Luis M. B. Varona
I am a fifth-year Bachelor of Arts student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB, graduating in May 2027 with a triple major in Mathematics (Hons.), Political Science, and Computer Science & Economics. Over the past three years, I have conducted research with MtA professors in all four disciplines, spanning (among other subfields) political philosophy, social network analysis, graph algorithms, spectral graph theory, and public finance.
My four favourite courses at MtA thus far have been Political & Cultural Change, Cryptography, Spectral Graph Theory, and Modern Political Thought. After finishing my undergraduate degree, I plan to pursue graduate studies in computer science and continue researching social networks, graph algorithms, or graph structures more broadly in some form. I hope to eventually end up in a line of work or research related—at least tangentially so—to public policy and/or democratic governance.
My other school-adjacent hobbies/activities include competitive programming and open-source software. Additionally, I have worked on (non-academic) accessibility policy research with the Government of New Brunswick’s Accessibility Office, particularly in the education sector. Outside of research and academics, I love cats, reading, travelling, and searching for bears in the woods.
Two of my family's cats, Ash (top) and Yuki, both sleeping.
Important Milestones
(2026-10) I present (for the last time!) at Science Atlantic MSCS 2026 on my social network analysis research with Dr. Brett. Alexander Matheson also speaks about our joint work on weighted graph bandwidth algorithms
(2026-10) I present at the 61st Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference on a numerical matrix factorization algorithm for finding wave modes in layered media
(2026-10) Dr. Liam Keliher hires me as a part-time CS research assistant, allowing me to continue my existing research into weighted graph bandwidth algorithms
(2026-10) Dr. Jessica Veevers hires me to do some OCR and graph visualization work for MtA’s Department of Fine Arts
(2026-08) My paper Generalizing the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality: Hadamard powers and tensor products with Dr. Johnston, Dr. Plosker, and Charles Torrance (a recent MtA graduate) is published in Linear and Multilinear Algebra
(2026-07) I give a lightning talk at the 19th East Coast Combinatorics Conference on heuristic algorithms for weighted graph bandwidth (an in-progress project with Alexander Matheson, another undergrad at MtA)
(2026-07) Dr. Johnston, Dr. Plosker, and I post Enumeration of Laplacian integral and \(\{-1,0,1\}\)-diagonalizable graphs on the arXiv (currently under peer review)
(2026-07) Dr. Brett hires me back for two more months of summer research, this time to study social network formation games in addition to continuing our public finance paper
(2026-05) I officially complete my math honours thesis with Dr. Johnston (a year before graduation)
(2026-04) I start my first summer of political science research (concurrently with my computer science grant) with Dr. Wayne A. Hunt, studying the political philosophy of technology & society
(2026-03) I receive a grant to conduct an independent computer science research project of my choosing (namely, my RNN project) for the summer
(2026-03) I speak again at AUPAC 2026 on heuristic algorithms for decomposing quantum states
(2026-02) I post A polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing high-bandwidth graphs (currently under revision for a v2 preprint and journal submission) on the arXiv
(2026-01) I post Efficient spectral bounds on the chromatic number of Hamming, Johnson, and Kneser graph powers (currently under peer review) on the arXiv with U of G student Finn Steinke
(2025-12) MatrixBandwidth.jl (my scientific computing Julia package) is peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Open Source Software
(2025-10) I return to Science Atlantic MSCS 2025 to give a talk on graph bandwidth algorithms, winning the 2nd Place Undergraduate Research Award for Computer Science. I also win 3rd Place at the Atlantic Canada Programming Competition with my competitive programming team, the MTA Computer Cats
(2025-09) Dr. Craig Brett hires me to do part-time economics research in public finance for the Fall term
(2025-05) Concurrently with my summer research, I work as a Student Researcher for the Government of New Brunswick’s Accessibility Office, looking into education policy and legislation
(2025-05) I return to do more spectral graph theory research with Dr. Johnston for the summer
(2025-02) I present at the 2025 Atlantic Undergraduate Physics and Astronomy Conference (AUPAC), again on quantum computing
(2024-10) I present at the 2024 Science Atlantic Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science (MSCS) Conference on my quantum information theory research
(2024-04) I start my first summer of math research with Drs. Nathaniel Johnston and Sarah Plosker on spectral graph theory and quantum information theory
(2022-09) I begin my Bachelor of Arts degree at Mount Allison University in the PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) program (which I later switch out of into my current program)