Final project

Here are some suggested topics for final projects. I will keep adding more and also references and background for some of these.

- Automatic signature verification.

- Determining structure of molecules by X-ray diffraction.

- Data assimilation in weather forecasting (Kalman filter).

- Models for the formation of animal stripes and patterns.

- Magnetic resonance imaging.

- Mathematical models of cardiac defibrillation.

- Models of animal swarms.

- Epidemic spreading.

- Tumor growth.

- Blood flow and branching in arterial trees.

- Baseball aerodynamics.

- Dynamics of walking. (Taken.)

Group project

For the group project, you should form groups of 3 and select a paper that deals with some aspect of traffic modeling. The objective of the project is that you understand the paper and do numerical or analytical work to extend its results. There will be 25-minute group presentations.

In the presentations, you should first explain what is the main contribution of the paper, for example: what problem of previous models is addressed, what new idea is introduced, etc. Then you should explain the paper to the audience and finally present your extension.

Here are some suggested papers (more coming). You need to be on campus or connected through VPN to download some of these.

  • "An analysis of the traffic on highways with changing surface conditions", Mochon, 1987. (Taken.)

  • "A cellular automaton model for freeway traffic", Nagel and Schreckenberg, 1992. (Taken.)

  • "Congested traffic states in empirical observations and microscopic simulations", Treiber et al., 2000

  • "Full velocity difference model for a car-following theory", Jiang et al., 2001. (Taken.)

  • "Self-sustained nonlinear waves in traffic flow", Flynn et al., 2009.

  • "Bifurcation Analysis of the Full Velocity Difference Model", Yin and Xu, 2010.

    Recently added:

  • Optimal velocity model (ring simulation shown in class), Bando et al., 1995.

  • Experiment on a ring (ring movie shown in class), Nakayama et al., 2009.

  • "Statistical analysis of floating-car data: an empirical study", Fouladvand et al., 2005.

  • "Effect of adaptive cruise control systems on traffic flow", Davis, 2004.

  • "Resonance, criticality, and emergence in city traffic investigated in cellular automaton models", Varas et al., 2009. (Taken.)

  • Last changed: Aug. 9, 2010