Stephen Melczer has just returned from a three-month paid research internship in Paris where he worked on combinatorial math problems at Inria, a French public science and technology institution.
"It was like solving a new puzzle every day," says the Coquitlam native. "I enjoy attacking a problem with different strategies to see which works out."
Melczer, who is graduating with a B.Sc. with first class honours, loves solving the sorts of problems that occur in combinatorial mathematics, at the theoretical intersection of math and computing science.
He's also good at it. He'll receive a Governor General's silver medal for academic excellence at convocation for achieving a 4.27 cumulative grade-point average, out of a possible 4.33. (Melczer is one of two recipients).
Melczer attributes his high grades to study habits that ensured he understood each new topic as it was introduced.
He didn't spend all of his time studying, however. He also spent 2 years working as a part-time teaching assistant in the mathematics department's calculus and algebra workshops, helping students with coursework.
He received three undergraduate research awards from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada as well, spending three semesters pursuing different mathematical research topics to discover which he preferred.
Melczer also shared his enthusiasm for mathematical problems, delivering presentations on a variety of topics at six Canadian universities and three European institutes. He even found time to visit local high schools to talk about solving Sudoku number-placement puzzles using algebraic geometry.
Later this summer he'll travel to Montreal, Kelowna and Japan to attend conferences on a selection of subjects he hopes will benefit his future research.
And in September he'll mark the start of his SFU master's degree in mathematics by returning to Paris to collaborate with his Canadian and French supervisors.
SFU's convocation ceremonies for spring 2012 took place Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week.
