As institutions of higher education become increasingly conscious of their carbon footprints, understanding the emissions generated by professional activities is essential. This project investigates the environmental impact of large academic events by analyzing attendance at conferences organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Using conference program data, we identified speakers and attendees, determined their home institutions and locations, and used this information to generate heat maps illustrating attendee counts and travel-related emissions. An interactive dashboard presents this data in an accessible format, allowing users to select from three analyzed conferences and view attendee numbers, emissions, and travel distances for participating institutions on a world map.

A shape possesses Rupert’s property if a hole can be cut through it such that a second identical copy of the shape can cleanly pass straight through the interior of the first. Such a passage proving cubes are Rupert was first shown more than 300 years ago. It remains open whether every polyhedron in three dimensions is Rupert. We propose a customized subgradient method providing high-accuracy local numerical optimization of the quality of a passage for a given polyhedron. From extensive numerical searches, we improve these best-known passages for more than half of the Platonic, Archimedean, and Catalan solids and for numerous Johnson solids. Our high accuracy solves support a new conjecture of a simple form for the Tetrahedron’s optimal passage. Despite our computational search, three Archimedean and two Catalan solids remain open, providing further negative evidence against the conjecture that all polyhedrons are Rupert.

Blue Jay Racing is a team of undergraduate engineers at the Johns Hopkins University. Student team members take part in designing, building, and racing a single seat off-road vehicle against approximately 200 teams representing university engineering programs from 14 nations. The award-winning program, founded in 2004, offers young engineers an educational experience that goes beyond what the classroom can offer. In addition to technical knowledge gained during the design/build process, students also learn critical team-building skills which will be extremely important in the development of each individual’s ability to become leaders in academia and/or industry.

An analysis of the 2024 NFL Kickoff Rule Change that focuses on the rule’s impact on the increased number of long field goal attempts in recent years