Harris Faculty Fellows Research Presentations
“Products and Process in Modeling Hypergraphs” by Nicole Eikmeier and “Quantum Confinement and Its Dilatonic Geometrodynamics” by Leo Rodriguez
Harris Faculty Fellows Research Presentations by Nicole Eikmeier and Leo Rodriguez
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct. 31, at 4:15 p.m.
Location: Burling First Floor Lounge
Please join us as we welcome our returning 2022–23 Harris Faculty Fellows, Nicole Eikmeier and Leo Rodriguez, who will present about the research they conducted during their yearlong research leave!
This event will take place in the Burling Library First Floor Lounge on Tuesday, Oct. 31, from 4:15–5:30 p.m. as part of our continuing Faculty/Staff Research Series talks.
Harris Faculty Fellowship: Overview
The Harris Faculty Fellowship is an annual competitive fellowship for early career faculty members at Grinnell College to recognize high-quality, innovative research projects and to support the advancement of scholars and scholarship at the College. The endowment for the fellowship comes from a gift from the late Jack (’39) and Lucile Hanson (’40) Harris and provides awardees with a yearlong research leave and additional funds to apply towards research and travel.
Nicole Eikmeier: “Products and Progress in Modeling Hypergraphs”
Nicole Eikmeier, assistant professor of computer science, will discuss her work with hypergraphs, which are a higher-order extension of graphs widely used in understanding complex interactions. She will then discuss her work on spectral clustering on nonuniform hypergraph data, as well as her research comparing hypergraph models to another complex modeling tool: simplicial complexes.
These techniques can help us better study phenomena as diverse as the spread of a disease within a population and changing public opinion as viewed on social media. These techniques were immediately applicable during the onset of COVID-19 and led to the awarding of an National Science Foundation grant in May 2020 entitled “Collaborative Research: Quarantined Networks and the spread of COVID-19.”
Her research area largely lies in the field of network analysis, focused on studying features of real data and constructing and analyzing graph models which maintain those features. Eikmeier also employs random graph models to study how well an algorithm may apply to real-world networks. At its core, her research sits at the intersection of math and computer science.
In fact, Eikmeier’s academic career has long straddled the disciplines of math and computer science. She completed her B.A. in mathematics and computer science at Concordia College in 2012 and her Ph.D. in mathematics from Purdue University in 2019, under the advisement of faculty in the Computer Science Department. She joined Grinnell College’s Department of Computer Science in 2019.
You can learn more about Eikmeier’s research and teaching on her website.
Leo Rodriguez: “Quantum Confinement and Its Dilatonic Geometrodynamics”
Leo Rodriguez, assistant professor of physics, will speak about the work done while on his 2022–23 Harris leave, during which he studied how black holes can act as a probe of the physics of quantum gravity, the extraordinarily complex idea of fusing physics of the very small (e.g., subatomic particles) with physics of the very large (e.g., galaxies). Rodriguez will also discuss how he applied the geometrodynamics of black hole horizons to tackle semiconductor manufacturers’ goal of optimizing the shape of nano-semiconductor devices.
Rodriguez’s work presents a creative approach to develop tractable models to analyze complex phenomena and has significant real-world applications. In particular, his current research is relevant to many areas of solid-state physics and engineering, including the design of read heads for computer hard drives.
As a theoretical physicist, Rodriguez’s research interests cover numerous topics in the field, including conformal symmetries and block holes; gravity/CFT correspondence; string theory’s intersection with quantum gravity and generalized complex geometries; and the geometry and topology of physics.
Rodriguez earned his B.S. in physics from the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology in 2005, his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Iowa in 2009 and 2011 (respectively), and served as an Howard Hughes Medical Institute post-doctoral research fellow and lecturer at Grinnell College between 2011–2013. The College was thrilled to welcome Rodriguez back in 2018 as assistant professor of physics.
Please visit Rodriguez’s College profile for a selected list of his publications.