Andrews University faculty are advancing knowledge across academic fields. Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske’s international research on endangered river dolphins and Anthony Bosman’s collaborative work in mathematical knot theory highlight a shared commitment to scientific discovery, national and international partnership, and undergraduate mentorship. Their work models how faculty scholarship enriches their academic disciplines as well as the educational experience of students at Andrews.
River Dolphins in Bangladesh
Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske, professor of biology at Andrews University, has devoted most of his career to studying aquatic mammals such as manatees and dolphins in estuaries and river systems. These environments are notoriously difficult to work in because of fluctuating water levels, strong currents and low water visibility. To overcome these challenges, Gonzalez-Socoloske and his students have embraced innovative approaches with sonar, drones and hydrophones (underwater microphones) to detect and study animals that are rarely seen. His research has taken him and his students to the Amazon River Basin in Brazil, the Usumacinta-Grijalva River Basin in Mexico and Isla de la Juventud in Cuba. In recognition of his impact, Andrews University awarded Gonzalez-Socoloske the Siegfried H. Horn Excellence in Research & Creative Scholarship Award in 2023 and the J.N. Andrews Medallion in 2024.
This past August, Gonzalez-Socoloske traveled to Bangladesh to launch a collaborative study of the endangered Ganges river dolphin with recent zoology graduates from the University of Chittagong. The work is supported by a National Geographic Society grant (the second he has received from the organization) as well as a Faculty Research Grant from the Andrews University Office of Research & Creative Scholarship.
Often described as blind because they lack lenses in their small eyes, Ganges river dolphins rely almost entirely on echolocation to navigate and possibly to communicate.
Ganges river dolphins represent one of the oldest dolphin lineages and are found only in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Sangu-Karnaphuli river systems of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. These river systems are undergoing rapid change due to heavy human pressure, and fewer than 3,000 individual dolphins are believed to remain in the wild. “The Ganges river dolphin in the Halda River, Bangladesh, faces increasing threats from natural factors and human activities,” notes J.K. Owareset, the Bangladeshi zoology graduate who first contacted Gonzalez-Socoloske two years ago to initiate the collaboration.
Often described as blind because they lack lenses in their small eyes, Ganges river dolphins rely almost entirely on echolocation to navigate and possibly to communicate. The primary aim of the current project is to better understand the acoustics of this rarely studied and seldom seen species. During a 20-day field season, Gonzalez-Socoloske and his team successfully deployed two types of hydrophones to record echolocation clicks and vocalizations produced by the elusive dolphins. The data collected from this collaboration is being used by undergraduate students in his lab at Andrews University and will provide research opportunities for students in the future.
In addition to fieldwork, Gonzalez-Socoloske led a two-day workshop at the Zoology Department of the University of Chittagong. The session was hosted at the Halda River Research Laboratory under the leadership of Md. Manzoorul Kibria, professor of zoology, University of Chittagong. It focused on dolphin research techniques, including hydrophone deployment, drone surveys and necropsy methods.
During the visit, Gonzalez-Socoloske signed a memorandum of understanding, formalizing collaboration between his lab at Andrews University and Kibria’s lab. Accompanied by fellow National Geographic Explorer and photographer Fatima Tuj Johora, he has since submitted a larger grant proposal to expand the project and raise awareness of the species locally and internationally.
Knot Theory in the Bay Area
Anthony Bosman, chair of the Department of Mathematics, does research in topology, particularly in mathematical knot theory, studying theoretical properties of knots and links. In recent years, Bosman has been collaborating with Christopher Davis and Carolyn Otto, professors in the Mathematics Department at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; Taylor Martin, associate professor of mathematics at Sam Houston State University; and Katherine Vance, associate professor of mathematics at Simpson College.
The group meets weekly via Zoom. In 2024, they organized a conference session at MathFest, a national mathematics conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, focused on research in topology and its intersection with teaching undergraduates. Bosman presented at this conference on several research projects he had involved Andrews University undergraduate students in.
This last year, the group was accepted to the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath) program for Summer Research in Mathematics. The program provided travel, housing and office space in state-of-the-art facilities, allowing the group to collaborate together in Berkeley, California, for two weeks during June.
“We started each morning hiking up to the institute through a gorgeous redwood forest, then spent the day working in offices with a spectacular view overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. One could not ask for better conditions to make uninterrupted progress on our research together,” reflects Bosman.
During their collaboration, they completed an article titled “How Many Crossing Changes or Delta-Moves Does it Take to Get to a Homotopy Trivial Link?” which was accepted for publication in the premier topology journal Algebraic Topology & Geometry. Their research examines the smallest number of simple changes required to turn a tangled collection of loops into a completely unlinked set. Together, they established new mathematical bounds on this measure of the complexity of a link, drawing on tools from knot theory, algebraic topology and extremal graph theory. During the summer, they also laid the foundation for a follow-up article that they are now completing through ongoing collaboration.
“We started each morning hiking up to the institute through a gorgeous redwood forest, then spent the day working in offices with a spectacular view overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.”
The partnership has also provided Bosman with opportunities to extend his mentoring of Andrews undergraduate students. Last year, he was honored with the Andrews University Undergraduate Research Mentor Award for successfully involving several undergraduates in his research.
Previous projects have involved undergraduates in studying the effects of delta-moves. Currently, Bosman is working with senior math major Alan Grimm, who is extending a graph theory result that the research group proved in their first publication. “Alan is taking what we did in a very particular setting and showing how to generalize the result to infinite families of cases. He is making excellent progress, and I am looking forward to him presenting his results at an upcoming conference,” says Bosman.
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