This page will be regularly updated with important events happening at the math department. Please e-mail news items to web-news@math.psu.edu.
| Climenhaga and Willett receive Graduate Teaching Awards. |
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| We congratulate Vaughn Climenhaga and Rufus Willett as the recipients of the Departmental Graduate Assistant Teaching Awards for the Fall 2008 semester. These awards are given by the department to TAs who have made an outstanding contribution to teaching as determined by faculty visits, student evaluations, and solicited and unsolicited student comments. The awards are departmentally funded. The value of each award is $250. In addition, Vaughn and Rufus will receive award certificates. |
| 12 / 17 / 2008 |
| Rosemary Frank to retire. |
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| Rosemary Frank plans to retire at the end of the year. Rosemary has served the Department of Mathematics faithfully since 1986 with unfailing courtesy and efficiency on countless administrative projects. Most recently her service was honored by the "Achieving Woman Award" of Penn State's Commission for Women. We thank Rosemary and wish her all the best for retirement. Congratulations, Rosemary! |
| 12 / 01 / 2008 |
| Special departmental tea. |
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| As usual we will celebrate the last day of classes, Friday December 12, with a special departmental tea. This year the tea will include a presentation to Rosemary Frank on the occasion of her retirement. |
| 12 / 01 / 2008 |
| Welcoming a visitor. |
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| The Department of Mathematics welcomes Professor Michael Hirschhorn of the University of New South Wales. He will be visiting 12/2/08 - 12/15/08 as a research collaborator with Associate Head James Sellers. His office is 209 McAllister. |
| 12 / 01 / 2008 |
| Summer program at Peking University. |
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| This summer a program on differential equations for selected Penn State students will run at Peking University. Interested students will need to register for a spring-semester preparation course, MATH 297S. The Penn State faculty members in charge of the program are Assistant Professors James Brannick and Xiantao Li and Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. |
| 11 / 17 / 2008 |
| Linda Fisher receives ECoS Staff Leadership Award. |
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| Linda Fisher, who runs our undergraduate office, has received the Eberly College of Science Staff Leadership Award for 2008. Congratulations, Linda! |
| 11 / 03 / 2008 |
| Eastern Sectional Meeting of the AMS. |
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| On October 24-25, 2009 Penn State will host the Eastern Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society. The local organizer for the meeting is Professor Augustin Banyaga. |
| 11 / 03 / 2008 |
| Terence Tao to deliver Marker Lectures. |
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On November 17-20, 2008 Professor Terence Tao of UCLA will deliver the Marker Lectures. The schedule of the lectures is: - Monday, November 17, 8:00 PM, 101 Thomas. "Long arithmetic progressions of primes."
- Tuesday, November 18, 4:30 PM, 114 McAllister. "Linear equations in primes."
- Wednesday, November 19, 4:30 PM, 114 McAllister. "Small gaps between primes."
- Thursday, November 20, 4:30 PM, 114 McAllister. "Sieving for almost primes, and expander graphs."
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| 11 / 03 / 2008 |
| Kang and Kursungoz receive Pritchard Fellowships. |
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| The Graduate Studies Committee has selected Ming-Hsuan Kang (Professor Winnie Li, thesis adviser) and Kagan Kursungoz (Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews, thesis adviser) as recipients of the Pritchard Dissertation Fellowship for Spring 2009. The Fellowships are awarded in recognition of the very high quality of the recipients' thesis work. |
| 10 / 30 / 2008 |
| Dynamical Systems Workshop, October 23-26. |
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| The 19th fall meeting of the Penn State-Maryland Dynamical Systems Workshop will take place this weekend, October 23-26, in our department. We welcome all the participants in this regular event. For more details please visit the conference website. |
| 10 / 20 / 2008 |
| Soto joins department as postdoc. |
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| Dr. Enrique Soto Castruita from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico has joined our department as a postdoc from 7/15/08 to 7/30/09. His office is 332 McAllister. His host is Associate Professor Andrew Belmonte. |
| 10 / 08 / 2008 |
| Jinchao Xu's research cited by the Department of Energy. |
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| Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu has been recognized by the Department of Energy in their publication 10 BREAKTHROUGHS IN 2008 for his work on the first provably scalable solver code for Maxwell's equations. According to DOE, this code "is a perfect example of how fundamental mathematical research can lead to important software advances in high-performance computing." Congratulations, Jinchao! |
| 10 / 03 / 2008 |
| Departmental Tea. |
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| This semester the departmental tea will be held Thursdays, 3:30 - 4:00 PM, in the Synergistic Room, 114 McAllister. There will be no tea on other days, except for special occasions to be announced. |
| 08 / 26 / 2008 |
| Visitors. |
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The Department of Mathematics welcomes these visitors. - Prof. Robert Coquereaux from CPT/CNRS, Case 907 is visiting 9/27/08-10/28/08. His office is 232 McAllister. His host is Professor Adrian Ocneanu.
- Prof. Pingbing Ming from Chinese Academy of Sciences is visiting 9/14/08-11/2/08. His office is 234 McAllister. His host is Assistant Professor Xiantao Li.
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| 08 / 26 / 2008 |
| MASS Fest. |
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| A MASS Fest conference will be held on Thursday and Friday this week to celebrate the end of our summer REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program and to inaugurate the MASS program for the coming semester. REU students will present some of their own research results. Professors Adrian Ocneanu and Mark Levi will give plenary talks. The full program is available here. |
| 08 / 11 / 2008 |
| Welcoming new lecturers and postdoctoral faculty. |
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The Department of Mathematics welcomes these new lecturers and postdocs. - Seunghoon Bang got his Ph.D. from Penn State University in August 2007 under the direction of Professor Yuxi Zheng. His research interests include partial differential equations and conservation laws. Seunghoon will be a lecturer.
- Robbie Beane got his Ph.D. from Missouri University of Science and Technology in May 2008. His research interests include topology and dynamical systems: in particular continua theory, inverse limit spaces, and hyperspaces. Robbie will be a lecturer.
- Paul Bendich got his Ph.D. from Duke University in May 2008. His research interests include computational topology, intersection homology and stratified spaces, and applications of topology to the analysis of scientific datasets. Paul will be a lecturer.
- Zhuo Chen got his Ph.D. from Peking University in July 2004. His research interests include symplectic geometry and mathematics physics (Poisson geometry). Zhuo will be a research associate and will work with Professor Ping Xu.
- Durkbin Cho got his Ph.D. from Penn State University in May 2008 under the direction of Associate Professor Ludmil Zikatanov. Cho's research interests include numerical analysis, and in particular, in generalized finite element methods and multigrid methods. Cho will be a research associate and will work with Zikatanov and with Assistant Professor James Brannick.
- John Ethier got his Ph.D. from Penn State University in August 2008 under the direction of Professor Gary Mullen. Ethier's research interests include Latin squares, combinatorics, number theory, and finite fields. He will be a lecturer.
- Andrey Glubokov got his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in May 2005. His research interests include noncommutative geometry, index theory, and Hopf cyclic cohomology. Andrey will be a lecturer.
- Eric Simring got his Ph.D. from Columbia University in May 2008. His research interests include quantum groups and irreducible representations of quantum subgroups. Eric will be a lecturer.
- Sherry Teti got her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in May 2008. Her research interests include billiard systems, population and disease modeling, geometrical optics, and analysis. Sherry will be a lecturer.
- Yi-Jun Yao got his Ph.D. from Ecole Polytechnique in January 2007. His research interests include aspects geometry (differential, symplectic) and number theory (modular forms) that may be considered by the tools of noncommutative geometry. Yi-Jun will be a S. Chowla Research Assistant Professor.
- Shuo Zhang from Peking University is visiting for the academic year. He will be a postdoctoral scholar and will be working with Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu.
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| 08 / 11 / 2008 |
| Visitors. |
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The Department of Mathematics welcomes these visitors. - Prof. Michael Hirschhorn from University of New South Wales is visiting 8/25/08-9/25/08. His office is 232 McAllister. His host is Associate Head James Sellers.
- Prof. Giorgio Mantica from Universita dell Insubria is visiting 8/22/08-9/2/08. His office is 428 McAllister. His host is Distinguished Professor Yakov Pesin.
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| 08 / 04 / 2008 |
| July visitors. |
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The Department of Mathematics welcomes the following visitors. - Dr. Enrique Soto Castruita from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico is visiting as a postdoc from 7/15/08-7/30/09. His office is 332 McAllister. His host is Associate Professor Andrew Belmonte.
- Dr. Steffen Roch from Technische Universitat Darmstadt is visiting from 7/14/08-7/21/08. His office is 209 McAllister. His host is Professor John Roe.
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| 07 / 31 / 2008 |
| Professor M. Denker joins the department. |
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| We welcome Professor Manfred Denker, who will arrive in August and will join us on a senior visiting position shared with the Statistics Department. Professor Denker will help us develop an interdepartmental initiative in probability theory and its applications. |
| 07 / 31 / 2008 |
| Tammy Coval rejoins the department. |
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| We welcome Tammy Coval back to the Department of Mathematics. She will join the staff of the undergraduate mathematics office in 104MB starting August 1. |
| 07 / 31 / 2008 |
| Manoharan leaves the department. |
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| Palanivel Manoharan recently left the department to take up a new position as Dean of the Division of Science and Mathematics, Lorain County Community College, Ohio. We wish Mano every success in his new position. |
| 07 / 31 / 2008 |
| Donations to the MASS program. |
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| Recently Professor Michael Brin of the University of Maryland and our own Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews pledged substantial donations in support of our MASS program. MASS brings outstanding undergraduate mathematics majors from colleges and universities around the USA for a semester of total immersion in mathematics at Penn State. The Department Head has appealed to departmental alumni and other supporters to build on this foundation and has received many generous responses. Several faculty members have begun to support MASS through payroll donation. |
| 07 / 31 / 2008 |
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