Supercharacter formulas for pattern groups
  C. Andre and N. Yan introduced the idea of a supercharacter theory to give a tractable substitute for character theory in wild groups such as the unipotent uppertriangular group $U_n(F_q)$. In this theory superclasses are certain unions of conjugacy classes, and supercharacters are a set of characters which are constant on superclasses. This paper gives a character formula for a supercharacter evaluated at a superclass for pattern groups and more generally for algebra groups. 
Persi Diaconis and Nathaniel Thiem