Georgia Institute of Technology

Dana Randall, professor of Computer Science and adjunct professor of Mathematics, has received the Institute's Outstanding Service Award. Randall has provided outstanding service to her schools, the Institute and the profession. She focuses a significant portion of her energies on mentorship, with a major emphasis on promoting women in science. She recently organized the event, "Connections for Women: Discrete Lattice Models in Mathematics, Physics, and Computing." She also created a task force on mentoring and transparency for the College of Computing, and she designed the Equity, Diversity and Excellence Initiative currently being launched.   more...

Two of the three campus-wide Teaching Assistants awards were received by School of Mathematics TAs this year.

• The 2013 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant is Andrew Travis Rogers.
• The 2013 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant is Ranjini Vaidyanathan.
• Albert Bush was a finalist in the category of Graduate Student Instructor.

Applied Math major Gautam Goel has been awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, whose purpose is "to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields." He is the only awardee at Georgia Tech this year.

Gautam has been working with two Georgia Tech faculty:    more...

Two Mathematics undergraduate majors, Martin Copenhaver and Eleanor Middlemas, received National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowships, and another undergraduate, Ross Granowski, received honorable mention for the same award. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.    more...

Professor Leonid Bunimovich will be a guest of honor at the upcoming 109th Statistical Mechanics Conference taking place at Rutgers University, May 12-14, 2013. Mitchell Feigenbaum and Leo Kadanoff will also be honored. He joins a very distinguished list of previous honorees, including    more...

 Mrs. Lorraine Ruff, 90, passed away on January 10, 2013. Ruff worked as a part-time secretary at the School of Mathematic's Center for Dynamical Systems and Nonlinear Studies from March 1992 until August 2003. She came to Tech after retiring from Emory University.

The mother-in-law of former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, Ruff was living at the Sunrise assisted living home at the time of her passing.   more...

Interested in learning the mathematics that govern games? Professor Tom Morley will be teaching a course online via Coursera,  Games without Chance: Combinatorial Game Theory. This 7-week course covers the mathematical theory and analysis of simple games without chance moves.

So, if you're a fan of games, mathematics or both, check it out.

For the second time in as many years, Ms. Klara Grodzinsky has received the Class of 1934 Course Survey Teaching Award from Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) in recognition of high Course/Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS) ratings and high response rates. The award includes a monetary bonus and recognition at Celebrating Teaching Day in March. This most recent award was for spring and fall semesters 2012. The previous award was for spring and fall 2011. Out of the 52 recipients this year, 12 also received the award last year.

Prospective Student Day

Students interested in graduate studies in the School of Mathematics are invited to attend Prospective Student Day on * Friday November 2, 2012 *    more...

Twelve faculty from Georgia Tech's School of Mathematics were named today as Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The listing represents the society's inaugural class and includes 1,119 fellows from more than 600 institutions.   more...

Professor Michael Loss was recently elected as a Foreign Corresponding Member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences. Information about the entire event (en español) is at the link. Among other things, the citation says that Michael

"... combines, with elegance and style, physical intuition and mathematical rigor, obtaining profound and highly interesting results in physics as well as in mathematics."

Professor Maria Westdickenberg will receive the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). This is "the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers."  Dr.   more...

At the yearly TA reception on April 12, the Graduate Program awarded its yearly awards to our graduate students. The awardees were selected by the Graduate Committee among a most impressive pool of nominees. This year's recipients are:

• Best GTA: Marc Sedjro
• Best PhD thesis (4/2010-3/2011): Ulfar Stefansson
• Top Graduate Student: Ricardo Restrepo and Ben Webb
• Festa Fellowship: Jie Ma

   more...

School of Mathematics' undergraduate student Michelle Delcourt was nominated by Undergraduate Coordinator Doron Lubinsky and won the 2011 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher College Award.

Michelle Delcourt has a truly outstanding undergraduate research record. It includes REU stints at Clemson University in 2008 (on combinatorics and computational number theory); at Louisiana State University in 2009 (on zeta functions and invariants in algebra and geometry); and Georgia Tech in 2010 (on additive combinatorics). The research that grew out of the first REU, has been accepted for publication in the prestigious and internationally recognized journal, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

There are at least three other papers, that have been submitted to refereed mathematics journals. Michelle has also presented several talks and poster presentations to seminars and conferences. In particular, Michelle's poster presentation at the 2010 Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America in San Francisco in January, was awarded a prize as one of the leading presentations.   more...

Elsevier, Publisher of the JMAA, has donated a matching sum. The combined account, The JMAA Ames Award Fund, is now entrusted with and managed by the American Mathematical Society.

The Editors of the JMAA have decided that the most appropriate recognition of Bill Ames' many years of outstanding service to the Journal is to establish two awards in pure and applied mathematics, to be made on a yearly basis.

Each award will be $2,500. In each case, this sum is to be divided equally among the coauthors of a paper, published during the previous year, that is deemed to be of major interest and of high quality. The decision on these two awards will be made by the Editorial Board of the JMAA.    more...

Since arriving at Georgia Tech's School of Mathematics four years ago, Professor Howie Weiss has expanded his research focus in dynamical systems to encompass population dynamics. He collaborated with biologists at Georgia Tech and Emory, epidemiologists at the Center for Disease Control, and other colleagues to use mathematical modeling to study how populations change and how infectious diseases are transmitted through a population. Currently, Dr. Weiss's research projects include modeling the population and evolutionary dynamics of bacteria in physically structured habitats, modeling the competition of flu viruses, and modeling the dynamics of shigellosis outbreaks in the US.    more...

Justin began as a student worker in January 2002, and he immediately distinguished himself with his technical expertise and good attitude. When he completed his Bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech in Computer Science in 2004, he was hired to a full time position where he progressed from being a System Support Specialist II to a System Support Specialist III in less than two years. Throughout his time here, Justin has shown an extremely high level of dedication and service to the School of Mathematics and the Institute as a whole.

As the lead system administrator for the School of Mathematics, Justin has broad responsibilities over a critical resource for one of the largest schools in the College of Sciences.    more...

Huy Huynh, PhD student and the School's graduate committee student representative, is a recipient of the 2010 Clendenin Fellowship. These endowed Fellowships are awarded from Kennesaw State University to its alumni who are pursuing graduate studies.

A prestigious scholarship offered at Kennesaw State University (KSU), the Clendenin Graduate Fellows is the first graduate fellowship program of its kind at KSU. The Program seeks to attract outstanding individuals interested in earning a master’s or doctoral degree with financial awards of $3,000 - $15,000.    more...

Ms. Cathy Jacobson has been asked to participate on a panel at the International Teaching Assistants (ITA) Academic Session of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) 2011 Annual Convention to be held in New Orleans during March 16-19. The focus of the presentations will be the "Relationship Building in International Teaching Assistant Programs." Emphasis is rightfully placed on the relationships between International Teaching Assistants and their students. However, the ITAs' relationships with and within the TESOL's programs have a significant impact on their success and satisfaction. Presenters discuss the relationship dynamics fostered by their programs and the resultant differences in ITA experiences. The five panel members include:    more...

The Graduate Committee announced the winners of the School of Mathematics graduate awards:   more...

Graduate student, Mitch Keller, has received another distinction. The Graduate Student Senate has voted to initiate an annual award to the most outstanding graduate student in terms of distinguished service and leadership. The award is named the "Mitchel T. Keller Lifetime Achievement Award", with Mitch the first to be so honored. Mitch has received a number of awards and honors during his time here at Georgia Tech including    more...

Undergraduate student, Michelle Delcourt, was named a "2010 MAA Undergrad Poster Session Prize Winner" for her poster Dessins and Manturov Bracket Shuffles at the annual combined American Mathematical Society - Mathematical Association of America meeting in San Francisco on January 15. This arose out of a Research Experience for Undergraduates at Louisiana State University, and was one of many undergraduate posters presented.   more...

Dr. Clemmie Whatley was honored as a Woman of Distinction by the 2009 Women's Leadership Conference at Georgia Tech. Dr. Whatley earned an MS in Applied Mathematics at Tech in 1973 and went on to a distinguished career at BellSouth. In 2005 she founded the non-profit organization Educational Dynamix which produces a program linking music and mathematics. You can read her profile in the 2009 Proof Reader.

The School of Mathematics lost a part of its legacy last week on August 3rd. Professor Bill Ames, a previous director of the school, passed away. He was a Navy veteran of WWII and the Korean War. He obtained his undergraduate (Phi Beta Kappa) as well as graduate degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1950 and 1954, respectively. He was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware and the University of Iowa. In 1975 he joined Georgia Institute of Technology and became the director of the School of Mathematics in 1982 and chairman of the University Center of Mathematics in 1988. He was a Regents' Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Tech. He authored eighteen technical books and 113 research publications on applied mathematics and proudly collaborated on several publications with his daughter Karen, also a professor of mathematics. Many of these publications have been translated internationally. Bill Ames became co-editor-in-chief in 1991 of the Journal of the Mathematical Analysis and Applications. He always showed exceptional levels of devoted service, was greatly respected among his colleagues, and his legacy continues with his numerous graduate students who became professors at universities worldwide. Among Bill's passions were playing bridge, completing the daily crossword puzzles with his wife, Terry, international and national travel, and reading historical books.

A tribute was published in 2007 by the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications in honor of his 80th birthday.

A celebration of Bill's life was held on Thursday, August 13. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Habitat for Humanity.

Professor Matt Baker has been selected as the recipient of the 2010 Regents' Teaching Excellence Award for faculty at research universities. This award is the highest honor for faculty at Georgia's public colleges and universities.  Baker was commended for his undergraduate and graduate teaching, the success of his research students, and his outreach to high school and community groups.  For a more in-depth article on Baker, please see his spotlight.

Robin Thomas was one of the four-person research team that was awarded the 2009 Fulkerson Prize. The other team members were Maria Chudnovsky (Columbia University), Neal Robertson (Ohio State University), and Paul Seymour (Princeton University). Thomas serves as Director of the Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. He and his colleagues are being recognized for their paper: The Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, Annals of Mathematics Vol. 164 (2006), 51-229, in which they resolved the long-standing conjecture of Claude Berge: A graph is perfect if and only if it contains an odd hole or the complement of an odd hole as an induced subgraph (an odd hole is an odd cycle on five or more vertices).

The Fulkerson Prize is sponsored jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Programming Society. This year's prize, including a $1500 cash award, will be presented at the opening session of the 20th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming in Chicago, on August 23, 2009. Thomas, along with Robertson and Seymour, also shared the 1994 Fulkerson Prize.  It is very rare to have repeat awards in such a competition.

Two Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO) students were successful in the very tough competition for NSF Graduate Fellowships during the 2009 funding cycle.  Luke Postle was awarded a 2009 Graduate Research Fellowship, and ISyE ACO student, Daniel Dadush, received an honorable mention. More information about the fellowships can be found at www.nsfgrfp.org.    more...

Prasad Tetali was one of four Georgia Tech professors named as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).  Tetali was recognized for contributions to discrete mathematics and algorithms.

The SIAM Fellows Program began in 2008 to recognize members who have made outstanding contributions to their fields. More on the program can be found at fellows.siam.org.

The other Georgia Tech professors named as Fellows were William Cook (ISyE), for contributions to the Traveling Salesman Problem and other combinatorial optimization problems, Ellis Johnson for contributions to combinatorial optimization and its application to logistical problems, and George Nemhauser (ISyE) for contributions to scheduling methodology and large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. All three Fellows are members of the multidisciplinary program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization (ACO)

Liang Peng has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Fellowship is a way of honoring the outstanding research and professional contributions of members.  It is these contributions which help the IMS maintain its leading role in the field of statistics and probability.

Each newly elected Fellow will be welcomed and presented with a plaque at the IMS Annual Meeting during the Joint Statistical Meetings to be held this coming August in Washington DC.  Dr. Peng joins Christian Houdre and Vladimir Koltchinskii, both of whom were elected to IMS Fellowship in 2004.

Silas Alben, Christine Heitsch and Hao-Min Zhou made highly effective presentations to the College of Sciences Advisory Board. They were great representatives of the School of Mathematics, skillfully answering questions and responding to comments from the Board. It was very clear that the Board was enthusiastic and appreciative.    more...

The School of Math will receive a $2,000 donation in recognition of Tom Trotter. This is from the College of Sciences (CoS) Ralph and Jewel Gretzinger "Moving Forward School" Award. The purpose of this award is to recognize the leadership of a School chair or former chair who has played a pivotal role in one or more of these areas: diversifying the (tenure or tenure-track) faculty composition in view of gender or race, creating a family friendly work environment, and providing a supportive environment for junior faculty.  The award is named for Ralph and Jewel Gretzinger, whose endowment supports the award.  Trotter was recognized with plaque at the CoS Advisory Board Meeting by CoS ADVANCE Professor Wing Li.  The School will receive an award of $2,000 intended for but not limited to enhancing activities toward the above-mentioned goals.

The Graduate Committee announced the winners of the School of Mathematics graduate awards. "We received several outstanding nominations, in all categories, which attest to the high level of achievement of our graduate students" said Luca Dieci, Graduate Coordinator. Congratulations to:

• Shannon Bishop and Ian Palmer - Outstanding TA Awards
• Carl Yerger - Festa Fellowship Award
• Alex Grigo and Hwakil Kim - Top Graduate Student Awards
• John Pearson and Alessandro Pugliese - Best PhD thesis Awards

Mathematics major A.J. Friend has won the prestigious Phi Kappa Phi cup. This is the top academic honor for graduating seniors on the GT campus. The minimum requirement for the award is a 4.0 GPA, and there were 39 students that met the minimum. The selection of the winner depended upon a record of high scholarly achievement, intellectual sophistication, and research accomplishments. Congratulations A.J.!

Other recent winners of the Phi Kappa Phi cup who were from the School of Mathematics are: David Vener (2001 BS) who went on to get a Ph.D. at MIT (2006) and Vida Blair Dowling (2002 BS) who went on to get a Ph.D. at Princeton (2007).

For further information about A.J., see his recent spotlight.

Prasad Tetali has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, informally known as SIDMA.  The journal publishes research articles on a broad range of topics from pure and applied mathematics including combinatorics and graph theory, discrete optimization and operations research, theoretical computer science, and coding and communication theory.

While maintaining very high standards, SIDMA is also very broad, perhaps the broadest among discrete mathematics journals. Tetali's appointment was announced following the reports of two SIAM committees charged with charting future direction of the Journal. The committees recommended that "in choosing the next Editor-In-Chief for SIDMA, SIAM should search for a researcher whose own work displays the breadth sought for the journal."