Imagine creating career-building connections between peers, near peers (graduate students and postdocs), and academic professionals.

Imagine spending your summer in a fun, memorable, and intellectually stimulating environment.

Now, imagine having this experience while being paid a $3,570 stipend. (Providence, RI room, board, and travel funding provided for in-person programming, pandemic permitting.)

The 2021 Summer@ICERM program at Brown University is an eight-week residential program designed for a select group of 18-22 undergraduate scholars.

The faculty advisers will present a variety of research projects on the theme of computational polygonal billiards and flat surfaces. This overarching theme will allow participants to use the theory of flat surfaces, along with the computational tools of pre-existing free software including Sage packages, to work on open problems in the field. Faculty will also guide the development of free software for flat surfaces. Students will be assigned to one or more research groups before the program begins and will be expected to do background reading before the program starts. During the program, students will work with faculty advisors to ensure they have the background understanding necessary to work on the problems. Students will also learn programming skills and computational techniques, including using Sage.

Throughout the eight-week program, students will work on their projects in groups of two to four, supervised by faculty advisors and aided by teaching assistants. Students will meet daily, give regular talks about their findings, attend mini-courses, guest talks, and professional development seminars, and will acquire skills in free software development. Students will learn how to collaborate mathematically, working closely in their teams to write up their research into a paper.

This program is partially funded by a grant from the National Security Agency.