how to group students to give them the best opportunity to learn, how to best challenge students by answering their questions with questions, how to balance lecture with activities that apply the concepts, how to balance the pace between students who understood very quickly and students who took a little longer to grasp the concepts, and many other things that I can not even put into words,” Jackson says.
Her responsibilities included helping with lesson plans, teaching lessons, monitoring and assisting students during evening study sessions, and observing student progress.
“Seeing the students grasp the concepts [and] becoming more comfortable with teaching,” Jackson says, were the greatest rewards of the program.
She co-leads a Bible study and is a member of the leadership team for Lafayette Christian Fellowship and is a photographer for the school newspaper.
A National Leader in Undergraduate Research. Blerta Shtylla ’05 has presented research conducted under the mentoring of Louis Zulli, assistant professor of mathematics, at two national math conferences.