2007 Personal News

• Wolfgang Bangerth and Guido Kanschat together with Ralf Hartmann from the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology, Braunschweig, Germany were awarded "The 2007 Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software" for their deal. II - a General Purpose Object Oriented Finite Element Library. The award will be presented at the Congress of International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) this July in Zurich, Switzerland.

• Harold Boas was presented the Lester R. Ford Award at the Summer MathFest in San Jose, Calif. Established in 1964, the awards, consisting of a citation and cash prize, are presented by the Mathematical Association of America for articles of expository excellence published in the /American Mathematical Monthly/. Boas received this prestigious award in recognition for his article, "Reflections on the Arbelos," /American Mathematical Monthly/, vol. 113, no. 3, 2006, pp. 236-249. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is the world's largest professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level.

• Yalchin Efendiev organized 5 mini-sessions (joint with Y. Gorb) at the 44th Annual Technical Meeting Society of Engineering Science, Texas A&M University, October 21-24, 2007.

• Distinguished Professor Richard Ewing, member of the department since 1992, died Wednesday, December 5, 2007, at age 61 after suffering a heart attack. For the past 15 years, Dr. Ewing has dedicated most of his professional life to the Department, the College, and the University. Through his tireless efforts as Dean and later as Vice President for Research, he oversaw the substantial growth in intellectual talent and research infrastructure here at Texas A&M. He was a working colleague and friend to many of us here in the Department and he will be sorely missed.

• Ciprian Foias has been promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor in our department effective September 1, 2007. Dr. Foias has made many fundamental contributions to both operator theory and fluid mechanics. He has authored over 400 peer reviewed articles and 11 graduate-level books. He has also directed over 20 Ph.D. students. His major awards include the Norbert Wiener Prize (1995) and the Bela Szokefalvi-Nagy Memorial Medal (2000). His promotion to Distinguished Professor here at A&M is in recognition of his long and extremely productive career.

  Distinguished Professor Ciprian Foias will receive the Association of Former Students University Level Distinguished Achievement Award in Research. This is the highest level research award offered by the University. With over 400 publications in refereed journals, Dr. Foias has made fundamental contributions to the fields of operator theory and nonlinear partial differential equations.

• William Johnson has been awarded the prestigious 2007 Stefan Banach Medal by the Polish Academy of Sciences. Below is the award citation from the Polish Academy Web site:
  

  Professor Johnson is one of the most outstanding contemporary mathematicians pursuing studies in the field of functional analysis and its applications. He is an author of over 100 scientific papers. His works have made significant contribution to mathematical sciences pointing to development directions of various branches of linear and non-linear functional analysis such as: the global and local theory of Banach spaces, the theory of Banach structures and symmetric spaces, the theory of linear operators in Banach spaces, the theory of Lipschitz functions. The scope of his scientific activity encompasses also the theory of probability and its links with the theory of Banach spaces. Many of his important mathematical discoveries have been made in cooperation with other scholars. He also inspired publication of many works in the area of mathematics. Prof. Johnson established a leading research center dealing with functional analysis and the theory of probability at Texas A&M University, where he heads a special department. Prof. Johnson has cooperated with Polish mathematicians for over 40 years.
  

  Dr. Johnson will travel to Poland this summer to receive his award.

• Greg Klein, a lecturer in our department, has been selected to receive the 2007 Distinguished Achievement College-Level Awards in Teaching from The Association of Former Students.

• Matthew Papanikolas research was the subject of part of a semi-annual Séminaire Bourbaki lecture. F. Pellarin, "Aspects de l'indépendance algébrique en caractéristique non nulle [d'aprés Anderson, Brownawell, Denis, Papanikolas, Thakur, Yu, ...]" Paris, France, Séminaire Bourbaki, March 2007.

• Joseph Pasciak is the recipient of the Computational and Mathematical Methods in Science and Engineering 2007 (CMMSE2007) prize for "Excellence in Research".

• Frank Sottile was the recipient of the US Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow . (Attended the Japanese-American Frontiers of Science, Kanagawa, Japan, November 29-December 4, 2007.)

• Jaime Vykukal gave birth to a baby girl (Jillian Marie) on April 12th around 1 in the afternoon. She weighed 9 lbs, 8 oz, mother and daughter are doing fine.

• Catherine Yan serves on the Editorial Board for Advances in Applied Mathematics, since November 2007.

• At its March 29, 2007 meeting, the Texas A&M University Board of Regents approved the promotion of Maurice Rojas to Professor and Andrew Comech, Peter Howard, Dmitry Panchenko, and Bojan Popov to Associate Professor with tenure.

Grants/Contracts Awarded

• G. Donald Allen, THECB (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board): "High quality algebra II instruction," $88,197, June 1, 2007 to August 31, 2008.

• G. Donald Allen, THECB (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board): "Course redesign for math 1324," (PI and Director: G. Donald Allen) $349,827, TAMRF #0701594, July 20, 2007 to August 31, 2009.

• Wolfgang Bangerth, DoE Grant 00056472: "3-D deep penetration neutron imaging of thick absorbing and diffusive objects using transport theory," (with Jean Ragusa, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University) $283,093, May 1, 2007 to Apri 30, 2010.

• Wolfgang Bangerth, NSF Grant: "A framework for developing novel detection systems focused on interdicting shielded HEU," (Co-PI; PI: Warren Miller, Texas A&M) $7,496,076, November 1, 2007 to October 31, 2012.
  Note: Each of the 4 co-PIs leads one sub-project. I lead the "Radiation transport modeling and inversion" subproject that consists, in addition to myself, of Jean-Luc Guermond, Guido Kanschat, Peter Kuchment (Department of Mathematics), Nancy Amato, Lawrence Rauchwerger (Computer Science), Marvin Adams, Jean Ragusa (Nuclear Engineering).

• Ioan Bejenaru (PI), NSF Grant: "Schrödinger maps and related problems," DMS-0738442, $89,000, July 2007 to July 2010.

• Sue Geller, PI, NSF Grant: "Undergraduate student travel to conferences," DMS-0714549, $15,038, 2007.

• Jean-Luc Guermond, PI, Guido Kanschat, Co-PI, and Raytcho Lazarov, Co-PI, NSF Grant: "Discontinuous Galerkin methods for PDEs with heterogeneous coefficients," DMS-0713829, $300,000, August 2007 to August 2010.

  William Johnson and Gilles Pisier, PIs, NSF Grant: "Geometry of Banach spaces and of operator spaces," DMS-0503688, $882,492, June 1, 2005 to May 31, 2010.

• William Johnson, PI NSF Grant: "Collaborative research: Embeddings of finite metric spaces - a geometric approach to efficient algorithms," DMS-0501256 (MSPA-MCS), (S. Arora, M. Charikar, and M. Gromov, Principal Investigators) $135,000 for Texas A&M, July 15, 2005 to August 31, 2008.

• William Johnson, David Larson, Gilles Pisier, and Joel Zinn, PIs, NSF Grant: "Workshop in Analysis and Probability," DMS-0532508 (SM), $307,986 for three years.

• William Johnson and G. Schechtman, PIs, US-Israel Binational Science Foundation: "Topics in the Geometry of Banach Spaces," BSF-2006027, $148,352 for four year (through the Weizmann Institute of Science).

• Guido Kanschat , Co-PI and Warren Miller (NEEN), PI NSF-DNDO Grant: A Framework for Developing Novel Detection Systems Focused on Interdicting Shielded HEU, 2007.

• Peter Kuchment, PI, NSF Grant: "Mathematical methods for novel modalities of medical imaging", DMS-0715090 $55,905, June 1, 2007 to August 31, 2009.

• Raytcho Lazarov, PI and Joseph Pasciak, Co-PI, LLNL: "Computational issues of neutron transport," $49,800, June 1, 2007 to December 30, 2007.

• Laura Matusevich, PI, NSF Grant: "Multivariate hypergeometric functions and equations," DMS-0703866, $146,741 (estimated), June 2007 to May 2010.

• Laura Matusevich, PI, and Frank Sottile, Co-PI, NSF Grang: "Summer School on Applicable Algebraic Geometry: Additional Funding," DMS-0704355, $25,000, Summer 2007.

• Laura Matusevich, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications: "Funding for IMA Summer School on Applicable Algebraic Geometry," supplied by the IMA, $70,000 (estimated), Summer 2007. Co-Organizers: Frank Sottile, Thorsten Theobald.

• Guergana Petrova, Co-PI, Bulgarian Science Fund Grant: "Mathematical methods and algorithms for computed tomography," VU-I-303/2007, BG LV 20,000, October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2010.

• Guergana Petrova, PI, IMA Participating Institutions Conference Grant: "Approximation and learning in high dimensions," $4,000, October 19-21, 2007.

• Guergana Petrova, PI, NSF Conference Grant: "Approximation and learning in high dimensions," DMS-0708470, $15,000, July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008.

• Guergana Petrova, Travel Grant: SIAM, ICIAM, $1,300, July 16-20, 2007.

• Guergana Petrova, PI, ARO MURI Grant: "Model classes, approximation, and metrics for dynamic processing of urban terrain data," W911NF-07-1-0185, $201,000, May 1, 2007 to April 30, 2010.

• Mike Pilant, Partial funding to organize First Annual Doha Conference on Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, $30,000, 2007.

• Bojan Popov, Co-PI, Conference funding for Approximation and Learning in High Dimensions from Texas A&M, IMA and NSF, $23000, October 19-21, 2007.

• William Rundell, NSF Grant: "Reconstruction algorithms for inverse obstacle problems," DMS-0715060, $260,500, July 2007 to July 2010.

• Henry Schenck, NSF Grant: Applied Math "Surface modeling, approximation theory, and coding theory," September 1, 2007 to August 31, 2010, $65,799.

• Henry Schenck, NSA Grant: "Applied commutative algebra," H98230-07-1-0052, January 1, 2007 to January 1, 2009, $30,000.

• Frank Sottile, NSF Grant: "Applicable algebraic geometry: real solutions, applications, and combinatorics," DMS-0701050, $202,895, September 1, 2007 to August 31, 2010.

• Sarah Witherspoon, NSA Grant: "Cohomology, deformations, and representations of algebras,", $38,895, February 2007 to February 2009.

• Catherine Yan, NSF Grant: "Combinatorial patterns and structures," DMS-0653846, $117,273, September 01, 2007 to August 31, 2010.

• Catherine Yan, NSA Grant: "CombinaTexas: A Combinatorics Conference in the South-Central U.S.," $14,607, November 1, 2007 to October 31, 2009.

• Philip Yasskin, NSF Grant: "Collaborative Proposal: Maplets for Calculus," DMS-0737248, $73,144, January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2010.

• Jianxin Zhou, PI, NSF Grant: "Computational theory and methods for finding multiple solutions to differential systems," DMS-0713872, $181,270, July 10, 2007 to June 30, 2010.

• Joel Zinn, PI, NSA Grant: "Inequalities and limit theorems in probability with applications," $51,503, December 1, 2007 to November 30, 2009.

Fall 2007 award recipients for the Department of Mathematics

• Outstanding Staff

  Cara Barton

  Judy Muzny

• Outstanding Service

  Harold Boas

  Philip Yasskin

• Outstanding Teaching

  Maurice Rojas

  Mike Stecher