Florida Polytechnic University student Cassidy Campbell knows that in mathematics, every effort adds up. This summer, her dedication and skills have added up to a standout internship at Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina.
Campbell, a rising senior majoring in applied mathematics, is working with the lab’s Atmospheric Technologies Group to find smarter and more efficient ways to analyze thousands of air samples. The goal is to better monitor emissions at the sprawling research site.
“I was called in to help identify and solve a problem with their air sampling methods,” said Campbell, a graduate of Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, Florida. “I’m trying to reduce the cost and total time for analysis on the air samples while still being able to fully retain the entire picture.”
During the 10-week Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Campbell found that using a compressed sampling method with fewer samples could do the job.
“You can use a linear equation using a lot of linear algebra optimization tools to take fewer of those measurements and recreate a signal that is still very faithful to the original,” she said.
The result could be reducing the nearly 9,000 samples now analyzed each year by up to 30 to 40 percent.
Campbell said she is putting her Florida Poly education to work at the lab, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
“I’m applying everything I know from linear algebra, applied statistics, and any other classes I’ve taken,” she said. “I’m also learning a lot of optimization from scratch and trying to absorb as much as I can.”
Campbell said her internship has opened her eyes to how broadly math can be applied in the real world.
“You don’t have to be with other math people to do math things,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a national lab with a bunch of meteorologists, doing what I’ve been trained to do.”
The challenging experience has been personally rewarding, Campbell said.
“I think my big takeaway from working on this is that you really can go anywhere and do anything with math,” she said. “I want to see what’s out there.”
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Lydia Guzmán
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