Department
News, 2003-2004
Faculty and Student Awards
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Professor John
H. Drew was the 2003 recipient of the Thomas Ashley Graves, Jr.
Award
for Sustained Excellence in Teaching. This award was created to
underscore
the importance William and Mary attaches to superior teaching. The
award
is named for Thomas Ashley Graves, Jr., who retired in 1985 after
nearly
14 years as President of the College. The recipient of the award is
chosen
by the president from nominations submitted by each of the academic
deans.
The award was presented to Professor Drew at Commencement Ceremony by
Collge
President Timothy J. Sullivan on May 11, 2003.
News
article on WM News
Professor
John H. Drew's
homepage
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Professor Chi-Kwong
Li has been selected as the recipient of the 2003 Faculty Award
for
the Advancement of Teaching by the Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at
the
College of William and Mary. This award is offered to "a faculty member
who has shown a commitment to the concept of an academic community in
which
teachers and students work together to advance knowledge."
Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious undergraduate
honors organization, was founded on December 5, 1776, at the College of
William and Mary.
Professor
Chi-Kwong
Li's webpage
Phi Beta Kappa
Society
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Mathematics and economics concentrator Hanley
Chiang, Class of 2003,
received this year’s Lord Botetourt Medal. Chiang was the only member
of
the class of 2003 to graduate with a 4.0 grade point average. The award
was established in 1772 by Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt,
Governor
of Virginia. It is awarded “for the honor and encouragement of literary
merit” and is given to the graduating senior who has attained the
greatest
distinction in scholarship. Chiang, who graduated with a double major
in
mathematics and economics, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and earned
“highest
honors” in mathematics. In nominating Chiang for the award, a faculty
member
wrote, “He has an extraordinary level of intellectual curiosity and
analytical
ability and…is a first-rate scholar.” Chiang also won 2002 Thomas
Jefferson
Prize in Natural Philosophy, and Truman Scholarship. He will begin his
graduate study on economics in Harvard University starting 2003 fall.
News
article on WM News Other
awards won by Hanley Chiang (in 2002 Newsletter) Hanley
Chiang profile
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Research Grants
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Professors Chi-Kwong
Li, Roy Mathias, Sebastian
Schreiber and Gregory
Smith (Applied Sciences) reiceive a National
Science Foundation NSF grant of $100,000 for Research Experience of
Undergraduate in Mathematical Biology. The duration of the grant is
2003-2005.
The grant is a supplement to the grant DMS-0091774 awarded to Mathias
and
Li on Matrix Analysis on Science and Engineering. For the project, each
year 5-6 undergraduate research students will work with professors on
matrix
problems that arise in Markov chains models of Ca Release Site Dynamics
and population dynamics.
Homepages: Chi-Kwong
Li, Roy Mathias, Sebastian
Schreiber; Gregory
Smith
Mathematical Biology REU in William and Mary (site
coming soon)
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Professor Junping Shi receives
a National Science Foundation (NSF)
research
grant of $108,545 for his project Persistence and Pattern Formation
in Biological Systems. The duration of the grant is
9/1/2003--8/31/2006.
The grant includes summer and travel support for Professor Shi, and it
will also support related research of two undergraduate students each
year.
Professor Shi is going to study some reaction-diffusion models of
population
ecology and of pattern formations of biochemical systems.
Project
Description on NSF website: DMS-0314736
Professor
Junping Shi's webpage
Mathematical Biology REU in William and Mary (site
coming soon)
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Professor Robert
Michael Lewis, Roy
Mathias, Larry M. Leemis,
and
Michael
W. Trosset receive a National
Science
Foundation (NSF) equipment grant of $39,999 for the project
Scientific
Computing Research Environments for the Mathematical Sciences.
The
duration of the grant is 8/15/2002-7/31/2004. The grant will be used to
purchase equipment for the creation of a computing network dedicated to
the support of research in the mathematical sciences. The award will
provide
funds for high-bandwidth networking equipment, high-performance
computers
for numerical calculations, and a file server. This equipment, together
with desktop machines providing platforms for smaller computations,
will
provide a numerical/file server cluster for the faculty investigators
and
students working on a number of research projects. This equipment will
be used for computationally intensive research projects spanning a wide
range of applied mathematics. These include numerical methods for
engineering
design, numerical mathematics, computational biochemistry, and
operations
research.
Project
Description on NSF website: DMS-0215444
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New Faculty Members
Professor Alexander
Pankov
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Professor Alexander Pankov joined our
department as a visiting professor for the academic year of 2003-2004.
His research areas are Partial Differential Equations, Mathematical
Physics,
Nonlinear Analisys, and Calculus of Variations. Before joining W&M,
Professor Pankov was a visiting professor in Texas A&M University.
Professor
Pankov's webpage
at Texas A&M University
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Dr. Martine Reurings
from
Vrije University, Amsterdam, Netherlands will visit us for the academic
year of 2003-04 as a post-doctoral fellow of Professor Leiba
Rodman.
Dr. Reurings' research interest is on the dynamics of maps on the set
of
Hermitian matrices. Dr. Reurings obtained her Ph.D degree in April 2003
in Vrije University under the supervision of Professor André
C.M. Ran.
Dr.
Martine Reurings's webpage
at Vrije University
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Marilyn Gloyer joined our department as a part-time instructor
for
the academic year of 2003-2004. She will teach Math 111 in both
the
fall sand spring semesters. Before joining William and Mary, she taught
at the University of Memphis, Fairfield
University and other colleges in Connecticut and
Virginia.
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Dr. Martine
Reurings
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Class of 2003
Information on Graduating Seniors (2003)
| Hanley Chiang |
Harvard University (Economics, graduate
study) |
| Mariel Conlon |
University of North Carolina
(Bioinformatics, graduate study) |
| Frank Curtis |
Northwestern University
(Operations Research,
graduate study) |
| Matthew Duggan |
College of Willaim and Mary
(Computational
Operations
Research, graduate study) |
| Rebecca Ellison |
University of Arizona
(Mathematical Biology, graduate study) |
| Sarah Hockensmith |
The
Analytical Sciences Corporation
in Washington DC (work) |
| Michael Levy |
University of Colorado
(Applied Mathematics, graduate study) |
| Robert McGregor |
College of Willaim and Mary
(Computer Sciences, graduate
study) |
| Jessica Otis |
University of Virginia (Mathematics,
graduate study) |
| Suzanne Robertson |
University of Arizona
(Applied Mathematics,
graduate study) |
| Matthew Schu |
(teaching high school) |
| Mary Swajkoski |
Teach for America program (teaching) |
| Daniel Sweeney |
US Air Force (applying) |
| James Turner |
College of Willaim and Mary
(Computational
Operations
Research, graduate study) |
| Bryan Walter |
NASA-Langley Research Center (work) |
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Information on Graduating Master Students
(2003)
| Catherine Easterling |
NASA-Langley Research Center and Lockheed
Martin (computer systems
analyst) |
| Lane Yingjie Lan |
University of Maryland
(Computer Sciences, graduate study for PhD) |
Dear graduate, Please let us know where you are
now.
Please sent news about you to shij@math.wm.edu
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Conferences
| Professors Roy Mathias
and Hugo Woerdeman co-chaired the
organizing
committee of SIAM
Conference
on Applied Linear Algebra, which was held on William and Mary
campus,
July 15-19, 2003. The meeting is sponsored by SIAM
Activity Group on Linear Algebra (SIAG/LA). It the latest in a
successful
series of meetings that began in Raleigh more than 20 years ago. The
meeting
is being organized in cooperation with the International
Linear Algebra Society (ILAS) and covers a wide and inclusive range
of topics in applied and core linear algebra, as well as applications,
both emerging and established. Ten distinguished mathematicians and
researchers
delivered the invited plenary lectures, and about 200 presentations
about
the linear algebra and applications were given in minisymposia (MS) and
contributed sessions. Professors Chi-Kwong
Li and Leiba Rodman organized MS:
Indefinite Inner Products and Applications; Professors Vladimir
Bolotnikov, Charles R. Johnson,
Chi-Kwong
Li, Leiba Rodman, and Michael
W. Trosset all gave talks in the meetings, as well as Thomas
Milligan
(graduate student, W&M) and Frank Curtis (undergraduate,
W&M).
Professor Roy Mathias
received the
SIAM
Activity
Group on Linear Algebra Prize in the meeting (see news item
above). |
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Professor Rex K. Kincaid gave a
presentation
at the 44th
AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference,
April
7-10, 2003, Norfolk, VA. His talk is "Bell-Curve Based Optimization for
Mixed Continuous and Discrete Structural Optimization Problems,'' (with
M. Griffith, R. Sykes and J. Sobieski).
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Professor Sebastian
Schreiber was one of the main lecturers in Scales
in Mathematical and Theoretical Ecology, From Individuals to
Ecosystems:
A Summer School, held in Sigüenza, Spain, August
25-September
3, 2003.
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Professor Junping Shi
gave
an invited plenary lecture in Workshop: New Perspective of
Nonlinear
Partial Differential Equations, held in Ryukoku
University, Japan, June 23-25, 2003; he was also invited to give a
talk in Workshop
on Defects and their Dynamics, held in newly founded Banff
International Research Station, Canada, August 9-16, 2003.
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Professor Nahum Zobin gave invited
lectures
in Workshop
on Noncommutative Geometry (April 5-10, 2003) and Workshop
on Analysis and Geometric Measure Theory, (July 26-31, 2003) held
in
newly founded Banff
International
Research Station, Canada; he was invited to the Max
Planck Institute of Mathematics (Bonn, Germany) to conduct a joint
research in Mathematical Physics with Professor Dimitri Gurevich (July
1-15, 2003).
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Summer Research Experience for Undergraduate
Since 1990, William and Mary has hosted an
NSF-funded summer Research
Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. For eight weeks in the
summer of 2003, nine REU students from around the country visited the
William and Mary mathematics department to work with faculty mentors on
research
projects on matrix analysis and its applications. Three of the students
(Kevin Armstrong, Audrey Crittenden, and Paul Smith) were William and
Mary
undergraduates. The faculty research mentors were Professors Chi-Kwong
Li, Charles R. Johnson, Roy
Mathias, Vladimir Bolotnikov,
and Sebastian
Schreiber. In addition, three doctoral students (Tom Milligan,
Raymond
Sze, and Brian Sutton) assisted faculty mentors in working with the
visiting
undergraduates. David Lutzer served
as
the overall project coordinator.
REU students choose their research projects from a
group of problems
described by faculty mentors during the first week of the
program.
These problems were not textbook exercises. Instead, they were
open-ended
projects designed to attack unsolved questions related to linear
algebra
and, in some cases, to its applications in bio-mathematics,
computational
mathematics. At the end of the summer, students presented written
and oral summaries of their projects and, if history is a guide, about
half of their papers will grow into refereed journal articles with the
students and research mentors are co-authors. (A list of previous
publications
by our mathematics faculty members and undergraduate co-authors can be
found at http://www.math.wm.edu/~klsmit/udres.html
)
REU students find that participating in
mathematical research is quite
a different experience from what they have seen in typical
undergraduate
classes. NSF hopes that REU experiences will encourage
participants
to continue their studies in graduate school, and the William and Mary
summer REU program has a very strong record in that regard. Since
its inception in 1990, about 75% of William and Mary REU students have
gone on to graduate school in a mathematical science, and in some
years'
REU groups, the percentage is closer to 90%.
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Interdisciplinary Research
| During the last 3 years there have been three
very successful interdepartmental
seminars running at William and Mary, bringing together mathematicians
and physicists. These seminars helped to create active joint research
groups
in several areas of mutual interest. Professors Carl
Carlson, Christopher
Carone
(Physics) and Nahum Zobin
(Mathematics)
are studying noncommutative gauge field theories which are meant to
explain
the small scale structure of space-time, Professor John
Delos, Dr. Kevin Mitchell (Physics) and Professor Nahum
Zobin are working on problems of dynamical systems related to break
up of large molecules and atoms, Professors Eugene
Tracy (Physics) and Nahum Zobin
are
using algebro-geometric methods to investigate complex dynamical
systems
arising in plasma physics and oceanography. |
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