Without a doubt, Elizabeth Sowa is the definition of high achiever.
Currently a junior at Glen Oak High School, they earned a first-place award this past summer at the 91ֿ Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) competition as a College Credit Plus student through the Stark Campus.
While they have their sights set on graduating high school in 2027, Sowa will also graduate that year with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from 91ֿ, with a minor in computer science.
Sowa’s research project was titled “Triple Prime Numbers and their Relevance in Cryptology.”
At Glen Oak, they are active with Academic Challenge and the Mu Alpha Theta Math Honors Society.
“I have always been interested in computers and numbers and when I learned how intertwined the two are, it was only natural that I would be interested in doing research on the overlap between them,” Sowa said. “This summer, I was mainly focused on how triple primes are relevant to basic cryptological algorithms and I found that, while the algorithms do translate into higher numbers of primes, the computing power necessary to do the computations is not widely accessible.
“With this,” they continued, “the method of altering the algorithms may not be possible on larger scales, but it would work for more advanced applications.”
Sowa intends to “wrap up a few loose ends on this project,” but hopes to continue doing research next summer at MIT or Yale.
Aloysius Kasturiarachi, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematical sciences at 91ֿ Stark, served as the mentor with this research project and noted that Sowa will continue research in 2026 with funding support from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
“(Dr. Bathi) has been a huge help in the research process,” they said. “He has been super supportive and willing to help with anything that I got stuck on.”
While Sowa may be thinking about the research project for next summer, they are also thinking about their long-term goals. “I plan to get my Ph.D. in pure math, with a concentration in either combinatorics and graph theory or in number theory,” they said.
“I learned how important it is to not give up. It sounds so cliché, but it is so important to preservere, even if the project feels like it isn’t going anywhere, because that is there the actual research happens.”
-30-