RUMBA

Research for Undergraduates on the Mathematics of the Bay Area

What is RUMBA?

The Cal State East Bay Research for Undergraduates on the Mathematics of the Bay Area (RUMBA) program consists of collaborative research projects which unite the skills of students (undergraduate and graduate), faculty, and Bay Area groups, so that they may use mathematics to study the systems and characteristics of the Bay Area.

How can students get involved?

We are currently recruiting undergraduate student researchers for the Fall 2021 semester. The projects are run remotely with meetings done via Zoom.

Below are the qualifications needed to be considered for the program:

  • Will be enrolled as a full time undergraduate student at Cal State East Bay in Fall 2021.

  • Has taken or is currently enrolled in Precalculus (Math 120 or Math 125).

  • Is enthusiastic about learning how math can be used in society.

  • Can invest 3 hours a week on the research project.

Benefits for students who are involved in the RUMBA project include the following:

  • A $600 stipend for full participation.

  • Experience conducting mathematical research and learning material outside of a classroom.

  • Experience working collaboratively on projects that are especially relevant to the lives of Cal State East Bay students.

  • Experience presenting your work in the form of a talk and poster presentation.

  • It'll be tons of fun!

Here is a link to the RUMBA Application!

Deadline to Apply: August 27, 2021.

Students will be notified about participating in RUMBA by August 30, 2021.

Here are just a few of the project ideas you could pursue with the 2021 RUMBA program.

Food Deserts

In 2020, RUMBA students explored the definition of a food desert and identified the food deserts in the Bay Area and specifically in Alameda county. In 2021, we may build on this work, by investgating how k-means clustering techniques from data science can help us determine the optimal places to build food distirbution sites.

Housing Displacement

Students will learn about how neighborhood change has been quantified in past studies, and choose several indicators of neighborhood change to further investigate. Based on personal experience and data availability, students can propose their own metrics. Then students can use their learnings to predict changes in the makeup of various communities within the next 10 years.




Fairness in Voting

In 2021, New York City began to use ranked choice voting in Primary and Special Elections for the offices of Mayor, Public Advocate, City Council, and more. In this project, students will explore various voting systems and investigate their benefits and shortcomings. We will explore questions like, how do voting systems like ranked choice voting or the electoral college really work? Do some voting systems benefit certain populations over others? How do we know if a voting system is “fair”? Students will run computer simulations of elections using various voting systems with an eye towards advocating for fair and representative voting in the Bay Area.


Curious about last years projects? See the talks and articles written by the 2020 RUMBA researchers.

RUMBA is sponsored by the MAA Tensor-SUMMA grant and the College of Science at Cal State East Bay.

Thank you Sponsors!


For more information please contact the Director of the RUMBA program:

Dr. Andrea Arauza Rivera

Department of Mathematics

andrea-dot-arauzarivera-at-csueastbay-dot-edu