Paige Yeung

Education

Research Experience

• One of three students selected to participate in UC Irvine and Leiden University’s REU program in pattern formation and PDEs, supported by the NSF grant DMS-2204758. Investigated front dynamics of the three-dimensional Gatenby-Gawlinski tumor growth model using tools from singular perturbation theory and functional analysis.

• Investigated applicability of mathematical methods to identify nonlinearities in the carbon cycle. Analyze isotope time series data to identify major paleoclimate events and predictors of critical slowing down in the climate system.

• Researched and designed algorithms for denoising and analyzing lidar waveforms and point cloud data in MATLAB. Employed matched filtering, regression, and SVD-based approaches to correct frames, identify object orientation, and analyze pulse width. Presented final results to company executives.

• Worked with Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) team, building a variational autoencoder to model light curves of astronomical transient objects and investigate rates of observation of transients in TESS data.

• Investigated measurements of TrES-1 b transits to search for transit timing variations and fit an updated ephemeris. First-author paper published in the Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society.

Publications

• P Yeung, Q Perian, P Robertson, M Fitzgerald, M Fowler, F Sienkiewicz, and K Tock. Searching for Transit Timing Variations and Fitting a New Ephemeris to Transits of TrES-1 b, JKAS, 55, 111, August 2022 (arXiv:2207.01559).

• E Yang, D Mendoza, PA Mendoza, V Pandian, K Tota, and P Yeung. Analyzing Transit Timing Variations of Qatar-1 b. JAAVSO, 50, 20, June 2022.

Presentations

• P Yeung. Supporting Students and Researchers in a Virtual Exoplanet Research Workshop. American Association of Variable Star Observers Annual Meeting, November 2021.

• P Yeung. Science Education for Scientific Literacy: Involving Students in Citizen Science Initiatives. American Geophysical Union, December 2020. Abstract #ED045-0005.

Activities and Community Leadership

• Direct and organize annual Math in Industries event, featuring industry representatives from Jane Street and Deloitte, to introduce different career opportunities to MIT undergraduates interested in industrial applications of mathematics.

• In collaboration with NASA astronomers, guided 200+ high school students to contribute research findings to NASA’s Exoplanet Watch, a citizen science project.
• Created resource website (exoplanetresearch.com), featured on Exoplanet Watch’s resource page.
• Presented about workshop at astronomy and science education conferences, including the AAVSO Annual Meeting and the AGU Fall Meeting.
• Raised funding from the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Skills

• Proficient in MATLAB, Python, Java; familiar with R
• Other skills: mathematical modeling, data analysis, technical writing