Students Sol Addison '25 and Lila Snodgrass '26 gave oral presentations at two conference this summer. At the Unknot V conference for Knot Theory, Addison and Snodgrass's presentation was the only undergraduate talk to be featured without a parallel session.
Elon Honors student Sol Addison ’25, an applied mathematics and sociology double major and Lumen Scholar Lila Snodgrass ’26, a mathematics and dance double major, presented their research at two conferences this summer, including one in which the two Elon students were the only undergraduate students presenting without a parallel presentation at the same time.
Addison, an applied mathematics and sociology double major and Snodgrass, a Lumen Scholar, mathematics and dance double major, have been conducting research with mentor Nancy Scherich, assistant professor of mathematics. All three members of this research team are both mathematicians and dancers.
Their interdisciplinary research studies the “danceability” of knots, which is a new area of research in the mathematical field of knot theory. As a dancer travels the stage over time, their path traces out a knotted curve. If multiple dancers are on stage, and it is assumed that each dancer ends in the starting position of another dancer, the total paths danced by all dancers forms a large knot. The danceability of a knot is the minimum number of dancers required to create the knot.
Addison, Scherich and Snodgrass wrote a research article on their work with danceability that has been accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal. Over the 2024 summer, students Addison and Snodgrass gave oral presentations about their research at two different conferences. The first conference was the Unknot V conference at Seattle University, a two-day undergraduate knot theory conference. The schedule for the conference was to have two parallel sessions for undergraduate talks. However, shortly after Addison and Snodgrass submitted their abstract for their proposed oral presentation, the conference organizers were so intrigued by the proposal that they decided to single out Addison and Snodgrass’s talk as the only featured undergraduate presentation with no other parallel sessions at the same time. The organizers said they thought everyone would want to come to the danceability talk and changed the schedule to feature Addison and Snodgrass.
Later in the summer, Addison, Scherich and Snodgrass attended the 2024 Bridges conference at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Addison and Snodgrass gave an oral presentation on their danceability research, and Scherich presented her Math-Dance video about Alexander’s Theorem in the Bridges Film Festival. To top off the conference, Addison, Scherich and Snodgrass performed in a play about Alan Turing on the last night of the conference. In addition to several speaking roles, the three researchers also sang and danced in the one musical number, donning outlandish mathematical costumes from the Bridges Math+Fashion show.
