Music has been a major part of Brileigh Cates’ graduate and undergraduate education at Missouri S&T. The applied mathematics graduate student – an alto saxophone player – has led the marching band as drum major, directed the Sax Choir, and performed in the University Wind Symphony, Movie Music Ensemble, and the University Symphonic Band. She is even a member of the band’s service sorority Tau Beta Sigma.

“Music isn’t a big part of my current studies, but as a graduate student at S&T, music and math are both universal languages in their own right, and getting to pursue both is extremely fulfilling,” says Cates.

Cates got involved in research early as an undergraduate student through both the First Year Research Experience (FYRE) and Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experience (OURE) programs at S&T. And, of course, her focus for both was music.

Dr. David Samson, associate teaching professor of music at Missouri S&T, advised her undergraduate project, titled “Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1958 and 2023: A look at more recent and statistical data on the Gender Bias in the music industry.”

“The research consisted of analyzing the gender bias in the music industry from its conception to 2023,” says Cates. “I won second place in S&T’s Undergraduate Research Conference (UGRC) in 2024 in the oral presentation category and won first place in the UGRC in 2025 in the poster presentation category.”

Math and music go together

As a graduate student, Cates wrote a thesis titled “Analyzing sleep architecture and brain state transitions using FMRI data.” Her research focuses on decoding sleep states from resting state FMRI data by using a modeling framework to judge latent sleep states and benchmark the accuracy of the model.

Cates will earn her master’s degree from Missouri S&T in the spring 2026 and was recently admitted to the statistics Ph.D. program at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Brileigh is a very hardworking and motivated student in the classroom,” says Dr. Nilanjan Chakraborty, Cates’ graduate advisor and an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics at Missouri S&T. “She finished her bachelor’s degree in three years with a grade-point average (GPA) of 3.968 and did her master’s degree in one year with a GPA of 4.0.”

The band is family

 Continuing to play in ensembles as a graduate student means a lot to Cates. She says graduate school can be both stressful and exciting but sometimes having the avenue to simply enjoy herself and forget stress can go a long way.

“I found a community among the bands here, where we can come together and have fun,” she says. “It is such an amazing feeling to make music with other individuals who feel so passionate about it.”

The memories carry on

While Cates says she has several notable memories of her time with the S&T bands, her favorite one happened this past year – her last year as drum major of the Miner Marching Band.  

“The last game of the season happened to be pretty bittersweet,” says Cates. “My mom made cut-outs of my face and gave them to Dr. Samson and some high woodwinds to tease me, and while it was extraordinarily embarrassing seeing myself making faces as a baby, it was so heartwarming to see the community that I have cherished for years show me how much I am loved and cherished.

“At the end of the game, despite my ugly tears, I had such a happy heart knowing I touched so many people in the program – a program that has meant so much to me in the past four years.”