At the university, I worked in the research group of Professor Roland Speicher, which broadly studied the mathematical fields of free probability and random matrix theory. The Speicher group participated in the German Research Foundation’s Sonderforschungsgebiet (special research area) 195 “Symbolic Tools in Mathematics and their Application,” a collaborative research center between several universities, which provided funding for my project.
My project concerned an application of the mathematical field of graph theory to a problem that arose in my mentor’s research. He was interested in studying the situation when a graph has so-called quantum symmetry, an important concept in the rising field of quantum information theory. Along with some other researchers, he had developed an algorithm which could potentially detect these special quantums symmetric in a given graph, but it only works for a restricted class of graphs that had not been studied before. I was able to apply my mathematics coursework, in particular the class 18.212 Algebraic Combinatorics, to prove several properties of this special class of graphs. Additionally, I used my commutation skills from my CI-M classes to deliver a talk on the work I had done in a research seminar at Universität des Saarlandes.
Spending the summer doing math research in Germany with the DAAD RISE program was an opportunity to both gain relevant experience in a field of interest as well as travel to a part of the world I had long wanted to see. The whole experience not only expanded my worldview but also influenced my future career path, inspiring me to consider attending graduate school in Germany.
