In the news recently, Ryan Hynd a Georgia Tech SoM alumni was awarded a Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship. Ryan was a graduate in the B.S. Applied Mathematics program and completed his MSc in mathematics at Georgia Tech in 2004, he then went on to receive his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2010, studying under Lawrence Evans. 

From the AMS News:

Ryan Hynd, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded the AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Hynd researches partial differential equations arising in mathematical models for fluid mechanics, control theory, and finance, as well as eigenvalue problems. During his fellowship year, he will visit the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Sweden for collaborations in the fall and continue consulting with various mathematicians in the spring. He will investigate the Blaschke-Lebesgue problem, seeking to characterize minimum-volume bodies of constant width.

“This has been an outstanding problem in convex geometry for a number of years,” Hynd said. “My current hunch is that a time-dependent flow can be used to deform shapes in a way that leads to some new insight.”

Hynd earned his PhD in 2010 from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Craig Evans. After a postdoc at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, Hynd joined the Penn faculty in 2012. In 2016–2017 he was a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship was established to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians. Recipients are recognized for their achievements as well as their significant potential for further contributions to mathematics.

“Gloria Ford Gilmer and William Schieffelin Claytor are both mathematicians whose efforts helped pave the way for someone like me. I think the work they did early in their careers is an indication that men and women from all walks of life can do mathematics at a high level,” said Hynd. “I’m also especially proud of their accomplishments as they both earned graduate degrees in my department. In fact, we have a permanent exhibit highlighting Claytor’s PhD thesis and the professional struggles he later encountered.”

Receiving the fellowship named for Claytor and Gilmer is “a tremendous honor,” Hynd said. “It’s wonderful that the AMS has dedicated a fellowship in their honor, and I’m thrilled to be a Claytor-Gilmer Fellow for the upcoming academic year.” 

In addition to his outstanding research, Hynd is a passionate teacher dedicated to promoting diversity in STEM. He helped create and coordinate the Bridge to PhD program at Penn, and he was a research leader for the 2020 African Diaspora Joint Mathematics Workshop (ADJOINT).

About the Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship

The AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship aims to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians. Awardees may use the fellowship in any way that most effectively enables their research—for instance, for release time, participation in research programs, travel support, childcare, etc. The most likely awardee is a mid-career Black mathematician based at a US institution whose achievements demonstrate significant potential for further contributions to mathematics. The fellowship is named for Dr. William Schieffelin Claytor, the first African American man to publish a research article in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal, and Dr. Gloria Ford Gilmer, the first African American woman to publish a research article in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal.

See the full article on the AMS News website here:

https://www.ams.org/news?news_id=6981

Other News

Ryan was a JMM Invited Speaker in 2021:

https://math.gatech.edu/news/two-jmm-invited-speakers-are-som-faculty

Ryan was also featured in this external news item in 2019:

https://math.gatech.edu/news/external-news-graduate-provides-opportunities-underrepresented-students

Ryan was also featured in this news story in 2017:

https://math.gatech.edu/news/georgia-tech-grad-ryan-hynd-finishing-mlk-visiting-professorship-mit

 

As one of the best discrete mathematics and combinatorics graduate programs in the country, Georgia Tech’s Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO) doctoral program has long been known for its excellence and rigor. 

Newly appointed director Santosh Vempala plans to both “ensure that the program maintains its high quality — and make it desirable for a diverse student population.”

“The ACO program is special both at Georgia Tech and in the world,” shares Vempala, who serves as professor and Frederick G. Storey Chair in the College of Computing with joint appointments across the School of Computer Science, School of Mathematics, and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE). “The community of students, thanks to the dedicated and insightful work of previous directors, is thriving, both while they are here at Georgia Tech and after they graduate. They have been exceptionally successful.”

Founded in 1991, the ACO program is housed jointly across the College of Computing, the School of Mathematics in the College of Sciences, and ISYE in the College of Engineering. Focused on topics like graph theory, algorithms, discrete optimization — and the interplay between the three — the program has deeply embraced its multidisciplinary nature, essentially eliminating “the traditional walls that usually separate academic units” by encouraging faculty members to advise students regardless of departmental affiliation.

ACO “brings together three disciplines that are fundamentally related,” Vempala explains. “Its course structure enables students to understand phenomena from all three perspectives and learn to use tools from all of them.” 

Vempala has been involved with the ACO program since he joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2006, advising many students in ACO, as well as serving on committees within the program. 

“Professor Vempala's experience at Georgia Tech, including his prior service as associate director of the ACO program, means that he is uniquely qualified to serve as director,” shares David Collard, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and senior associate dean in the College of Sciences. “The program is highly regarded nationally and internationally. It attracts superb students from around the world and provides exceptional educational opportunities. I look forward to its continued success under professor Vempala's leadership." 

Meet Santosh Vempala

Vempala received his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization at Carnegie Mellon University before spending a year as a Miller Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and a decade as a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Vempala served as the founding director of Tech’s Algorithms and Randomness Center.  He is a fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Mathematical Society.

Describing his research as “studying the nature of computation, and its limits,” Vempala’s work ranges from theoretical to applied. Often entailing searching for efficient algorithms to solve fundamental mathematical and computational problems, his work also has applications such as trying to understand the problem-solving capabilities of the brain. “The best possible algorithms for basic problems — such as solving linear systems and linear programming — are still waiting to be discovered,” he says.

Along with continuing ACO’s longstanding record of research and academic excellence, Vempala is also keen to foster community and another ‘factor’ across the ACO community.

“I am looking forward to working with my colleagues in Computer Science, Mathematics, and ISyE, to building an atmosphere of scientific collegiality and open curiosity for faculty and students, and to having more social events with a high fun factor.” 

In addition to research and leading ACO, Vempala is an active instructor who teaches Computability and Algorithms, Machine Learning Theory, Optimization and Sampling, and Computation and the Brain courses across campus.

“Teaching takes a lot of effort for me with an hour of lecture needing several hours of preparation, but it is consistently rewarding — each lecture is an opportunity to understand something better; each student is an opportunity to see something from a new angle.”

Learn more about the Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization Ph.D. program at Tech.

Six College of Sciences researchers are among 19 Georgia Tech faculty and students receiving 2022 Research Awards from the Georgia Tech chapter of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. 

Sigma Xi’s mission is “to enhance the health of the research enterprise, foster integrity in science and engineering, and promote the public’s understanding of science for the purpose of improving the human condition.” 

Two College of Sciences researchers won the Best Faculty Paper Award:

Grigoriev won for the paper, “Robust learning from noisy, incomplete, high-dimensional experimental data via physically constrained symbolic regression.” The study appeared in Nature Communications.

Ng won for four papers:

Four College of Sciences graduate students are also recognized.

Best Ph.D. Thesis Awards:

  • Yuchen He, School of Mathematics
    Advisor: Sung Ha Kang
    Title: "Mathematical and data-driven pattern representation with applications in image processing, computer graphics, and infinite dimensional dynamical data mining"  

  • Pan Liu, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
    Advisor: Yuanzhi Tang 
    Title: "Speciation and recovery of rare earth elements (REES) from coal fly ash"   

  • Suttipong “Jay” Suttapitugsakul, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Advisor: Ronghu Wu 
    Title: "MS-based chemical proteomics studies of extracellular glycoproteins: identification, quantification, and dynamics" 

Best M.S. Thesis Award:

  • Charles Ross Lindsey, School of Biological Sciences
    Advisor: Frank Rosenzweig
    Title: "Phylotranscriptomics points to multiple independent origins of multicellularity and cellular differentiation in the Volvocine algae"

The Sigma Xi Georgia Tech Chapter awards ceremony is scheduled for April, preceding the Georgia Tech faculty awards ceremony. Learn more.

Prof. Dan Margalit and Visiting Assisting Professor Gary Lavigne have been awarded the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: 2021 CIOS Award. The award comes with a $1000 prize and recognition of the recipients at the Mach 15th Celebrating Teaching Day on campus. 

About the CIOS Award

Funds for the award this year have been provided by the Class of 1934 and the Jack and Frances Mundy endowment accounts. Fifty awards are being made to recognize instructors with exceptional response rates and scores on the Course Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS). CIOS scores were based on the sum of three scale items: (#16) Instructor’s respect and concern for students; (#17) Instructor’s level of enthusiasm about teaching the course; and (#18) Instructor’s ability to stimulate my interest in the subject matter.  Ties were broken by response rate.  

Courses taught during Spring 2021, Summer 2021, and Fall 2021 were considered for this award. Each semester, instructors who met the base criteria of 70% response rate and placed in the top 25% of the composite CIOS scores for each size group were eligible for recognition on the Honor Roll. Now 50 members of the Honor Roll with the highest response rates and CIOS scores are being recognized with the 2021 CIOS Award.

 

Dan Margalit

Professor Margalit's research lies in the intersection of low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory, with a focus on mapping class groups of surfaces, i.e., the symmetries of surfaces. Prof. Margalit has a long history of excellence in teaching, and he is a previous recipient of several teaching awards including the Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award in 2021 and the Fulmer Award in 2019. Prof. Margalit is also a renowned researcher who recently gave an invited Maryam Mirzakhani Lecture at the JMM in 2022, and is a recent winner of the Conant Prize in 2021 as well as being named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2019. Prof. Margalit is also an extremely active mentor in the School of Mathematics, helping to guide graduate students and postdocs to successful careers in mathematics, as well as mentoring undergraduates in Research Experiences for Undergrads (REU's) with four successful REU programs with co-mentors Wade Bloomquist, Yvon Verberne, and Nancy Scherich, in the Summer of 2021 alone. 

 

Gary Lavigne

Dr. Michael Gary Lavigne is the Assistant Director of Communication, Education, and Outreach for the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB) and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematics. Dr. Lavigne has research interests at the intersection of mathematics and biology, especially reaction-diffusion systems, cellular automata, and spacial strategies of the interferon response. Dr. Lavigne received his PhD in Applied Mathematics at North Carolina State University in 2020. Dr. Lavigne was also the recipient of the Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll Awards for Spring 2021.

Little Einsteins Organization (LEO) is a chartered Georgia Tech campus organization that conducts science, technology, engineering, and math focused activities with children in Atlanta.

Each week, LEO works with more than 150 kids at various elementary schools in Atlanta. The organization has more than 100 Georgia Tech student members and nearly 2,000 followers on Instagram. Membership is open to all undergraduate and graduate Georgia Tech students.

The past two years have presented many challenges for those involved in education, but that hasn’t stopped Georgia Tech’s Little Einsteins Organization from helping provide students in K-5 schools with instruction and activities focused on STEM. 

They’ve accomplished that by changing how they bring science and engineering to the kids — meeting at Hands on Atlanta for science demonstrations, and sending kits to local libraries for children and their families to take home — so that children can perform experiments found in do-it-yourself kits assembled by Georgia Tech volunteers.

“I think they have done wonderful outreach activities, and have been so creative and committed to reach out, despite the very different pandemic landscape,” says Pamela Pollet, LEO academic advisor and senior academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This project is unique because it gives Georgia Tech students the opportunity to support the education of young children in Atlanta during a time of isolation and online schooling.”

Pollet says the pandemic hasn’t kept LEO student and instructor volunteers from keeping their commitment to Atlanta’s students, especially those in underserved communities. 

And before Covid, Pollet saw firsthand LEO’s impact when volunteers helped the younger students conduct experiments in their schools. “Their friend’s volcano erupted much more than theirs. Why? What was different? ‘How come my catapult is not working?’ It is okay if it does not work — let’s take a look and think how we can make it work," she shares. "LEO members created a welcoming and vibrant atmosphere in which students were so engaged and curious.”

There was also the opportunity for Atlanta children to see future versions of themselves in the Georgia Tech students. “They recognized themselves or connected with LEO members as if they were in an age group of older sisters or brothers. It demystified the image given to a scientist or engineer.”

Olivia Gravina, a fourth-year undergraduate in the School of Mathematics, serves as LEO president for the 2021-22 school year. Gravina says one of the group’s latest efforts to get creative during Covid challenges involved putting together at-home STEM kits for kids involved in Hands On Atlanta’s "Disco" program, formerly known as the Discovery program. Disco is a Saturday morning enrichment program which currently offers STEM, social emotional learning, fitness, and health-related activities to K-5 youth across nine Atlanta-area schools.

“We made 150 homemade ice pack kits, and 150 soap Silly Putty kits,” Gravina says. Teams of LEO members made instructional videos for each of the activities which included explanations of the science behind them. Then, Tech's LEO members joined Zoom calls with students from schools involved in the Disco program. 

“The young students had the opportunity to ask questions, and Georgia Tech students were able to encourage the younger students and see the impact of the kits they had provided,” Gravina shares.

Another recent activity, a collaboration with Fulton County Libraries, saw LEO members assembling kits for building small catapults, which also included instructional videos. “We delivered 620 catapult-making kits, which translates to 20 kits in each of the 31 branches of the Fulton County Library System,” Gravina explains.

“It was absolutely brilliant to use the libraries, kits and videos to maintain the excitement of hands-on experimenting,” Pollet adds.

“It was needed even more, especially for younger kids. Being virtual all day leaves many of them disconnected from the material and what science is about: Experiments, observations, questions, analysis," Pollet shares. "And again, they can connect the experiments with Georgia Tech students they can easily relate to.”

Gravina says LEO is still working through plans for the season ahead, but hopes to continue coordinating activities in Atlanta libraries. She encourages other Georgia Tech students to join those activities.

Pollet says the ability to show younger students that they could eventually pursue science careers is critical, pandemic or no pandemic.

“Young, dynamic Tech students who are doing science, and taking the time to do it with them,” Pollet says. “That is really inspiring.”

More information on Little Einsteins Organization is available on their website, and on their Instagram page. Learn more about Hands On Atlanta’s Disco program here. 

Two assistant professors in the College of Sciences have just joined the ranks of Georgia Tech early career scientists selected to receive prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships.

Hannah Choi of the School of Mathematics and Henry S. “Pete” La Pierre of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry are among 118 early career researchers across the United States and Canada named as 2022 Sloan Fellows. 

"Today's Sloan Research Fellows represent the scientific leaders of tomorrow," says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "As formidable young scholars, they are already shaping the research agenda within their respective fields — and their trailblazing won't end here."

Sloan Research Fellowships are some of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers. They are also often seen as a marker of the quality of an institution’s science faculty — and proof of an institution’s success in attracting the most promising junior researchers to its ranks. Since the first Fellowships were awarded in 1955, nearly 50 faculty from Georgia Institute of Technology have received the honor.

“I am extremely excited and honored to be named a Sloan Fellow,” Choi says. “I am deeply grateful to my research group members, mentors, colleagues and collaborators who made this possible, and I appreciate support from the School of Mathematics and the College of Sciences very much.”

Choi plans to use the grant to expand on current research projects on biological neural networks. “Specifically, with this grant, I hope to investigate computational roles of network complexities manifested by diverse neural dynamics and intricate connectivity among different types of neurons, in data-driven, functional neural networks across multiple scales, modalities, and systems. This study, therefore, will help us better understand how robust and efficient computation emerges from the unique complexity of biological neural networks, which then can be applied to innovate neuromorphic computing.”

The Choi Research Group in Mathematical Neuroscience’s primary goal “is to understand how efficient and adaptable neural coding emerges from complex connectivity structure and rich neural dynamics in both biological and artificial neural networks at multiple scales.”

La Pierre leads the La Pierre Research Group, with an aim to “disentangle the complex electronic structure of f-block materials,” according to the group’s website. F-block elements, also known as lanthanides and actinides, are heavy metals found at the bottom two rows of the Periodic Table. 

La Pierre will use the award funds to support postdoctoral fellows and graduate students to take on several new lines of inquiry in lanthanide and actinide magnetism. 

“I am quite excited to be included among this year’s Sloan Research Fellows,” La Pierre says. “It’s (a group of) extremely talented colleagues. I am also particularly humbled by my colleagues’ support for this award.” 

Several current and former College of Sciences researchers — along with a number of College of Engineering faculty — are also recent recipients of Sloan Fellowships:

Four College of Sciences early career researchers were also named 2020 Scialog Fellows for a new research initiative, Signatures of Life in the Universe. Scialog Fellows are jointly sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation:

  • Jen Glass, associate professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Chris Reinhard, associate professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Gongjie Li, assistant professor, School of Physics
  • Amanda Stockton, assistant professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry 

Beyond Sloan Research Fellowships, the Sloan Foundation awards approximately 200 grants per year, totaling roughly $80 million dollars in annual commitments in support of research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. 

That list includes a number of Georgia Tech recipients, most recently 2021 recipient Nicholas (Nick) Hud, professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences; 2020 recipient Matthew McDowell, associate professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering; and 2019 recipients Kaye Husbands Fealing, dean and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Julia Melkers, professor, School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Elaine M. Hubbard's Legacy

In September 2003, not long after retiring from her 28-year career as a mathematics professor at Kennesaw State University with a known passion for teaching, Elaine M. Hubbard, PhD Math '72, included a provision in her estate plans to establish the Elaine M. Hubbard Endowed Chair in the School of Mathematics — the School’s first endowed faculty chair. This fund serves to support robust, leading-edge mathematics education and research at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Svetlana Jitomirskaya Receives Inagural Appointment

Dr. Svetlana Jitomirskaya, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California Irvine, will be the inaugural Hubbard Chair Professor at the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, starting in the Fall of 2022.

There is no better choice than Svetlana Jitomirskaya to occupy this inaugural Chair as she is both a worldwide recognized expert in Analysis, and widely appreciated, among her students and her University, for her dedication to teaching Mathematics at the highest level of excellence.

Prof. Jean V. Bellissard, School of Mathematics

Biographical Information

Prof. Jitomirskaya was born in Kharkov Ukraine in 1966, at a time when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. Her parents were both mathematicians, and she describes both of them as survivors, having barely escaped the German invasion of Kiev which was a death sentence for Jews in 1941. Her mother managed to become the only female Professor of Mathematics in Ukraine for twenty years after she received her PhD. Her father persisted all the way to the top of the academic ladder despite facing multiple obstacles, one after the other, in the antisemitic atmosphere of the 1950's in Soviet Union. Fortunately, Svetlana escaped their fate, coming of age during the perestroika.

A Highly Impactful Career in Mathematics

Prof. Jitomirskaya graduated from Moscow University under the supervision of Yaklov G. Sinai. Sinai was himself a student of Kolmogorov, who was a student of Lusin, the scientific ancestor of some of the best Mathematicians and Theoretical Physicists produced by the Soviet Union after 1916. 

[Prof. Jitomirskaya] brings to GaTech a brilliant scientific genealogy which is really hard to match.

She is a scientific granddaughter of A.N. Kolmogorov (the greatest Russian mathematician ever - who also at all accounts among the top five mathematicians of the 20th century) and her advisor Y. Sinai is an Abel (analog of Nobel) prize winner. The spirit of this school is that mathematics is a rigorously proved (i.e. a true) common sense. In other words, mathematicians should not just prove what scientists and engineers already understood but uncover why their ideas are right and show them the way further, and even bring in new ideas, which mathematicians must rigorously justify, especially in cases when these new ideas contradict "preexisting" physics intuition.

Prof. Leonid Bunimovich, School of Mathematics

By a bizarre turn of events, Prof. Jitomirskaya became a master of the small divisor problem, one of the most difficult problems in modern analysis, relating herself to a long tradition of fine analysts at Kharkov University.

[Prof. Jitomirskaya] is one of todays leading mathematical physicists with numerous deep results on the spectral theory of Schrödinger operators with emphasis on the spectral properties of almost periodic Schrödinger operators. In her work she made fundamental contributions to the mathematical understanding of metal-insulator transition phenomena and her contributions were instrumental for determining the nature of the spectrum of the almost Mathieu equation which was called the Ten Martini problem by Mark Kac. 

Prof. Michael Loss, School of Mathematics

The small divisor problem is an obstacle in astronomy to predicting the long-term movement of multiple, interacting, celestial bodies. It also one of the causes for the strange fractal structure of the rings of Saturn. It comes from a resonance phenomenon between conflicting incommensurate periods of rotation.

[Prof. Jitomirskaya's] work on the small divisor problem for Schödinger's equations with quasiperiodic potential in one-dimension is absolutely amazing. Her breakthrough attracted the attention of two Fields Medalists, Jean Bourgain and Artur Avila, who collaborated with her. She is invited at ICM 22 for a plenary talk. And she became recently a correspondent of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ... I met her for the first time in the early 1990's in Vienna at the Erwing Schrödinger Institute. It was already obvious to me that she was outstanding.

Prof. Jean Bellissard, School of Mathematics

Prof. Jitomirskaya works at the intersection of Analysis, Mathematical Physics, Dynamical Systems, and Probability theory. Her major area of research is initiated by the Mark Kac question: "Can one hear the shape of a drum"?, and she has under her belt a variety of outstanding results culminating with solution of the "ten martini problem". 

One domain of application for Prof. Jitomirskaya's work is Quantum Mechanics, dealing with paradigmatic Schrodinger equation for one-dimensional systems, and especially the so-called 'Almost Mathieu Model'. There, interferences between two or more waves of matter having incommensurate spatial periods produce several types of complex patterns which are even harder to master in detail. Her work focused on finding methods to solve this problem. She achieved that goal masterfully, for the cases of the paradigmatic equations, starting with her 1999 Annals of Math paper and onward. This work attracted the attention of two Fields Medalists with whom Prof. Jitomirskaya collaborated.

International Recognition

Prof. Jitomirskaya was awarded the Satter Prize from the American Mathematical Association in 2005, and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics awarded by the American Physics association and the American Institute of Physics in 2020. She is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) since 2018. And she has been chosen to deliver a Plenary Lecture at the International Congress of Mathematics in 2022.

Very recently [Prof. Jitomirskaya] was invited to deliver a plenary address at the Internation Congress of Mathematicians in 2022. Already an invitation to give a talk in ICM is a high honor but a plenary address is something exceptional.

[The School of Mathematics] hiring of professor Jitomirskaya does not only raise the level of the School of Mathimatics, but it raises the level of the Institute.

-Prof. Leonid Bunimovich, School of Mathematics

Accolades for Research and Teaching

For her work, Prof. Jitomirskaya received many honors, among them the prestigious 2020 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics. Prof. Jitomirskaya is also the recipient of the 2005 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize from the American Mathematical Society and a member of the of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In addition, Prof. Jitomirskaya has dedicated a large part of her career to teaching. She received the UCI Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research in 2018. She has advised many graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, who eventually found positions in the academic world.

Wenjing Liao, an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics who researches high dimensional data analysis and machine learning, has won a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award.

The CAREER Award provides funding for five years and is one of the most significant grants that a scientist can receive early in their profession. The program “offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early career faculty ... build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.”

“I am very grateful to the NSF for its support,” Liao says. “This CAREER Award will not only support my team’s efforts in the area of computational math and data analysis, but it will also support the training of the future data analysis workforce by involving graduate and undergraduate students.”

Liao’s project for the grant is “Exploiting Low-Dimensional Structures in Data Science: Manifold Learning, Partial Differential Equation Identification, and Neural Networks.” Liao says many real-world datasets are high dimensional (more features than observations) but exhibit low dimensional structures (a small number of important features). 

“Low dimensional structure is the opposite of high dimensional. For example, a high resolution image may have millions of pixels, but images of similar objects in a dataset may contain very few important features to represent an object, Liao says.

Reducing dimensionality can narrow down datasets to workable numbers by removing redundancies and inessential features. “The success of many modern methods suggests that exploiting low-dimensional structures in data often leads to outperforming results.” 

For the educational aspect of the CAREER proposal, Liao would like to help build an undergraduate “Bridge” program for math and data science students to assist with the transition from Georgia Tech to careers in academia and industry.

Liao also proposes to recruit math undergraduates from diverse backgrounds in the greater Atlanta area, and design special math and data science research projects for students in the NSF’s REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program.

Liao has been active in the REU Program in the School of Mathematics, mentoring undergraduates and leading them in undergraduate research projects, having worked with nearly a dozen REU students in several projects including The Double Descent Phenomenon in Machine Learning, and Using Neural Networks to Classify PDEs (partial differential equations). She has also developed a new data science course for undergraduate students in the College of Sciences. In the future, Liao also plans to organize a young researchers workshop on mathematical foundations of machine learning. 

Liao won a 2020 NSF award in deep neural networks for structured data as a principal investigator, representing the third NSF award and fourth award overall she has won since becoming an assistant professor at Georgia Tech in 2017. 

“Professor Liao is an expert in analyzing data presented to us in high dimensions, but actually being closely identified with surfaces of much smaller dimension. This is a surprising, and essential, aspect of modern data analysis,” says Michael Lacey, professor and interim chair of the School of Mathematics. “We are very pleased that this award recognizes both professor Liao's worldwide expertise in this subject, but also her great successes in training people in modern data analysis. The grant gives her recognition, and support for her further research.”

The College of Sciences is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Wolf as the new chair of the School of Mathematics, effective summer 2022.

“Dr. Wolf plans to assume his new post on July 1, 2022,” shares Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. “I look forward to working with him to advance the teaching and research missions across the School of Math and of the College of Sciences — and to the energy, creativity, and strategy that he will bring as we welcome him to the Georgia Tech community.”

“I was thrilled to be invited to chair the School of Math,” Wolf says. “Georgia Tech’s Mathematics faculty is world-renowned for its strength and scope, and it is an honor to participate in its leadership. Mathematics is an engine for modern science and technology — from codes for cybersecurity, to differential equations that explain black holes and the interfaces of materials, to machine learning and mathematical neuroscience, and through beautiful advances whose applications will only be revealed to our grandchildren. Mathematics is everywhere, and Georgia Tech’s mathematicians are at the frontier.”  

“What’s also wonderful about the School is the unusual extent of the connections between the research in the School and the rest of campus,” he adds. “Of course, mathematics is central to most fields of inquiry, and all fields grow increasingly quantitative over time, but at Tech, one sees the interactions on personal levels. ”

“Simultaneously, the nation’s student population is at a moment of change,” Wolf notes. “The population is more diverse than ever before, with income distributions more attenuated than at any other time in our lifetimes, with shortages of STEM professionals in the millions in the coming decade. Almost all of those students will pass through our mathematics classrooms multiple times, so we need to find ways to support all of these young people so they can achieve their ambitions in science and engineering,” he explains. “Georgia Tech is already in the leadership of programs that welcome their students into the community of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. I look forward to participating in building on that success.”

Meet Mike Wolf

Wolf received his Ph.D. in Mathematics at Stanford University as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow after completing math and philosophy studies at Yale University as an undergraduate. In 1986, Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Wolf a C. L. E. Moore instructor, a role for recent Math Ph.D.s who show promise in pure mathematics research.

Two years later, Wolf joined the faculty at Rice University, where he served most recently as Milton B. Porter Professor. During his one-third of a century at Rice, Wolf has held many positions, including two periods as chair of the Department of Mathematics, head of a residential college, and co-founder and co-director of the Rice Emerging Scholars Program.

The scope of Wolf’s tenure at Rice and beyond stretches through mathematics research and education, to diversity and equity, undergraduate admissions and life, to strategy and development. “There are very few offices on the Rice campus I haven’t interacted with in a meaningful way,” he shares.

Residential College Magister

“About 15 years ago, I took an unusual administrative position, that of a residential college ‘magister’. At Rice, my family and I lived on campus in a house astride an undergraduate residence for five years,” Wolf says. “During that time, I got to know about 750 undergraduates quite well, serving as a mentor to them as they lived their lives as young people trying to manage semi-independently for the first time while also trying to navigate their way through college. I was left with a far richer understanding of contemporary undergraduate life and education than I had had before.”

Wolf shares that during that half-decade living on campus, he “became frustrated by the experiences of our students of high potential from under-resourced high schools. These are kids who are valedictorians of their class in rural or urban high schools, often the first of their family to go to college, and whose preparation for college was just well behind those of their upper middle class suburban peers,” he says. 

“Often from a family background of job insecurity, most wanted a career in science or engineering. They were smart and at least as hard-working and mature as the rest of their freshman competition — but the pace, rigor, depth and scope of what they were asked to do as matriculating science and engineering students was just too much to handle with a background that often included far fewer AP or even regular science classes.” 

The result? “They left STEM in droves, sometimes even failing to make it to their junior year as college students,” he says, but also that “four years after I began to gather statistics and highlight this issue to the senior university leadership, Rice asked me in 2010 to co-lead an effort to address the problem.”

Equity, diversity, access, representation — and retention

That effort led to the Rice Emerging Scholars Program (RESP), which takes in a number of incoming science and engineering matriculants and, “through a summer bridge program and aggressive term-time interventions, seeks to have this group, whose preparation leaves them most at risk to not achieve their dreams, succeed at the level of their peers,” Wolf says. 

Now, in a typical year, “more than 80% of our group has, in their fourth semester, declared a major in science or engineering, while a similarly prepared control group averages about 50%, and the general peer group is at 75%.” 

“We comprehensively attack the obstructions these students face, from an ‘anti-remedial’ bridge program that focuses on very difficult topics in STEM to advising that encompasses the idiosyncratic problems these folks face as typically low-income, first generation, and/or students of color,” he shares. 

Wolf says that work must also focus on anticipating the arc of a student’s career and identifying inherent milestones — and also in carefully defining every obstruction that might stand in their way, and proactively producing sustainable solutions and ongoing support for each student, focusing first on those most likely to fall behind their peers. “Many programs address just some of the obstacles students must overcome,” he says, “but those approaches leave them vulnerable to the remaining barriers. You simply have to confront every issue.”

“This program has been important for Rice,” he shares. “We were the first program on campus that intervened academically for cohorts like the one we address.” Since then, a new ‘holistic’ advising office has opened on campus that is modeled on the team’s practices, and that today, access and inclusion stand as one of eight planks in Rice’s new strategic plan.

“Most of my administrative work in the past decade or so has been in the direction of transitioning to successful science and engineering undergraduate students whose background puts them at risk for not realizing their ambitions,” Wolf says. “Most of these students in the Emerging Scholars Program are from groups poorly represented in the sciences — about one-third are first generation collegians, almost all are from underrepresented minority groups, most are women, and almost all are low income.” 

“The really cool part of this work is engaging with these students as pre-matriculants and then freshmen and then seniors and finally graduates,” he adds. “I get to watch them mature from not knowing their own potential to succeeding and finally realizing that they can take on and surmount very difficult challenges and lead in that work: I think this is the most personally gratifying administrative work there can be.”

Wolf received Rice’s George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching and the Marjorie Corcoran Award for those contributions to the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. His service leadership there has also included appointments on the University’s strategic planning group on diversity and equity, as Faculty Senate Parliamentarian, the University Faculty’s Officer for Grievances and Appeals, and on numerous committees on issues across the University — from General Educations, to Benefits, to Data Warehouses, to a committee he chaired that rewrote Rice’s calendar — along with several diversity and equity initiatives.

Vertically integrated student support: NSF VIGRE

Wolf has also served as PI and co-I of the Rice VIGRE Program, an NSF-funded initiative whose primary goal is to “increase the number of well-prepared U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents who pursue careers in the mathematical sciences and to broaden their background and perspective” through sustained mentoring, education, and training.

VIGRE stands for Vertical InteGration of Research and Education and in the NSF program’s context, “vertical means across academic ranks: faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.” Under Wolf’s leadership, Rice secured two five-year VIGRE grants, and when that program became more targeted as the NSF Research Training Grant program, Wolf was part of a team that secured two more five-year grants.

“During the second VIGRE grant, I was department chair, and a consequence of that grant was that I was able to permanently grow our Instructorship pool from five to eight lines; those extra lines — quite a jump for a department in a small school — enhanced our ability to teach and are attractions when we recruit,” he says, also noting that “graduate education in the science and technical areas in this country must change. Our current systems obstruct us from welcoming into the best STEM post-baccalaureate programs whole cohorts of students with amazing potential.”

Research, recognition, outreach

An active teacher and scholar, Wolf’s research lies in geometry, at the intersection of the study of families of surfaces and geometric variational problems. His work which has garnered the most popular attention is a proof, with Weber and Hoffman, of the existence of a minimal surface — an idealized soap film — of a ‘helicoid with a handle’. This shape, announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with a full proof in the Annals of Mathematics that ran for more than 100 pages, was the first example since the 18th century of a ‘topologically’ simple minimal surface which was infinitely twisted.

Over 34 years, Wolf has also served as investigator on a number of grants and programs with the NSF; his educational work has been supported by the Chao Foundation, Hearst Foundations, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and Alkek Foundation. He has delivered talks at dozens of universities and conferences spanning five continents, has co-authored several publications on STEM education and Bridge programs, and delivers occasional talks to groups of teachers and the general public. “We once offered a course to the public on the hardest unsolved problems in mathematics. Outreach at Rice was convinced that no one would ever want to pay $79 to listen to math lectures,” he shares. “They were astonished when the course filled to capacity and was one of the most popular courses they had ever produced.”

“There is a tremendous interest in mathematics in the community, and a tremendous need for the scientific community to find ways to explain — to both school children and the general community — what scientists and mathematicians do and why it is interesting, as well as important,” Wolf says. “One of the attractions of Georgia Tech to me is its interest in engaging in such critical partnerships.”

In 2019, Wolf was named a Simons Foundation Fellow in Mathematics and in 2013 was among the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). In his early career, Wolf was both an Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation and Research Fellow, as well as a NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He has been a member of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute several times, and has twice worked as a Research Professor there.

With a particular focus on geometric analysis and geometry and topology, Wolf has also long-served on several journal editorial boards including Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society and Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.

A past member of the AMS Committee on National Speakers, Wolf is also a frequent NSF panelist and co-organizer of international math conferences, colloquia, and congresses, including serving as National lecturer for the Sigma Xi society.

 

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About the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech

The School of Mathematics is one of the original academic departments at Georgia Tech, dating back to 1888. The School continues to be a cornerstone of the Institute, and today is a vibrant community of faculty working on the highest caliber of mathematical research and educating a cohort of remarkable students on campus.

About the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech

The College of Sciences cultivates curiosity, encourages exploration, and fosters innovation to develop scientific solutions for a better world. Our connected community of scientists and mathematicians collaborates across disciplines and challenges to achieve excellence in science, teaching, and research. Working across six internationally ranked schools with the brightest young minds in our fields, we mentor future leaders to identify and push the frontiers of human knowledge, imagination, and innovation.

We nurture scientifically curious students by offering diverse educational and research experiences. As an internationally recognized, preeminent institution in the sciences and mathematics, we help students build empowering foundations in the sciences and mathematics — educating and preparing the next generation of scientists who will create the technologies of the future.

Most of the disciplines within our six schools — Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology — are ranked in the top 10%. We organize ourselves in multidisciplinary research neighborhoods to promote broad exchange of ideas. We also offer exciting opportunities for students to engage in research, and train with top professors in chosen fields.

Our internationally recognized senior faculty and an extraordinarily talented group of junior faculty are genuinely concerned about undergraduate and graduate education, and they bring the excitement of new discoveries in the research laboratory to the classroom. The quality of the faculty and the curriculum, combined with new state-of-the-art facilities and a low student to faculty ratio, ensure the excellent educational opportunities available to our students.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

James Stringfellow, an employment specialist with a history of helping Atlanta-based veterans and entertainment industry staff in the workforce, has been named the first career educator for the College of Sciences.

“I am thrilled to have James join the Georgia Tech Career Center,” says Laura Garcia, director of Career Education Programs. “I hope everyone gives him a warm welcome to the Georgia Tech community.” 

Stringfellow, who began his duties on January 4, leads the following initiatives:

  • Assisting students with career mapping, co-op and internships, and workforce preparedness.
  • Supporting College of Sciences programs by facilitating career education events.
  • Supporting College instructors with employer updates and industry trends.
  • Developing employer partnerships to cultivate employment opportunities. 
  • Assisting the Career Center team in meeting its community goals.

Stringfellow will be available for remote meetings from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays. He will work out of Room 2-90 in the Boggs Building from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and at the Georgia Tech Career Center (located on the first floor of the Bill Moore Student Success Center) from 8 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.

Stringfellow previously worked for the Veterans Empowerment Organization (VEO) as their employment specialist responsible for assisting veterans with re-entry into the civilian workforce. Prior to the VEO, he served as an award-winning career services manager at SAE Institute where he oversaw employer outreach and graduate employment for audio, film, and entertainment business programs. Stringfellow also worked for DeVry University in both career services and admissions in support of its College of Health Sciences.  

Stringfellow earned a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Tuskegee University, and received his MBA in International Business from Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry. A member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Stringfellow shares that he stays connected to the entertainment industry by coaching creatives on how to protect their musical brand, speaking at related conferences, and serving as a disc jockey at various events throughout Atlanta.

“I am thrilled to have James join the College of Sciences,” shares Cameron Tyson, assistant dean for Academic Programs in the College of Sciences. 

Tyson and Garcia also extend a special thanks to the new role’s search committee for their “hard work and finding a great addition to our team.” Committee members included:

  • Alonzo Whyte (search chair), academic professional, Undergraduate Neuroscience Program
  • Andrew Newman, professor and undergraduate coordinator, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Enid Steinbart, principal academic professional and director of Undergraduate Advising and Assessment, School of Mathematics
  • Mariah Liggins, advisor for Pre-Health, Pre-Graduate and Pre-Professional Advising
  • Mackenzie Pierce, undergraduate student, School of Psychology

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