Dustan Aron Levenstein
Dustan Levenstein is a Dean’s Honored Graduate in the Department of Mathematics, where he will graduate with a bachelor of science in mathematics. Dustan is being recognized for his advanced academic work, as well as his research efforts with Professor David Ben Zvi that have culminated in an undergraduate thesis entitled “Modular Representations of Symmetric Groups” and a refereed journal publication.
Dustan began his activities in the Mathematics Department while he was still in high school. As an Austin native he was able to take Professor Ted Odell's Honors Advanced Placement Calculus alongside advanced U.T. freshmen. At the end of that semester he entered the Bennett competition run by the department for current freshmen, and was declared the winner over his elders. After being recruited to come to UT, he joined the Dean’s Scholars Honors Program and continued to shine. As a sophomore, he was challenged by Professor Michael Starbird to come up with a proof of Kuratowski's Theorem without looking up references. Dustan came up with a proof that was simple and elegant enough that he ended up presenting it to Dr. Starbird's Discrete Mathematics course in the spring, and part of it as a student talk to the math club. Each year, Dustan has participated in the nationwide Putnam examination and has been UT’s leading scorer for each of the past four years, even as a freshman.
Dustan has sought out numerous research opportunities while at UT. He participated in an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program held at Pennsylvania State University. As part of this program he investigated a related set of tiling problems, asking for ways to cover a surface with identical copies of an irregular shape. Dustan's summer research has already led to a paper published in the journal Discrete Mathematics. More recently, Dustan turned his attention to an honors thesis, and chose a rather different direction for this work – studying Representation Theory, a branch of abstract algebra. He is working with two mathematics faculty members, Professors David Ben-Zvi and John Meth. He has been able to construct useful examples of representations of symmetric groups in his thesis, which will enable him to attack research questions in this area in the future.
Apart from his current research activities, Dustan has mentored many younger undergraduates. Dustan has been a leader of the undergraduate math club and has given several informal research presentations at the club meetings. He maintains a deep interest in computer science and is pursuing independent study of cryptographic protocols that lie in the intersection of mathematics and computer science. He served as the head tutor for Dr. Elaine Rich's Computer Science Automata Theory course and also tutored for two years with the Sanger Learning and Career Center.
This fall, Dustan will begin pursuit of his PhD in mathematics at UCLA. While there, he will benefit from some of his book selections, including Algebraic Geometry by Robin Hartshorne and Commutative Algebra by David Eisenbud.
Dustan Aron Levenstein
Dustan Levenstein is a Dean’s Honored Graduate in the Department of Mathematics, where he will graduate with a bachelor of science in mathematics. Dustan is being recognized for his advanced academic work, as well as his research efforts with Professor David Ben Zvi that have culminated in an undergraduate thesis entitled “Modular Representations of Symmetric Groups” and a refereed journal publication.
Dustan began his activities in the Mathematics Department while he was still in high school. As an Austin native he was able to take Professor Ted Odell's Honors Advanced Placement Calculus alongside advanced U.T. freshmen. At the end of that semester he entered the Bennett competition run by the department for current freshmen, and was declared the winner over his elders. After being recruited to come to UT, he joined the Dean’s Scholars Honors Program and continued to shine. As a sophomore, he was challenged by Professor Michael Starbird to come up with a proof of Kuratowski's Theorem without looking up references. Dustan came up with a proof that was simple and elegant enough that he ended up presenting it to Dr. Starbird's Discrete Mathematics course in the spring, and part of it as a student talk to the math club. Each year, Dustan has participated in the nationwide Putnam examination and has been UT’s leading scorer for each of the past four years, even as a freshman.
Dustan has sought out numerous research opportunities while at UT. He participated in an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program held at Pennsylvania State University. As part of this program he investigated a related set of tiling problems, asking for ways to cover a surface with identical copies of an irregular shape. Dustan's summer research has already led to a paper published in the journal Discrete Mathematics. More recently, Dustan turned his attention to an honors thesis, and chose a rather different direction for this work – studying Representation Theory, a branch of abstract algebra. He is working with two mathematics faculty members, Professors David Ben-Zvi and John Meth. He has been able to construct useful examples of representations of symmetric groups in his thesis, which will enable him to attack research questions in this area in the future.
Apart from his current research activities, Dustan has mentored many younger undergraduates. Dustan has been a leader of the undergraduate math club and has given several informal research presentations at the club meetings. He maintains a deep interest in computer science and is pursuing independent study of cryptographic protocols that lie in the intersection of mathematics and computer science. He served as the head tutor for Dr. Elaine Rich's Computer Science Automata Theory course and also tutored for two years with the Sanger Learning and Career Center.
This fall, Dustan will begin pursuit of his PhD in mathematics at UCLA. While there, he will benefit from some of his book selections, including Algebraic Geometry by Robin Hartshorne and Commutative Algebra by David Eisenbud.