CAMCOS

(Center for Applied Mathematics, Computation, and Statistics)

Department of Mathematics
San José State University

News & announcements

Pardon our appearance -- this website will soon feature a major renovation. Please keep checking regularly....
CAMCOS Reports Day, Spring 2008 will be held on Wed May 14, 2008. Reports Day will feature a project sponsored by the NASA Ames Research Center and supervised by Dr. Slobodan Simic. Click here for more details.
Are you with a local business or research institution that might be interested in sponsoring a CAMCOS project? Click here for a brochure on how that works, and how both you and our students can benefit from such a project (3.4MB), or see below for more details.

What is CAMCOS?

CAMCOS is a student research program in the Department of Mathematics at San José State University (SJSU). Our goal is to give SJSU students the experience of working on a real-world problem in the applied mathematical sciences. We are therefore looking for local businesses and government agencies to sponsor student teams that will investigate problems arising from their work.

Each sponsor supplies a problem or topic in which it is interested, and provides modest financial support for a team of undergraduate and graduate students to work on the problem, supervised by a faculty member and a graduate student team leader. The sponsor also supplies a liaison person, who will help clarify aspects of the problem, supply sample data, etc., as work proceeds. At the end of the project, the team presents its results orally, in a public forum, and then presents a more detailed written report to the sponsor.

Benefits of the program

Students get valuable experience with the world of industry and with doing independent work, as well as contact with potential employers. Sponsors get useful research done on their problems, and they also get the opportunity to see, first-hand, the work of some good students and potential employees before they graduate.

For students: Participating in CAMCOS

San José State students who want to be part of a CAMCOS team next semester (Fall 2008) can do so by taking Math 203. However, registration for Math 203 is by application only. More precisely, to apply for Math 203 in Fall 2008:

Click here for an application form. Students who have previously taken Math 203 and wish to continue with the same faculty supervisor need not reapply.
Submit the application form, either by e-mail (strongly preferred) or by campus mail.
Since you are not guaranteed to get into Math 203, for the moment, you should register for Fall 2007 classes as if you were not taking Math 203. However, you should also put a class in your schedule that you can drop if you get into Math 203.
If you are chosen for a team, you will be notified directly, most probably by e-mail.

See here for more on why you should take Math 203. If you would like to get into Math 203 in a future semester, click here to see what courses you should take to prepare yourself.

Want to sponsor a CAMCOS project?

Are you part or head of an organization in business or industry that might be interested in sponsoring a CAMCOS project? Here's where to go next.

Check out what previous students and sponsors have to say about CAMCOS.
See a list of publications resulting from recent CAMCOS projects.
Click here to read the final reports of some recent CAMCOS projects.
For a few more details about CAMCOS:
To see what else CAMCOS teams have been doing recently, see our page on the Spring 2008 Reports Day.

For more information, or to get the process started, just e-mail us at either hsu@math.sjsu.edu (or camcos@math.sjsu.edu).

More about CAMCOS and Math 203

How to prepare yourself for Math 203 (i.e., what we're looking for in a Math 203 student).
What previous Math 203 students have to say about the class, and what previous sponsors have to say about their projects.
Some of the history of CAMCOS.

If you are interested in participating in CAMCOS as a student, or if you are part of a Bay Area business or government organization that may be interested in sponsoring a CAMCOS project, please contact Dr. Tim Hsu at:

E-mail: hsu@math.sjsu.edu (or camcos@math.sjsu.edu)

Phone: (408)924-5071 (office), (415)533-4537 (cell), (408)924-5080 (fax)

U.S. mail:

Dr. Tim Hsu, Director of CAMCOS
Department of Mathematics
San José State University
San José, CA 95192-0103

(This page last updated April 13, 2008)