Simulations of Crumpling for Stomatal Density Measurements
In collaboration with the Lang Lab at UC Berkeley, I am working on mathematically un-crinkling scans of dried arabidopsis thaliana leaves to accurately collect measurements of stomatal density. This helps plant biologists study how plants evolve due to climate change.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 2137424. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
(image source here)
Studying the Long-Time Behavior of Folded Sheets
Computer simulations of folded sheets have been used as surrogates for crumpled materials. The invariant, steady-state distributions of crease data in folded sheets provides insight into some possible order amidst the chaos of crumpling.
This is built upon previous work by the Rycroft Group. This project melds machine learning modeling for big data, mathematics, and high-performance computing.
Here is a poster I presented at the AWM Research Symposium at UW – Madison in 2025 on this topic.
Miscellaneous Portfolio
I’ve written reports for various graduate courses about topics I find interesting. Here are a few:
Random walks, diffusion, and The Winding Problem — Math 704 final project, UW – Madison (Spring ’25)
The finite element method for advection-diffusion — Math/CS 715, UW – Madison (Spring ’25)
Computational methods for phyllotaxis dynamics — Math/CS 714 final project, UW – Madison (Fall ’24)
For questions or further details, email me at ann.bigelow@wisc.edu. This page only summarizes my research interests.