School of Mathematics | Georgia Institute of Technology

Workshop on Harmonic Analysis and Related Topics

This workshop aimed to bring together experts in Harmonic Analysis and related fields. A Clay lecture was delivered by Christoph Thiele. Organised in partnership with the Clay Mathematics Institute. The workshop was held in hybrid format, with opportunities to take part online. We are happy to announce that most speakers agreed to give talks in person! Those who gave talks virtually are indicated below. The workshop took place right after the El Escorial and was held from June 13 to June 17, 2022.

Confirmed speakers:

Alex Iosevich, University of Rochester
Amalia Culiuc, Amherst College
Andrei Lerner, Bar-Ilan University
Ben Krause, California Institute of Technology
Luz Roncal, Basque Center for Applied Mathematics
Betsy Stovall, University of Wisconsin-Madison (virtual talk)
Brett Wick, Washington University St. Louis
Christoph Thiele, HCM Bonn
Francesco Di Plinio, Washington University Saint Louis
Jill Pipher, Brown University
Laura Cladek, UCLA
Lillian Pierce, Duke University (virtual talk)
Tuomas Hytonen, University of Helsinki
Svitlana Mayboroda, University of Minnesota
Vladimir Temlyakov, University of South Carolina
Yumeng Ou, Baruch CUNY (virtual talk)

Organizers:

Dario Alberto Mena Arias, Universidad de Costa Rica dario.menaarias@ucr.ac.cr

Dmitriy Bilyk, University of Minnesota bilyk.dmitriy@gmail.com

Galyna Livshyts, Georgia Institute of Technology glivshyts6@math.gatech.edu

Ioannis Parissis, University of the Basque Country ioannis.parissis@gmail.com

Maria del Carmen Reguera Rodriguez, University of Birmingham M.Reguera@bham.ac.uk

Sergey Tikhonov, Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) tikhonov.work@gmail.com

For more information see:

https://www.crm.cat/harmonic-analysis-and-related-topics/

and

https://glivshyts6.math.gatech.edu/Lacey-conference.html

Josephine Yu is planned to give a Plenary talk at the Symposium Discrete Mathematics and Richard-Rado Prize in Hamburg, Germany, taking place from September 30th to October 1st, 2022.

The Symposium Discrete Mathematics, the biennial meeting of the Discrete Mathematics Group of the German Mathematical Society, will take place at TU Hamburg on 30th September and 1st October 2022.

On the occasion of the symposium, the Richard-Rado Prize 2022 for a dissertation in Discrete Mathematics will be awarded. You can find the history of the Symposium Discrete Mathematics and the Richard-Rado Prize here.

To register, please visit: https://www.mat.tuhh.de/veranstaltungen/dm2022/register.php

Plenary Speakers

Invited Speakers

Executive Committee

Local Organizers

Six graduate students, one from each school in the College of Sciences, are among the latest recipients of the Herbert P. Haley Fellowship at Georgia Tech. The initiative recognizes significant accomplishments and outstanding academic achievements for graduate students at Georgia Tech.

College of Sciences’ 2022-2023 Haley Fellows are Karim Lakhani, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; Cody Mashburn, School of Psychology; Andrew McAvoy, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Joshua Pughe-Sanford, School of Physics; Roberta Shapiro, School of Mathematics, and Cassandra Shriver, School of Biological Sciences.

Haley scholars receive a one-time merit award of up to $4,000 thanks to the generosity of the late Marion Peacock Haley. Haley’s estate established the creation of merit-based graduate fellowships at Georgia Tech in honor of her late husband, Herbert P. Haley, ME 1933. It is an award which may be held in conjunction with other funding, assistantships, or fellowships, if applicable.

Meet the scholars

Karim Lakhani is a 5th-year Ph.D. student who is studying paleoceanography in ADVANCE Professor Jean Lynch-Stieglitz’s lab. The fellowship will allow Lakhani to spend more time on research, where he is currently “looking at the transition between the surface ocean and the deep ocean and how that was different, so the shells I look at are from organisms that floated at specific depths in the ocean in the past.”

Cody Mashburn’s research interest is the cognitive basis of individual differences in intelligence and reasoning. “Basically, why do we see variability in how well people are able to perform on intelligence tests, and how well they are able to problem solve,” he said. Mashburn will use the funds to add “more tools to my research arsenal” and to attend relevant workshops.

Andrew McAvoy is a fifth-year Ph.D. student who plans to use the Haley funds for registration and travel-related expenses so he can present his research at scientific conferences.

“My graduate research involves studying small molecule production in Burkholderia cepacia complex bacteria, one of the most feared pathogens infecting cystic fibrosis patients,” McAvoy said.

Joshua Pughe-Sanford’s fascination with dynamics — how things move, breaking down complex behavior into simpler parts — drives his physics research. “Dynamics can describe how elementary particles collide, how neurons fire in our brain, how traffic accrues, how galaxies collide,” he said. “The list goes on and on and, in essence, the work I do can be applied to all these different fields.”

Roberta Shapiro’s research centers on using topology — the study of geometric properties that stay the same, even when they are distorted — to answer questions in complex dynamics. Saying that “mathematics is all about collaboration,” the fourth-year graduate student plans on using the funds to attend conferences “and make connections with future collaborators. That means there's more math coming soon!”

Cassandra Shriver, who is starting her second year in the Quantitative Biosciences graduate program, studies comparative biomechanics and conservation science. “Specifically, I'm curious how various morphological differences and scaling constraints affect climbing kinematics, and how these strategies might change as you increase in size from something as small as a squirrel to as large as a bear.”

The ProofReader 2022 has arrived.

Letter from the Chair

» SoM Chair Mike Wolf (Page 1)

Undergraduates

» NSF REUs (Page 4)

» Little Einsteins (Page 7)

» Math Lab Solves the Tutoring Support Equation (Page 9)

Awards

» 2021 Diversity Symposium (Page 10)

» Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll (Page 11)

» Dan Margalit and Gary Lavigne Receive

Teaching Honors (Page 12)

» Kimberly Stanley Wins Leadership in Action Award (Page 14)

» Molei Tao Wins Cullen-Peck Award (Page 15)

» Sung Ha Kang Wins CoS Mentoring Award (Page 16)

Featured Award

» Lea Marzo Wins Staff Excellence Award (Page 17)

Awards (continued)

» SoM Members Earn Top Annual Awards (Page 20)

» Bhanu Kumar Awarded Prestigious

NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship (Page 21)

» SoM Advances in U.S. News Best Graduate

School Rankings (Page 23)

» Frances O. Hite Scholarship and

Eric R. Immel Memorial Award (Page 25)

» Xu-Yan Chen Awarded 2021 SoM Fulmer Prize (Page 26)

» Yuchen He Wins Sigma Xi Award (Page 26)

Research Awards

» Wenjing Liao Wins NSF CAREER Award (Page 27)

» Roberta Shapiro Wins 2022 Haley Fellowship (Page 28)

» Hannah Choi Awarded Coveted Sloan Fellowship (Page 29)

» Dan Margalit to Give AMS Maryam Mirzakhani

Invited Adress at JMM 2022 (Page 30)

Featured Articles

» Inaugural Hubbard Chair to be Filled by Svetlana Jitomirskaya (Page 31)

» Michael Wolf Appointed SoM Chair (Page 33)

Research

» SoM to Present at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) (Page 35)

» ICERM Semester on Braids Planned for 2022 (Page 36)
» Meet Santosh Vempala: Director of the ACO Program (Page 37) » Using Moths for Innovative Defense Reserach (Page 39)
» Special Session on Mathematical Models for Biomulecular

and Cellular Interactions at JMM (Page 40)

Events

» Graduate Student Topology and Geometry Conference (Page 41)

» Workshop in Convexity and High-Dimensional

Probability (Page 42)

» Stelson Lecture 2022 (Page 43)

» Tech Topology Summer School 2021 (Page 45)

External and Alumni News

» Alex Blumenthal in Siam News for Chaotic Mixing and the Batchelor Spectrum (Page 46)

» Ryan Hynd Receives 2022-2023 Claytor-Cilmer Fellowhip (Page 47)

» Jinyoung Park Proves Kahn-Kalai Expectation Threshold Conjecture (Page 48)

» Alum Ben Elkins Tanslation of Hausdorff Poem Picked up by JHM (Page 49)

» Rachel Kuske Cited by Heriot-Watt University (Page 50) » AMS Tribute for the Legacy of Robin Thomas (Page 51) » Santosh Vempala Recognized in AMS 2022

Class of Fellows (Page 53)
» Santosh Vempala in Quanta Magazine for ACM-SIAM

Best Paper Award (Page 54)

Promotions and Farewells

» Recent Promotions in SoM (Page 55)

» Enid Steinbart Retires (Page 56)

Outreach

» SoM At the Atlanta Science Festival (Page 57)

» High School Math Competition (Page 60)

Meet the Grads

» Meet the Grads - Noah Caplinger (Page 61)

As the mercury climbed across Atlanta this summer, student research heated up across the College of Sciences, thanks to special summer programs for undergraduates from around the globe that help undergraduates get a head start on research experience for STEM careers in academia, industry, and beyond.

This year’s initiatives included National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU) programs, a new initiative to engage Georgia community college students, summer workshops in computational chemistry and quantitative biosciences, and more.

Through the workshops, students learned to navigate new methods of research that involve data analysis and computational aspects of disciplines like chemistry and biology — as well as communicate connections across concepts like group theory, topology, combinatorics, and number theory.

Meanwhile, the NSF REU programs across the College’s six Schools of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Physics, Psychology, and Mathematics, as well as the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program, allowed early-year students to get their first taste of in-depth research with unique expertise and equipment available at Georgia Tech.

Other students took advantage of special fellowships to attend summer conferences in their chosen disciplines, where they networked with fellow young scientists and mathematicians while soaking up knowledge from peers and mentors.

Here’s a roundup of some of the 2022 summer undergraduate student research programs and events led by the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech:

The Summer Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (STACC) Workshop

Undergraduates eager to try calculations in areas such as quantum dynamics, electronic structure theory, and classical molecular dynamics — and who want to know more about new data science and machine learning tools — got their chance during this two-week early summer computational chemistry workshop.

“Theoretical and computational studies provide a necessary complement to experimental investigations because they are able to obtain the atomistic level of detail that is near impossible to probe with experiment,” said Joshua Kretchmer, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

“It is becoming more and more routine to use these techniques, even outside of pure theory research groups, as computers have become more powerful and more easy-to-use software is being developed to perform these calculations,” Kretchmer said. “It is thus important for students to be exposed to these techniques early on in their undergraduate education so they have a basic understanding of how and when the slew of different computational techniques are best utilized.”

2022 was the first year for the STACC Workshop, and Kretchmer added that the students “seem to be engaged and excited by the material, both in terms of learning the technical skills necessary to utilize high-performance computers and the unique aspects that can be learned about chemical systems from computer simulations.”

Those thoughts were echoed by University of South Florida student Nicholas Giunto. “After simulating and calculating these various processes, I realized how theoretical chemistry can do so much more than just simulate these scenarios. This technique of chemistry can be used in many other fields of science as well,” Giunto said. “This workshop has broadened my perspective of chemistry, and taught me a whole new field of science that is innovative and prudent.”

For more information, check out the STACC website here.

Summer College Research Internship

Thanks to a grant from the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean’s Chair, community college students in Georgia were paired up with a Georgia Tech College of Sciences lab — at no cost to the students — for the inaugural Summer College Research Internship (SCRI).

The idea for SCRI grew from Shania Khatri’s experiences conducting research for the first time. Khatri, a fourth-year Biological Sciences major scheduled to graduate in December 2022, began research in high school through a program at a local university that placed students, especially those historically underrepresented in STEM, in labs to complete their own summer research projects.

“I felt firsthand how important mentorship was in building confidence in STEM, promoting belonging, and ultimately influencing my decision to pursue higher education and research,” Khatri said. “Research shows that students who complete high school and undergraduate programs are more likely to pursue STEM majors and consider doctoral degrees, underscoring that mentorship early in careers can improve achievement and retention of these students.”

SCRI students helped design experiments, collected and analyzed data, and presented the results of their work. They worked closely with their Ph.D. student mentors, learning from them as well as the broader community of their host labs. They also heard weekly lectures from College of Science faculty as they learned about the broader research environment at Georgia Tech.

“The accepted students have strong scholastic potential, and we hope that we can excite them about the research happening at Georgia Tech and potentially recruit them to join our programs, either as transfer students or future graduate students,” said William Ratcliff, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences Program. Ratcliff also co-leads the SCRI with Todd Streelman, professor and chair of the School of Biological Sciences at Tech.

Three students from two-year community college programs in Georgia were chosen for the inaugural SCRI, Ratcliff said. With diverse interests, all three researched in labs within the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI).

“While this was not part of our review criteria, two of the three students are members of groups that are underrepresented in science according to National Institutes of Health criteria, so this is a great opportunity to broaden participation in academic research,” Ratcliff added.

“When discussing diversity in STEM and retention of underrepresented minorities, community college students should be at the forefront of the discussion,” Khatri said. “It is my hope that through this program the students will gain confidence in their own abilities, and learn skills of science communication, data analysis, critical thinking, collaborative work, and problem solving that will aid them in any career path.”

More information on the Summer College Research Internship is available here.

Child Lab Day

Child Lab Day is the capstone assignment for students in the School of Psychology course PSYC 2103 Human Development. Christopher Stanzione, senior lecturer and associate chair for undergraduate studies for the School, said his students conducted cognitive, language, and conceptual assessments in June on children ranging in age from four months to nine years old.

“This is a great applied experience for the Georgia Tech students,” Stanzione said. “All semester we study these concepts, but to see development in action is special. They’ll likely see the gradual change between concepts by administering the assessments to kids of different ages.”

The first Child Lab Day was in 2019. This summer, students majoring in psychology, biomedical engineering, computer science, biology, neuroscience, and economics took part in this second one. “They loved it,” Stanzione said.

National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REUs)

For the first time, this year all six schools across the College of Sciences — plus the Neuroscience program at Tech — led Research Experiences for Undergraduates, a National Science Foundation initiative.

Each student was associated with a specific research project, and worked closely with school faculty and other researchers. Students were given stipends and, in many cases, assistance with housing and travel to help cover the experience.

“Since most of the undergraduate participants are recruited from institutions that do not have extensive research infrastructure, the immersive research experience available to them in these programs can be transformational,” said David Collard, professor and senior associate dean in the College, who previously led the REU program in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry for more than a decade.

“A measure of success of the REU programs in the College of Sciences is that many of the undergraduate participants subsequently go on to complete their Ph.D., some at Georgia Tech, and others elsewhere,” Collard added.

The following are the details for each College of Sciences school’s REU program. Learn more about future Summer Research Programs for Undergraduates here.

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences REU:

Georgia Tech Broadening Participation in Atmospheric Science, Oceanography, and Geosciences

Working under the supervision of a School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) faculty member, participants focused on a single research project, but also gained a broad perspective on research in Earth and atmospheric sciences by participating in the dynamic research environment. This interdisciplinary REU program had projects ranging from planetary science to meteorology to oceanography. In addition to full time research, undergraduate researchers participated in a number of professional development activities, seminars with faculty and research scientists, presentation and research poster symposiums, and social activities with other summer REU students.

Schools of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering REU:

Aquatic Chemical Ecology (ACE) at Georgia Tech

The Aquatic Chemical Ecology REU gave students the opportunity to perform research with faculty from five Georgia Tech schools.

Students participated in research with one or more faculty members, learned about careers in science and engineering, and saw how scientists blend knowledge and skills from physics, chemistry, and biology to investigate some of the most challenging problems in environmental sciences.

This was the first REU experience for Jenn Newlon, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In fact, “I’d actually never heard of an REU before I came here,” she said. “It’s been a really good experience. I never really saw this side of research in my institution. While I did get to do undergraduate research, it was more of, ‘do this in a lab, this is what happens.’ I had to present my findings every week to my PI (principal investigator), who gave really good feedback. And all the people in my lab were really kind and helpful.”

Schools of Psychology, Biological Sciences REU:

Neuroscience Research Experience for Undergraduates

The first week of the inaugural Neuroscience/Psychology REU was a Neuroscience Bootcamp, where students engaged in hands-on activities to learn about brain anatomy, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), encephalography, and other techniques. Then the student researchers spent time working on projects in the laboratories of mentors in either the School of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, or with researchers at Georgia State University. They also attended professional development and social activities with other REU students.

“There is tremendous interest in neuroscience, and we have seen an incredible expansion of technology in our ability to record from the human nervous system,” said Lewis Wheaton, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Neuroscience/Psychology REU.

“At the same time, many students do not have access to these technologies at their academic institutions because of expense,” Wheaton said. “We feel that it is vital to ensure that students who do not have access to these technologies at their universities get exposure to the tools and approaches to understand the human brain. I am excited to further focus on providing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities to engage in this research.”

A unique feature of the Neuroscience REU program is that it allows some students to come back for a two-year experience, “which can really provide a great opportunity to enhance their research, and put these students in a stronger position to advance their careers,” Wheaton added.

“It is also great that we can show them the research and educational environment at Georgia Tech and in the broader Atlanta area,” said Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology and co-director of the Neuroscience/Psychology REU. “This is an opportune time to showcase our two schools and the Institute, given that both schools are working with the College and Institute to offer a cross-disciplinary Neuroscience Ph.D. program soon.”

That was the impression that Alexa Toliver came away with. The fourth year student at Arizona State University is majoring in neurobiology, “but I always wanted to do neuroscience research,” she said during the recent REUs poster session at the Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building. “It was a little new, but it was a great opportunity and I never felt uncomfortable with any of the topics. This was the only neuroscience REU that I could find, and I applied to it and I got it, so I was excited.”

School of Physics REU:

Georgia Tech Broadening Participation in Physics

Working under the supervision of a physics faculty member, participants focused on a single research project but also gained a broad perspective on research in physics by participating in the dynamic research environment.

Available projects for the REU spanned the field of physics ranging from quantum materials, quantum simulation/sensing, astrophysics, physics of living systems, and non-linear dynamics.

In addition to full time research, undergraduate researchers participated in a number of professional development seminars, research horizon lunches, and social activities with other summer REU students.

Brendan D’Aquino, a rising senior at Northeastern University in Boston, had planned to use his computer science background to get an industry job after graduation. Then he attended the 2022 School of Physics REU.

“After doing an internship last year at a software company that does physics, I kind of realized I wanted to make the switch,” D’Aquino said. “So I applied to the program. I got to work here. And I thought it was super cool. So this was my first time doing research. I kind of had grad school in the back of my mind for a while. But 10 weeks here kind of makes me more sure that I want to get into that in the future.”

School of Mathematics REU:

The School of Mathematics has a rich tradition of offering summer undergraduate research programs. The projects have been mentored by faculty and postdocs covering a range of topics, such as graph coloring, random matrices, contact homology, knots, bounded operators, harmonic analysis, and toric varieties.

Previous Math REU students have published many papers, won a number of awards, and have been very successful in their graduate school applications.

“The main purpose of our REU is to give students research experience which should help them decide if they want to do math research for a living, and in particular, go to a math grad school,” said Igor Belegradek, professor and director of Teaching Effectiveness in the School of Mathematics. Belegradek also coordinates the Math REU. “Also, if there is a publication or poster at a conference, their grad school application will definitely become more competitive.”

Sometimes that application is sent to Georgia Tech. “We did have a few students who were accepted to our grad school after attending an REU with us,” Belegradek said. “It definitely helps put Georgia Tech Mathematics on the map. This summer we have 22 REU students, and only two of them are from Georgia Tech.”

Mathematics topics for the 2022 REU included aspects of graph coloring, Legendrian contact homology, Eigenvectors from eigenvalues and Gaussian random matrices, and applications of Donaldson's Diagonalization theorem.

Read more about the 2021 Mathematics REUs here.

In July, the School of Mathematics also hosted its biennial Topology Students Workshop, organized by Professor Dan Margalit since 2012.

Events included a public lecture on campus, “Juggling Numbers, Algebra, and Topology”, accessible for curious people of all ages and backgrounds.

“One goal of mathematics is to describe the patterns in the world, from weather to population growth to disease transmission,” event organizers said. The workshop used mathematics to describe juggling patterns, count the different kinds of patterns, and create new patterns, “making surprising connections to group theory, topology, combinatorics, and number theory.”

The 36th Annual Symposium of the Protein Society

From microproteins, protein condensates, synthetic biology and biosensors, to the latest developments in machine learning and imaging technologies, to addressing health disparities, the Protein Society Symposium, held in San Francisco in early July, provided a state-of-the-art view of the most exciting areas of research in biology and medicine.

Four students of Raquel Lieberman’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry lab attended, thanks to Protein Society travel fellowships:

Lydia Kenney, fourth-year undergraduate and Beckman Scholar in the Lieberman lab. Kenney was also selected to give an oral presentation in a dedicated session to undergraduates
Minh Thu (Alice) Ma, fourth-year Ph.D.student
Emily Saccuzzo, fourth-year Ph.D. student
Gwendell Thomas, first-year Ph.D. student

Kenney and Ma won Best Poster awards at the symposium, and Saccuzzo won an honorable mention.

“The conference was amazing! We saw so many great speakers and presentations about protein science, and it was a great way to meet scientists from all over the world,” Kenney said. “I’m so grateful for this experience, especially as I begin to apply to graduate school and think about my future career in science. It was a great experience, and one that has truly deepened my appreciation for science and research.”

“To have each of these superstars selected for travel fellowships puts them in an elite cohort of trainees at this 500-plus person meeting,” Lieberman said. “I am so excited for them to present their thesis research and to get feedback from colleagues in our field from all over the world. I’m sure new ideas, collaborations, and other opportunities will emerge from this experience. It’s just the boost they and I need after a challenging couple of years as experimental biochemists.”

SoM Chair Mike Wolf

A few weeks ago, I moved into the chair's office at the School of Mathematics. Of course, I have much to learn about the school, its people and programs, but I was excited to be offered the position because of the tremendous strength of the school and especially the promise and potential of SoM at the moment.

The Beauty of Mathematics

Let me take a step back. I don't have to tell this audience that mathematics is a wonderful subject. Mathematics has an unparalleled richness and complexity that comes from millennia of human thought and discourse across cultures; math has a scope of effect that touches all scientific and engineering disciplines, and now math reaches ever further into the social sciences as well.

While perhaps somewhat less visible than the research in the other sciences, mathematics is beautiful and signif- icant - in this issue, you may read of the breakthroughs of Alex Blumenthal on Batchelor's law, Jinyoung Park on the expectation conjecture, and Svetlana Jitomirskaya on quantum mechanics, as well as the ongoing pioneering efforts of Rachel Kuske to harvest unused vibrational energy in bridges.

About the School of Mathematics

The school is increasingly prominent: you will also read in this edition of the ProofReader of our rapid ascent in the U.S. News rankings: not only did the school jump from 26 to 21 in the most recent poll, but we were also ranked in four specialized areas, which is in itself a testament to the breadth and depth of the program. Faculty gained a great deal of international recognition: there are few math departments that can claim three invited addresses (here by Jen Hom, Michael Loss, and Konstantin Tikhomirov) at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) for work they did while at the school. In addition, our incoming Hubbard Chair Svetlana Jitomirskaya delivered a plenary address at the ICM and was recently awarded the inaugural Ladyzhenskaya prize by the International Mathematics Union.

The Impact of SoM

At the same time that mathematicians drive mathematics forward, they influence vast numbers of students at all levels. Just about all Tech students take a math course and most take several: as one cumulative measure, last year the school awarded roughly sixty-five thousand credit-hours for undergraduate and graduate classes. Beyond the numbers, the instruction is first-rate: please take note of all the pedagogical awards garnered by the faculty.

The school also reaches beyond its own students with several outreach programs: there are articles in this issue on the Atlanta Science Festival and the High School Math Competition. Not mentioned here is the longstanding Distance Learning program which sends Georgia Tech courses to high school students across Georgia who have progressed beyond calculus and are ready for more.

Also in this newsletter, you'll see a reflection of the contributions of our wonderful staff, who with little celebration just make everything work. Both Kimberly Stanley and Lea Marzo were recognized for their efforts beyond what any of us had the right to expect. It is greatly empowering to a new chair to inherit a staff that is both effective and invested in the future of the school.

The Future of SoM

There are of course challenges. Our excellence invites competition from other programs, so we must constantly try to advance our research presence, defending our strengths and growing into newly important areas. The student body is growing in size and diversity and we need to find ways to make sure that all are supported as they reach towards their ambitions. What can be wonderful about mathematics is that, ideally, it is only the truth and significance of what you say that matters, rather than what your background is. But to fully realize that ideal, we must be welcoming and encouraging to all, including mathematicians of exceptional potential from groups we haven't focused on as much as we could. That goal of broad and comfortable participation from all corners of society is both the imperative of today and also the promise of mathematics for the future.

Share Your Story!

I am trying to learn from as many people from the School of Mathematics community as I can. I ask the alumni to please share your stories of what you did with your mathematics education: our students greatly benefit from having models of where their studies can take them. More broadly, if you wish to partner with us as we move forward, please get in touch: I would love to hear your ideas. It's a wonderful time to join the School.

Herbert P. Haley Fellowship

This graduate fellowship recognizes significant accomplishments and outstanding academic achievements for students at Georgia Tech.

Recent Winners of the Haley Fellowship include:

Chris Dupre (2022)
Ian Lewis (2021 while an MS student)

An Interview with Roberta Shapiro

By Dan Margalit

Roberta has written three papers on quite different topics within the theory of mapping class groups. As an undergraduate, she was a co-author on a paper called “Automorphisms of the k-curve graph.” This paper was completed as part of the Summer@ICERM program. The project pushes in a new direction the metaconjecture of Ivanov, which says that any graph naturally associated to a surface should have automorphism group isomorphic to the mapping class group. There are many papers on this topic. This is only the second one that deals with infinitely many different graphs for each surface.

More broadly, Roberta has been a leader in the graduate program as a whole. She has volunteered for more panels than I can count. She and Katherine Booth have also been working hard to revitalize the AWM chapter in SoM. She has mentored a first year student two years in a row. She also is organizing the Graduate Student Topology and Geometry Conference at Georgia Tech in a few weeks. This is a high profile, annual national conference.

By Dan Margalit

In 2021 the School of Mathematics continued its long running summer REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program. The organizers were Professors Igor Belegradek, Rachel Kuske, and Dan Margalit. This summer the mentors and topics were

Anton Bernshteyn - Graph coloring
Jianbo Cui, Luca Dieci and Haomin Zhou - Numerical simulations in optimal transport
Jorge Gonzales - Dynamical Systems with computer assistance
Siddhi Krishna and Marissa Loving - Braids, surfaces, and low-dimensional phenomena
Rachel Kuske - Dynamical modeling for sustainable energy
Wenjing Liao - High-dimensional data analysis and neural networks
Doron Lubinsky - Inequalities for polynomials
Cheng Mao - Comparison of Ranking Systems
Mayya Zhilova - Resampling methods for statistical models involving heavy-tailed distributions
Dan Margalit, Wade Bloomquist, Nancy Scherich, Roberta Shapiro, and Yvon Verberne - Curves on Surfaces
Dan Margalit - Complex dynamics

After a summer in 2020 where the entire program was virtual, SoM was happy to welcome some students back in person. The students were especially excited to be back on campus, leading to an energetic atmosphere in Skiles. Overall, there were 35 undergraduate participants, with 21 working in person on campus.

Besides the research projects, which form the cornerstone of the program, students also participated in a professional development seminar, which covered topics such as: applying to graduate school, writing and delivering talks and posters, and the basics of LaTeX and Inkscape. The seminar was organized by Dan Margalit, Wade Bloomquist, Nancy Scherich, Roberta Shapiro, and Yvon Verberne. The students also participated in tea time, regular social activities, as well as an REU-wide colloquium series.

This year also saw the introduction of the GRE Math bootcamp, a two–month test preparation program, which was well attended by the REU and metro Atlanta students. This program was organized by the graduate director Xingxing Yu and taught by Hyunki Min, a graduate student.

There were two poster sessions, one in Skiles and one online. Both featured outstanding projects and even more outstanding posters and presentations. Among the awards earned by this year’s cohort were an MAA Outstanding Student Paper Session Presentation Award at Mathfest. Students presented their work in the SoM Graph Theory Seminar and at the Tech Topology Conference. Papers from the summer’s research were published in Acta Mathematica Hungarica and Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.

One student, Lily Li, won honorable mention for the Alice T. Schafer prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics, a national prize awarded to “an undergraduate woman for excellence in mathematics.” This was Lily’s second REU in the School.

Based on the REU exit survey, the REU was a great success. Here is one anonymous comment from a participant:

This REU has really made me want to stay in the field of mathematics. Before I did this REU, I had no real idea of what field of math I wanted to explore further. However, this REU has made me want to pursue higher levels of mathematics and learn more about the multiple intersections that math has with other fields, because I found that it was possible to do that in our own research. I would like to learn about higher levels of mathematics moving forward and I am grateful that now I have 5 more people to help me along the way.
-Anonymous survey response

SoM is wrapping up a 5 year REU grant from the National Science Foundation. We plan to apply for more funding to continue this program, and hope to inspire many more students to pursue a career in mathematics.

Written by Evans Harrell, Lew Lefton, and Dan Margalit

The School of Mathematics made its presence felt at the Atlanta Science Festival in 2022, with a variety of performances, workshops, and artistic creations.

Mathematics in Motion

On March 13, Professor and Assoc. Dean Emeritus Evans Harrell hosted an event of his creation, called Mathematics in Motion. This event was held in the theater at the Drew Charter School. From the flyer:

Mathematics and the performing arts? Yes, absolutely! Join us during the Atlanta Science Festival to experience how dance and circus arts can interpret math through the beauty of movement!

The show started with a unicycle demonstration by Georgia Tech student Anthony Limiero and recent grad Ziggy Zaptacular. They rode many unicycles of various shapes and sizes while Harrell, acting as emcee, described the various geometric properties of the unicycles and their wheels. Then Harrell (dressed in a clown nose and rainbow wig) showed the audience - with the help of an adorable volunteer - how a non-circular wheel could be used to make a smooth ride on the flat stage. A working model of a unicycle with such a wheel, built by Paul Hartman, was in the building. Its premiere ride in public was accomplished by Anthony, much to the delight of the crowd.

The shape used for Hartman’s unicycle wheel is called a Reauleaux triangle. This is a curved triangle that has an amazing property: it has the same height no matter how it is rotated. This shape is named for the 19th century engineer Franz Realeaux, although the shape was known earlier, for instance to Leonardo Da Vinci.

After the unicycling, Professor Dan Margalit took the stage to give a juggling demonstration and an explanation of the mathematics behind siteswap notation, a kind of sheet music for juggling that was invented independently by three separate groups in the early 1980s.

The third act, Hypercube, was a modern-dance performance in which the dancers manipulated a very large, and very flexible hypercube created by Atlanta artist Julia Hill. This piece was created by Atlanta choreographer Rose Shields, with the collaboration of Sarah Pritchard, one of our star undergraduates in the School. Ms. Shields is an artist in residence at Mathematics in Motion, Inc.

The fourth and final act was a piece called Shape of Reflection, created by Julie Galle Baggenstoss, an instructor in the Emory Dance Program and another resident at Mathematics in Motion, Inc. While guitarist José Chirinos played flamenco music, the dancers played off the inherent asymmetry of the ellipse using both flamenco and hip-hop dance moves.

The performance ended with a question and answer session, hosted by Harrell. Audience members stayed for almost an hour after the performance, and children and adults got a chance to interact directly with the performers. Many were struck by the way that mathematics interfaced with art in so many surprising ways.

Science Improv

What happens when improv comedy gets geeky? Just ask Prof. Lew Lefton (also Assoc. VP for Research and CoS Asst Dean of IT), who hosted an Atlanta Science Festival event called Science Improv on March 16 at Whole World Improv Theater. This event, which puts short-form improv games into a Math and Science context, has been an Atlanta Science Festival favorite, returning every year since the first festival in 2013! The ensemble cast varies from year to year, but frequently includes Georgia Tech faculty and students playing with experienced improvisers. Do you want to see a press conference where Issac Newton announces he’s invented an AI powered lawn mower? Come suggest it at the next Science Improv show.

Jazz Hands: A Science Comedy Event

Prof. Lefton also produced and hosted a stand up comedy showcase on March 23, in partnership with the nonprofit Science for Georgia. Here, Lefton takes advantage of his decades of experience as a stand up and improv comedian to combine a Science Communication course with a Stand up comedy course. Participants learn the basics of comedy and then take a scientific topic and build a 5-7 minute stand up comedy set about it. This year’s cohort performed their “final exam” at Zoo Atlanta and the event was a big success. We had faculty from Emory talking about “Chuck Norris Antibodies” and Ph.D. candidates from Morehouse School of Medicine who were “vaxxed, waxed, and can’t relax!”. The event was also a fundraiser for Science for Georgia which is a nonprofit that works to build stronger bridges between Science and the public through communication, engagement and public policy.

Scientists are funny! And because we’re scientists, we’ve got data to back that statement up! Back by popular demand, and *in 3D*...come see scientists do comedy at Science Jazz Hands! Learn the answers to all of life's mysteries, like "how can you make a math pun that bad?" and "how is religion like nuclear physics?"

MindCraft!

In the new, environmentally friendly Kendeda Building on campus, the College of Sciences hosted an event called MindCraft! The Science of Crafting. This event was organized on March 12 by Jennifer Leavey, Assistant Dean in the College of Sciences. From the advertisement:

Are you a maker or a crafter? Ever given much thought to some of the science and technology secrets behind your favorite hobby? Or maybe you haven't picked your pandemic hobby yet and want some inspiration! Make your own mini-crafts and learn about the science of materials in knitting, origami, flower pressing, pottery, and more.

Among the many tables at this science fair-type event, School of Mathematics ran a table called Crocheting Hyperbolic Space. Hyperbolic space is a space that looks like a Pringles potato chip or like certain types of coral. Second-year graduate student Katherine Booth and Professor Dan Margalit taught participants to crochet a hyperbolic plane out of yarn. They explained the phenomenon that on a sphere (which is positively curved) triangles have interior angles greater than π, while in hyperbolic space (which is negatively curved) triangles have interior angles less than π. Children and adults had a blast learning to crochet and discovering the world of negative curvature.

Imagining the Future

Another event run by the Atlanta Science Festival is Imagining the Future, a program that pairs STEM professionals with elementary and secondary school classrooms. The STEM professionals visit with students in their classrooms. The goal is to expose students to aspects of science and academia that they might not be aware of, and to give students a chance to interact with scientists and engineers.

This year, Professor Dan Margalit was paired with Boyd Elementary School, on the west side of Atlanta. He gave a juggling demonstration to second and third grade students and give a basic introduction to siteswap, emphasizing the distinction between even and odd numbers in the siteswap patterns. Students then got to ask questions. At the end, the students practiced their juggling skills with plastic bags from the grocery store. They were very excited!

Science.Art.Wonder

Science.Art.Wonder is a student organization run by undergraduates at Georgia Tech. In their words:

Science.Art.Wonder matches artists and researchers to create art based on and inspired by scientific research.

This year, Professor Dan Margalit was paired with Olena Buriakova, a third-year Computer Science major from Kyiv. Olena’s painting is titled “The squared lantern relation.” It illustrates an equality in the braid group on three strands. The equality is illustrated as two different braids in the hair of two twin sisters. The painting was exhibited on campus and at the Atlanta Science Festival Exposition on March 26.

What: Linear Algebra: The Musical
When: Opening night Friday, July 1st at 8pm. Second and final performance Saturday, July 2nd at 8pm.
Where: Dramatech Theater, 349 Ferst Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30332, in between the Boggs building and the Student Center.
Why: It's a musical about linear algebra... !
Who: Everyone! Admission is free.

Eight actors and a dozen theater tech enthusiasts will put on what is bound to be a joyful romp through a dystopian futuristic world populated by matrices, where your societal rank is equal to your matrix rank. Dramatech is Tech's on-campus, student run theater company and their newest offering is a jukebox musical written by Tech student Aren Russ, Linear Algebra: The Musical, a rising fourth-year physics major who first started writing the script as a study guide to Dr. Mayer's Spring 2019 class, Math 1554 Linear Algebra.

We had an opportunity to chat with the playwright about how this amazing musical was created and to get a glimpse into what anyone attending the performance can expect. Here is what we found out.

Q: So, Linear Algebra: The Musical, how did this happen.

About 2 years ago I took Math 1554 Linear Algebra the four hour version, with Dr. Mayer. I'm a physics major so I wanted to take the longer version for when I would need it for quantum [mechanics]. I was trying to memorize all the definitions for the final exam, and I memorize scripts a lot easier than I can memorize pages of notes, so I jokingly said I should just write a script about linear algebra. So just opened a word document and at the top I jokingly wrote Linear Algebra: The Musical, and this title was too funny to not do anything with.

Q: Completely agree. Is that when you wrote the play?

About a year later, Dramatech was looking for student works to do readings. I went back and found what I had done before and then wrote [the play] over the course of 3 days, it was a very interesting period of my life. I realized about a day into it, that it needed to be a musical and so I needed songs. The song "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance came on the radio and I could picture the characters of the story singing the songs.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the plot?

The plot centers around four zero matrices who live in a dystopian future where your matrix rank determines your societal rank. So since their rank is zero they are at the bottom and they are all edgy and angsty about it. It's implied that every five years you add another row or column [to your matrix]. The whole society is led by the identity matrices because they are the top dogs, and so you see the journey of these zero matrices working through society and trying to find a place for themselves, and working to make a statement for the rights of zero matrices, and you end up finding out by the end that zero matrices are already pretty interesting: they are already in reduced echelon form, they are diagonalizable, basically they are already perfect matrices, and the identity matrix was hiding that because he wanted to be the only perfect matrix and not them.

Q: Do matrices get to rank up in your world, or are they stuck with the same rank forever and I guess they just learn to accept it?

It's implied that the rank that you are around graduating high school is the same rank that you are going to be regardless of how you age.

Q: How did you come up with the jokes in the play?

A lot of the jokes were me just going back to the linear algebra notes and seeing terms, things that I enjoyed in the class, and then working them into the script and basing characters off of them or just writing little throw away lines. I ended up doing a motif where I would take pop culture references, and change one thing about them to be linear algebra themed. So for example, one of the characters mentions an artist named Megan The Subspace, and there is a party where they drink SmirNULL Ices (instead of Smirnoff Ice).

Q: Was this your first play that you wrote?

I have written quite a few plays and musicals, but this is the first one that I've actually found a space and opportunity to perform. And so I've had the time to really rewrite it and polish it. Most of my other works are less campy and jokey, and it is much harder to find a space to perform them. They either require a lot of technical aspects or they are just relatively serious intense topics that are not really the vibe of Dramatech.

Q: So you are a physics major, and you write plays for fun?

I do a lot of things with my life. I'm a physics major but i want to go into meteorology, and I love writing but I do a ton of art. I'm a professional artist, doing art is my main source of income. I'm also working with a graphic design marketing job, and then the writing has just been a side hobby up until now.

Q: What is the Dramatech community like?

The community is wonderful, I love all of them so much, they are such a welcoming and accepting group of people who let you put on shows like Linear Algebra: The Musical.

There are about 8 actors, and 12 tech people. We of course have a lot more tech theater kids than on stage actor kids, and being at Dramatech we often find ways to incorporate our love for the sciences and engineering into the theater productions that we do. So we have a lot of people that are interested in lighting design, we have a master electrician, a master carpenter and we often end up with some really cool set builds.

We work 6pm-10pm pretty much every night. The actors have been doing an amazing job memorizing their lines and learning the seven songs in the musical.

Q: What was the experience like going from your written play to a living breathing production, or did things pretty much stay the same as how you were originally envisioning?

It's been really cool to see how [the show] changes from my mental image to actually being on the stage. The cast that I got they are amazing, I love them all so much. Casting was a bit of a struggle, it's a minimum of 8 people but only 7 people signed up and some people were dropping last minute but eventually we got one freshmen and one third year who are here for the summer recruitment events, they are noobies to Dramatech. But casting-wise I just put people in random roles based on their vocal range and how much theater experience that they had, and I ended up casting them as themselves. So all of the actors are playing their exact type, playing pretty much their own personality on stage.

Q: What was it about Math 1554 Linear Algebra that made you want to create the musical?

First of all, I loved [Dr. Mayer's] class he was an amazing teacher. The content, well, not my favorite math course I've ever taken - I'm much more of a differential calculus kind of person. But he made it really palatable and fun to learn despite it being at 8am. And I was having trouble memorizing all the different terms and all the different definitions, because there were so many different ways to classify everything and so many different methods of processing everything, and I was trying to think of fun ways to memorize everything. And I was putting everything into a word document and I thought it would be a good joke to write a script about it, and then it wasn't a joke.

It was a series of funny, one line jokes that I had: your matrix rank equals determines societal rank, and a couple other bitty style one-liners, that I just sat down and over the course of three days just kind of made a script out of it.

Q: Are your other plays also science or math based?

I've spent a nonzero amount of my life practicing bridging scientific topics with artistic things, being an artist myself who does a lot of drawing, illustration, writing, and painting and other forms of art. Pretty much as long as I can remember I have always been doodling characters based on the elementary [classical physics] model, or super heroes based on the periodic table, so it was surprisingly in my wheelhouse to transfer these linear algebra concepts into an art form. Understanding them from a logical on-paper standpoint, and then using that understanding to create an artistic impression of them.

Q: That's actually really cool. Can you explain that a bit more?

I think it comes from my love for the two fields. My love for the pure sciences and the pure arts, and wanting to do the two things - not wanting to have to choose between the two things I love. So it's kind of driven out of necessity, almost, the necessity to not have to give up either aspect of myself. I was raised on shows like Mythbusters and Magic Schoolbus which are art-forms that portray scientific concepts and I absolutely loved those growing up. And I guess I wanted to kind of do that in my own way. Like in high school I would explain what a photon is by showing my friends a silly little doodle of an anime girl who can fly through walls because she has no mass.

Q: I absolutely love that, and I'm super excited to go see the show!

Seeing the interest that people have in this, because I didn't know that anyone would even be interested in this kind of thing. So I genuinely didn't realize there were so many people on this campus interested in bridging the two [art and science]. I think people just enjoy getting to see this thing that they spent hours of their life studying and pouring themselves into in a much more fun, lighthearted, and low stakes format with fun songs and dance, lights and costumes.

Now that I've discovered the shared interest people have in bridging art and these scientific ideas, I'm hoping to bring more stuff like this to campus in this final year that I have here.

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