VIGRE

First Spring (Mathematical) Beauty Contest

Professor John McCuan has organized a Mathematical Modelling Contest where
the winning entries will be judged on the beauty and elegance of their solutions.

Deadline: March 25, 2004. Teams are permitted.

There are cash prizes to the top three entries, with a base prize amount to be
supplemented by the total number of entries.

Georgia Tech Student Paper Contest Information

SAIC Student Paper Contest

Deadline: 5 p.m., Friday, February 20, 2004 6 $1000 awards Total

The Executive Science and Technology Council of Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), in conjunction with the local SAIC
offices, has instituted this annual student paper contest to recognize
technical excellence at Georgia Tech and to foster the development of closer
ties between the company and the university.

SAIC will make six awards for outstanding technical papers in the fields of
engineering, physics, chemistry, applied mathematics, computer sciences, and
science and technology policy. Awards will be made to students at the
undergraduate level, the master's level, and the Ph.D. level. Papers may be
prepared in support of university courses, professional society
competitions, or technical publications. SAIC reserves the right to keep a
copy of each submitted paper for its records. Papers co-authored with
faculty members or with other non-student authors must be accompanied by a
letter indicating the relative contributions of the non-student author (e.g.
student-x%, faculty-y%).

The awards program will comprise:
an awards banquet to honor each successful student and their guest, and the
faculty sponsor and their guest,
a check for $1000 for each successful student or student team (team members
will share equally the single award),
a framed certificate for each successful student or student team member and
for the faculty sponsor.

To Enter

The entry form attached to this information brochure must accompany each
paper submitted. Three copies of the submitted paper, along with the entry
form, must be received by 5 p.m., Friday, February 20, 2004. We regret that
we cannot accept submissions received after the deadline. Submitted papers
must not exceed 20 pages in length (typed double-spaced, and including
figures and references). Reprints of technical journal publications are
also acceptable if they do not exceed 7 pages in length. Papers should be
sent to:

Science Applications International Corporation
Attn: Ms. Donna Louis
4901 Olde Towne Parkway
Suite 200
Marietta, GA 30068
(770) 973-8935 ext. 4400

Selection Procedure and Criteria

The selection panel will consider three primary criteria in the selection
process:
1) originality or uniqueness of the work,
2) significance of the results, and
3) effectiveness of the presentation.

Papers will be submitted to a combined SAIC/Georgia Tech selection panel for
evaluation and selection. All participants, including cognizant faculty
members, will be notified of the results and receive a letter stating SAIC's
appreciation for their participation in the program.

Awards Dinner and Ceremony

Successful papers will be announced on or about March 8, 2004 and awards
will be given out at the awards banquet, presently scheduled for April 1,
2004. The time and location of the awards banquet will be announced at a
future date. Invitees to the dinner will include winning authors, their
guests, their faculty project sponsors and their guests, and SAIC staff.
Pictures and a short article describing the awards ceremony will be
published in the SAIC NEWSGRAM, a company periodical.

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), is the nation's
largest employee-owned research and engineering company, providing
information technology, systems integration and eSolutions to commercial and
government customers. SAIC engineers and scientists work to solve complex
technical problems in national and homeland security, energy, the
environment, space, telecommunications, health care and logistics. With
annual revenues of $5.9 billion, SAIC and its subsidiaries, including
Telcordia Technologies, have more than 42,000 employees at offices in more
than 150 cities worldwide. More information about SAIC can be found at
www.saic.com.

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SAIC/Georgia Tech Student Paper Competition Entry Form
(Form required for each student author)

Paper Title:


School or Department:


Primary Student Author:


Primary Student Author's Social Security Number (for award processing):


Other Student Author(s):


Faculty Author(s):


Other Author(s):


Mailing Address:


Email Address:


Home Phone:


School Phone:


Paper was completed while working on the following degree: (please circle
one)

BS MS Ph.D.


Faculty Sponsor:

School or Department:

Email Address:
Office Phone:





saicpapercontest@comcast.net
Margie Verdon
Science Applications International Corporation
4901 Olde Towne Parkway, Suite 200
Marietta, GA 30068
Phone: (404) 421-2326
Fax: (770) 973-6971

arXiv Begins Endorsement Policy

The arXiv is a freely availible
database of scientific papers, principally in physics and Mathematics.
Over the last few years, the arXiv has grown explosively, to become a
vital resource to the scientific community.

This database, while largely automated, does require some human intervention to maintain. A small group of largely invisible moderators have been monitoring all submissions to the arXiv, principally for appropriate content, and
placement in the arXiv.

On 17 January 2004, the arXiv has started an endorsement policy, under which new submitters may have to obtain endorsement of the appropriateness of their submission from a current submitter to the arXiv. As the full policy states, this should have the effect of keeping the arXiv relevant to the scientific community in a manner that will keep pace with its growth in the future.

The arXiv permits an email subscription to the new articles placed in the database, a very useful tool. See the help page for more information.

High School Mathematics Competition

A High School Mathematics Competition will be held at Georgia Tech on Saturday, 20 March, 2004.

This all day competiton will have as prizes at least $4,000 in scholarships
to attend Georgia Tech.

The revival of this old Georgia Tech tradition is in large part due to the efforts of Nguyen Truong, and the new Pi Mu Epsilon leadership of Alan Michaels, Stephanie Brent, and Patricia Pichardo.

Voiculescu Receives National Academy of Sciences Mathematics Award

The US National Academy of Sciences has awarded National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2004 Mathematics Award for his contributions to Operator Theory, through the device of free probability.

See the press release for more information.

Interview with Jack Hale

Jack Hale, Regents Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Tech has had
a remarkable career of research in dyanamical systems, writing 15 books,
over 200 paper, and directing 48 doctoral thesis.

Professor Yingfei Yi interviews Jack about his long and influential career.
The interview is featured the first issue of the SIAM Dynamical Systems magazine. In fact, the interview begins with " By being a leading mathematician and a person of exemplary character, he has had tremendous impacts on the career developments of many people around him and has brought the best out of many of us working in the field. It seems only fitting that we begin the very first interview of the SIAM DSWeb Magazine with Professor Hale."

Current Events in Mathematics

From the AMS website:

AMS President David Eisenbud organized an AMS Special Session, Current Events in Mathematics (1,617 KB pdf of the talks) at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Friday, January 9. The well-attended session featured The Interior-Point Revolution in Optimization: History, Recent Developments and Lasting Consequences, presented by Margaret Wright; What Is Motivic Integration?, by Thomas C. Hales; It Is Easy to Determine Whether or Not a Given Integer is Prime, by Andrew Granville; and Perelman's Recent Work on the Classification of 3-Manifolds, by John W. Morgan.

The PDF file linked above is interesting, but a bit of a mess. The pages of the
four seperate article wind up being mixed up in a peculiar way. Too bad, as the speakers at the session worked to provide their contributions in electronic form
in a timely way.

VIGRE Update

The VIGRE program at Georgia Tech is halfway through the second year of the program.
The semester, we recruite the third and fnal round of graduate students and postdocs
to the program.

With the third year review coming up, it's a good time for an overview of the project, and
begin to think about the future. A pdf presentation
is availible.

Mentors for Women in Math

AWM Mentor Network

The goal of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Mentor
Network is to match mentors, both men and women, with girls and women who
are interested in mathematics or are pursuing careers in mathematics. The
network is intended to link mentors with a variety of groups: recent
PhD's, graduate students, undergraduates, high school and grade school
students, and teachers. Matching is based on common interests in careers
in academics or industry, math education, balance of career and family,
or general mathematical interests.

Interested? Here is what you can do.

BE A MENTOR or VOLUNTEER: Volunteer to mentor someone in their pursuit
of their mathematical interests or to help the AWM Mentor Network in
other ways. As a mentor you don't have to have all of the answers, but
you can help to make the connection to someone or someplace that does! We
invite mentors, and anyone else who is interested to join the Mentor
Network Forum on the AWM Forum Web Site, http://www.awm-math.org. We
strongly encourage mentors, mentees, and their institutions to join AWM so
that they can stay informed on opportunities and resources available
through the AWM.

REQUEST A MENTOR: Would you like to find out about opportunities for
math degrees or careers? Do you need some advice as you pursue your
mathematical studies or career? Do you have questions for someone who has
experience and expertise as a mathematician? Then request to be matched
with a mentor from the AWM Mentor Network!

Just fill out a form on the Mentor Network web site.

For more information, contact:
Contact: Prof. Rachel Kuske
Department of Mathematics, UBC
#121-1984 Mathematics Road
Vancouver BC VKT 1Z2
phone: (604)822-4973
fax: (604)822-6074
email: rachel@math.ubc.ca
http://www.math.ubc.ca/~rachel

Check out the AWM web site for more AWM activities!
http://www.awm-math.org

Winners of the EMS Article Competition

The European Mathematical Society (EMS), through its committee for
Raising Public Awareness of Mathematics, ran a competition for articles
that have appeared in a newspaper or general magazine. First prize:
"Unbreakable cyber-secrets," Nuno Crato (Instituto superior de Economia
e Gestao, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, Portugal); second prize:
"Playing a Trick on Uncertainty," by F. Thomas Bruss (Universite Libre
de Bruxelles, Belgium); third prize: "For those who think mathematics
dreary," by Sava Grozdev, Ivan Derzhanski and Evgenia Sendova (Union of
Bulgarian Mathematicians, Sofia, Bulgaria). Read the winning articles,
in their original languages and translated into English.

http://www.mat.dtu.dk/people/V.L.Hansen/rpa/resultartcomp.html.