Campus Life

UWF student accepted to Harvard internship

The University of West Florida Department of Mathematics and Statistics is continuing its tradition of producing skilled students who utilize their strong educational background to excel in joint programs at elite universities across the country. Ruth Ashley, a senior mathematics major, was recently accepted to participate in Harvard University’s Research Experience for Undergraduates internship program during the Summer 2013 semester.

 Ashley will be working at the Institute for Applied Computational Science (IACS) as part of a pilot program developing opportunities for students to apply mathematics and computation to solve real-world problems proposed by industry sponsors. She will work on a project proposed by a company interested in novel, data driven approaches to petroleum reservoir modeling, which leverage technologies such as signal processing, data mining, and artificial intelligence to ensure fast and robust integration of field data into their models.

Ashley, a John C. Pace Jr. Scholar and honors student, currently serves as the Honors Council Co-Social Chair. She said she heard about the Harvard internship when UWF alumni John Welch, a Ph.D candidate at Harvard, spoke to Mathematics & Statistics students about the opportunities available through the program.

“My experience at UWF has prepared me well for this internship,” Ashley said. “Being involved in the Honors Program has given me leadership skills. We also have strong faculty in the Mathematics Department that have provided me with a solid education.”

Working in the IACS, Ashley will be on a team with two other students. The company will provide her team with data collected from real petroleum reservoirs and ask her to propose new ways to extract patterns, trends and correlations from the data.

“I am beyond excited about this amazing opportunity and the doors it can open for me,” Ashley said.