Eggheads in Pierre -- Students Present Research

"We Go Dome!" the football players at Montrose liked to grunt around November. Yesterday, I went Dome -- Capitol Dome! I joined 88 other university students for the Student Research Poster Session, sponsored by SD-EPSCoR. My friend Patrick Weber was there from SDSU, presenting a proof he and his fellow students worked out on triangle similarity using imaginary numbers (word is a math guru challenged the calculations, but Weber stood his mathematical ground -- good man!). The future Jordanian millionaire next to me -- Ahmad from the School of Mines -- presented a design for antennae on paper that can be embedded in helmets and eliminate one more piece of equipment our soldiers have to lug around.

Among DSU's contingent, budding Internet magnate Matt Paulson showed a stunningly simple yet effective way to keep hackers from stealing your PIN when you do online banking. Huron's Alex Wollman showed research on genetic programming, a programming method that looks to me like a way to allow computers to generate their own new software.

And me? Well, I got to jawbone a few legislators about my continuing research on e-Government.


Here's me with my poster. If nothing else, years in education gives you lots of practice at putting together bright bulletin boards for the kids.


District 8 Representative David Gassman takes in my spiel. He's still recovering from a nasty bout with influenza-A that knocked him out of commission all last week. No more excused votes for him, though: he's fighting off the bug like a champ.


District 8 Representative Russell Olson drops by to take my e-Government survey and ask some good tough questions about how my revamp of the LRC website would work. Turning it into a 24-7 crackerbarrell sounds great, but he wants to know what sort of security the system will have, who will run it, and how much it will cost. That's Rep. Olson for you -- big ideas are great, but we need the nuts and bolts as well. Expect lots of input from Olson and other legislators in this research!

District 8 Senator Dan Sutton stopped by about ten seconds after this picture was taken. Let me say a big thank you to our full District 8 delegation for taking time between session and caucus meetings to check out the poster session. I'll keep working to turn this initial research into something that help the legislators do their jobs and help citizens participate in the process. Stay tuned for more of better government through egghead ideas!

Photo credit: all photos by Dr. Wayne Pauli, DSU. See all of Dr. Pauli's photos of the session here!