Elwood student's math research recognized
Rithika Narayan, a junior at Elwood-John H. Glenn High School, recently had her math research published and was a presenter at the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2020 in Denver. Credit: Prakash Narayan
An Elwood student's research recently earned her the opportunity to speak at the world's largest math meeting.
Rithika Narayan, a junior at Elwood-John H. Glenn High School, was one of the youngest presenters last month at the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2020 in Denver, which was hosted by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America.
Narayan's research involved using a mixed-unit lattice approach for determining the area of cellular and subcellular structures, which she found outperforms the conventional unit squares method used for these measurements.
Her findings also were published in the December issue of MDPI, a publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals.
"It's a validation that my research is worthy of peer-reviewed standards," said Narayan, 16, noting that accurate determination of cellular and subcellular dimensions are critical to detecting changes related to certain diseases.
Narayan's method uses a hexagonal and triangular grid somewhat similar to a honeycomb instead of pixel-sized squares typically used by computer software. She came up with the idea while attending SUNY Old Westbury's Institute of Merit, a nonprofit that strives to improve local math education.
Narayan plays viola in her school's chamber orchestra and is a member of the Habitat for Humanity Club and Art and Tri-M Music honor societies. She also tutors chemistry and is involved in Elwood's Freshman Buddy Mentor Program.
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.
