Georgia Institute of Technology

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."