College students from around the country taking part in a summer institute in theoretical and mathematical biology at Cornell University are surprised to learn that math has uses outside of academia. "We don't do a lot of research at my school. It's nice to see some real-world applications," said Julio Villarreal, a senior math major from the University of San Diego. "I've never seen math done with biology before. It's nice to see you can do things with math besides teach."

Villarreal is one of 35 students spending six weeks this summer at Cornell for the Mathematical Sciences Summer Institute sponsored by Cornell, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Security Agency (NSA) with the support of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), an organization dedicated to increasing the number of Latinos/Chicanos and Native Americans in mathematics and the sciences. SACNAS helped recruit the students.

A three-year NSF grant provides one-third of the support, with additional support from the NSA, the Cornell provost, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and, for six international Latino students, partial support was provided by their own Mexican institutions, Mexico's NSF (CONACYT), and the University of Texas at El Paso.

The institute is directed by Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Cornell chair and associate professor of the Biometrics Unit, and Herbert Medina, visiting assistant professor of mathematics from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. It brings to Cornell 35 undergraduate students from eight states, Mexico and Puerto Rico, and 24 academic institutions for six weeks of mathematical and theoretical biology.

"A lot of these students have never even seen a minority scientist," Castillo-Chavez said. "Many of them don't come from large research universities and don't have the support they need."

The summer program integrates math with biology, "and also shows them the rigors of graduate school," Castillo-Chavez said. "There are no grades, no tests and no credit. This is not a course; it is a workshop and research experience."

Students listen to a lecture every morning; twice a week they have a computer lab where they work on problems and do experiments; and they attend a writing seminar based on readings in evolutionary biology twice a week.

On a recent Monday afternoon, half the group was ensconced in a Warren Hall computer lab, many of them using Mathematics and Matlab software for the first time. With teaching assistants and lecturers leading the session, the students learned how to predict the number of new HIV cases in the United States using mathematical models.

"This integrates math and biology. We are teaching dynamical systems and modeling," Castillo-Chavez explained. "They are doing computer experiments, mathematical analyses of biological problems, statistics and probability." Also, the students must complete a research project by the end of the summer program by working in small groups -- another innovation that many of the students have not experienced.

"The aim is to provide them with an interdisciplinary experience which will better prepare them for graduate studies as well as to expose them to current mathematical sciences research," said Medina, who is serving as the summer director.

Students receive a $2,000 stipend for the six weeks, but they earn something more valuable:

"I'm really hoping to come away with a research experience," said Roberta Winston, a Native American (Navajo) student majoring in computer science at New Mexico State University. "This really helps me see how math can be applied in the real world. It's been all textbook until now. Now I see how statistical analysis is really important in understanding results." Plus, she is learning about opportunities in computer science, she said.

The students and staff make up a diverse group. The students come from or have parents who come from the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The teaching and support staff come from or have parents who come from the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Colombia and Chile. The students also come from diverse disciplines, with majors in mathematics, applied mathematics, microbiology, economics, statistics, physics, mathematics education, neuroscience, computer science and civil engineering.

Students also attend six colloquia by mathematicians from the Courant Institute in New York, the University of Arizona, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Cornell. Participants also attend workshops on presenting material to a class and applying for graduate school and fellowships.

Gina Ramirez, a junior math major from California State University in Dominguez Hills, Calif., said being at Cornell was very exciting.

"Everything is so big," she said. "At my school, all the classrooms are together in one building. Here you have to walk a lot. All the faculty and staff are really helpful. They provide everything we need. I get to use things I couldn't use at my school, because we don't have them."

She said she was interested in integrating math with biological systems, particularly in looking at decay and growth rates.

Ariel Rodriguez, a senior math major at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, said he would return to his school and "think about graduate school. It's wonderful here. For me, it's a new and powerful tool with a lot of applications."

Fernando Carreon, a junior applied math major at the University of Texas-El Paso who won the Mexican national Math Olympiad last year, said he would look for research opportunities now as a result of this summer's experience. "I will try to improve my skills in dynamical systems," he said. "This is a great experience and I'm learning a lot."

The program's lecturers also bring valuable experience to the program, as role models and future college instructors. Jorge X. Velasco-Hern‡ndez has a Ph.D. in mathematical biology and will return to Mexico, but will retain an adjunct associate professorship in Cornell's Biometrics Unit. Carlos Hern‡ndez is a doctoral student in biometry, working on stochastic models in biology. He expects his Ph.D. from Cornell next summer. The teaching assistants are: Stephen Tennenbaum, Harold Figueroa, Ricardo Oliva, Steve Wirkus, Mercedes Franco. The writing instructors are Tamara Parker, Estelle Tarica and Julie Seda.

The support staff, managed by Mexican-American Bonnie Delgado, is equally diverse and includes individuals with a variety of skills: Ada Mancilla (Mexican-American, architecture major), Jessica Lasky (biometry and statistics major), Carla Vargas (Chilean-American, comparative literature), Uriyoan Colon (Puerto Rican, nutrition), Isabel Ramos (Puerto Rican, drama), and Allen Wenzhang (Chinese-American, high school student).