Discovering Skills Beyond Research

Not only did Miles Bakenhus find several opportunities to conduct research while earning a master’s degree in applied mathematics at Illinois Tech, he also had opportunities to stand in front of a crowd and present it, giving him valuable experience building communications skills.

“Professor Hemanshu Kaul and Professor Jinqiao Duan presented me with opportunities to explore research topics and present on my finding,” Bakenhus says. “Most recently I presented a project on using statistical mechanics to model urban structures. Since I plan on studying statistical analysis of networks in the fall, this project was very helpful at giving me a background on the subject.”

The applied mathematics department at Illinois Tech regularly hosts speakers from other universities, which exposed Bakenhus to a wide variety of modern research topics so he could begin contributing to these topics himself.