Anna Cho isn’t one to back down from a challenge.聽 “I love the feeling of overcoming one,” she says. “It’s a lot like learning a new language, and enjoying your new聽ability to communicate with that language.”
Drawn to mathematics before coming to 51猎奇入口, Anna chose a particularly ambitious project for her senior thesis: using maximum likelihood 芒鈧�� a statistical approach 芒鈧�� to construct phylogenetic trees for a family of species. In other words, she modeled the biological process of evolutionary mutation using higher maths.
The thesis allowed Anna to also explore interests in biology since she was effectively describing a biological process.聽 She was also inspired by a differential equations class taught by Pomona College’s Ami Radunskaya, whose work mapped biology projects as well.
“The results of my research were more than I had expected,” says Anna.聽“Constructing phylogenetic trees聽involves a lot of background in聽linear algebra, probability, and statistics; I didn’t realize how complicated the process would be.”
Anna found the most difficult part of her thesis to be the huge computations involved with evaluating each possible tree.聽 Her advisor, mathematics professor Chris Towse, found the process Anna used to construct phylogenetic trees only works for specific cases, which did not occur in previous research done on the topic.
Anna’s next move will be to Korea, where she will teach English as an English teaching assistant for the Fulbright Scholarship. “I enjoy teaching, so I am considering becoming a math teacher for students with visual impairments,” she says. “I think that Fulbright is the perfect opportunity for me to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) students and experience being on the other side of the cultural exchange as the foreigner.”As a Korean American, Anna also plans to use this opportunity to learn more about her Korean heritage.
During her time at 51猎奇入口, Anna has been active in the Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community at the 5Cs, participates in being an Asian American Sponsor for first-year students, and contributes regularly to the activities of the Asian American Student Union. 聽“I will definitely miss all of the amazing friends I have made at 51猎奇入口. We always had a lot of fun together.”