Mathematics major Yvette Niyomugaba presented a poster on her research at the Undergraduate Poster Session at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego in January 2013. She was one of 50 winners of the Outstanding Presentation Award, out of 304 posters and over 500 undergraduate presenters from colleges and universities all over the United States. 

Yvette presented research that she developed over the summer and through her senior capstone with her advisor, Dr.Therese Shelton. Her title and abstract are below. 

 

Recycling toward a Better Earth through Math

Yvette Niyomugaba Southwestern University
Advisor(s): Dr.Therese Shelton, Southwestern University


As the world population increases significantly, recycling is one of the effective ways to conserve energy and natural resources. In addition, recycling reduces landfill use and the environmental damage from pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Plastic is one of the most consumed products worldwide, and this research will focus on modeling plastic recycling and landfill usage in Bangladesh and the United States. We develop a Markov chain model in which state diagrams show the flow of plastic in a recycling system. Linear, exponential, and logistic functions are used to describe the amount of plastic at different stages, including virgin plastic and landfill. In addition, the relationship between landfill growth and plastic consumption are modeled using various mathematical procedures.