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Our Fall 2011 departmental newsletter can be found here.
News of faculty and student invited lectures and presentations can be found here.
Recent News
Marvin Knopp: 1933-2011
December 2011
With great sadness we report that Professor Marvin Knopp passed away December 24 while visiting family in Florida. He joined the Department of Mathematics at Temple in 1976. Prior to coming to Temple he held appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, under the direction of Paul Bateman. Professor Knopp was born in 1933 in Chicago, Illinois.
Professor Knopp was a leading expert in the theory of Modular Forms, and he twice gave invited addresses to meetings of the American Mathematical Society. He had over 70 publications. In 2007 the International Journal of Number Theory dedicated a volume in his honor.
Over the course of his career Professor Knopp supervised 20 Ph.D. students. He was active mathematically up to the time of his death, and he was supervising the Ph.D. thesis of Austin Daughton, who is currently writing a dissertation based on the research he completed under Professor Knopp's direction.
A brief appreciation, by Professor J. A. Paulos, can be found here.
Memorial activities are being planned.
John Paulos in Scientific American
December 2011
Professor John Paulos has been writing regular short columns for Scientific American. His most recent column can be found here.
Numerical Analysis Day
November 2011
On November 4 the Department of Mathematics hosted a one-day conference on numerical analysis. The keynote speaker was Lisa Fauci, Pendergraft Nola Lee Haynes Professor of Mathematics, Tulane University. She lectured on "Waving rings and swimming in circles: some lessons learned in biofluiddynamics." The remainder of the talks were given by young researchers: Eighteen graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from Maryland to New York, and from Pittsburgh to Delaware, gave presentations. More details can be found here.
Benjamin Seibold and Prince Chidyagwai awarded new NSF grant
September 2011
Assistant Professor Benjamin Seibold is PI, and Postdoctoral Research Assistant Professor Prince Chidyagwai is co-PI, on the new NSF Grant Numerical approaches for incompressible viscous flows with high order accuracy up to the boundary. The award is for $299,922. From the abstract: "In many applications in science and engineering, the accurate and efficient computation of forces and stresses at boundaries between fluids and solids is of crucial importance. Examples in which boundary forces (in the form of lift and drag) are key quantities of interest are the design of airplane wings, motor vehicles, and wind turbines, as well as the simulation of sedimentation in stratified fluids and bio-locomotion. The investigators are researching new methodologies and implementations of approaches that allow for a highly accurate computation of these boundary forces."
Daniel Szyld and Fei Xue awarded new NSF grant
August 2011
Professor Daniel Szyld is PI, and Postdoctoral Research Assistant Professor Fei Xue is co-PI, on the new NSF grant, Eigenvalues problems, Krylov subspace methods, and subspace recycling. The award is for $280,000. From the abstract: "The problems to be studied in this project include the efficient computation of a group of eigenvalues and the solution of sequences of linear systems. Eigenvalue calculations include analysis of vibration frequencies in structures including buildings, to make sure, for example, that they are far from the earthquake band. Fast algorithms for generalized eigenvalue problems also contribute to the design and analysis of electronic integrated circuit and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), and the detection of potential presence of turbulent fluid flows. Efficient solution of a sequence of linear systems facilitates modeling of fatigue and fracture via finite element analysis, and the stability analysis of linear systems through the solution of Riccati equations."
Igor Rivin appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor
August 2011
Professor Igor Rivin has been appointed a Berlin Mathematical Society Distinguished Professor, for Fall 2011, at Technische U. Berlin.
Welcome to new faculty member: Irina Mitrea
July 2011
Dr. Irina Mitrea joined our department July 1 as Associate Professor. Dr. Mitrea pursued her graduate studies in the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, where she earned a Ph.D. degree under the direction of Carlos Kenig and Mikhail Safonov. Her area of expertise is at the interface between Real and Harmonic Analysis, Partial Differential Equations, and Geometric Measure Theory. Dr. Mitrea's research is currently supported by an NSF CAREER Grant. Other research awards include the 2008 Ruth Michler Memorial Prize from the Association of Women in Mathematics; a Fund for Excellence in Science and Technology Award from the University of Virginia, 2005-2006; a Sloan Dissertation Fellowship, 1999-2000; and a Liftoff Fellowship from the Clay Mathematics Institute, 2000. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics and is an editor for the American Mathematical Monthly.
Journal volume dedicated to Janos Galambos
July 2011
Volume 34 (2011) of Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eotvos Nominatae. Sectio Computatorica was dedicated to Professor Janos Galambos on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Shiferaw Berhanu PI on NSF grant to support Workshop on Partial Differential Equations and Several Complex Variables.
June 2011
Professor Shiferaw Berhanu is PI on a new $40,000 grant from the NSF to help support the upcoming "Workshop on Partial Differential Equations and Several Complex Variables" that will be held from August 1-5, 2011, in Serra Negra, Brazil. This will be the sixth of a highly successful series of biennial international workshops by the same title bringing together researchers from Brazil, Europe, and the US. Professor Berhanu is on the scientific committee of this conference.
Cristian Gutierrez co-organizer of Fabes Lectures 2011
May 2011
Professor Cristian Gutierrez was a co-organizer of Fabes Lectures 2011 Conference on Real Analysis and PDEs, May 30 and 31, at the Instituto Argentino de Matemática "Alberto Calderón", Buenos Aires, Argentina. The members of the conference advisory committee were Luis Caffarelli (University of Texas, Austin), Cristian Gutierrez, Carlos Kenig (University of Chicago), and Sandro Salsa (Politecnico di Milano). This conference series is dedicated to the memory of Eugene Fabes, a leading mathematical analyst.
Department of Mathematics students Dobbins, Hanson-Hart, and Xiong awarded Ph.D.
May 2011
Temple mathematics graduate students Michael Dobbins, Zachary Hanson-Hart, and Sheng Xiong were all awarded Ph.D. degrees in mathematics this past May. Dobbins' thesis, Representations of Polytopes, was completed under the direction of Professor Igor Rivin. Hanson-Hart's thesis, A Cauchy Problem with Singularity Along the Initial Hypersurface, was completed under the direction of Professor Gerardo Mendoza. Sheng Xiong's thesis, Stochastic differential equations: some risk and insurance applications, was completed under the direction of Professor Wei-Shih Yang.
Martin Lorenz co-organizer of Hanoi workshop
January 2011
Martin Lorenz was co-organizer of the CIMPA-UNESCO-VIETNAM School and Workshop on Braids in Algebra, Geometry, and Topology, Hanoi, January 17-28, 2011. Courses were given by Corrado De Concini (Univ. Rome I, Italy), Christian Kassel (Univ. de Starsbourg et CNRS, France), Toshitake Kohno (Tokyo Univ., Japan), Luis Paris (Univ. de Bourgogne, France), Claudio Procesi (Univ. Rome I, Italy), and Le Tu Quoc Thang (Georgia Inst. of Technology, USA). The conference was sponsered by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, the Centre International de Mathematiques Pures et Appliquees, the NSF, and the Institute of Mathematics, Hanoi. Marting Lorenz and Nei Nakamura (Temple) were among those who presented talks.
Conference in Memory of Professor Leon Ehrenpreis
November 2010
A two-day conference in memory of Professor Leon Ehrenpreis was held November 15 and 16, 2010. Speakers: C. Epstein (University of Pennsylvania), J. E. Fornaess (University of Michigan), C. Gutierrez (Temple University), X. Huang (Rutgers University), H. Iwaniec (Rutgers University), J. J. Kohn (Princeton University), I. Rivin (Temple University), P. Sarnak (Institute for Advanced Study), E. Stein (Princeton University), F. Treves (Rutgers University). A memorial banquet was also held, where Professor Ehrenpreis' colleagues and friends shared fond memories. Present throughout the conference was Mrs. Ahava Ehrenpreis, who also spoke at the memorial banquet. Also present for the conference and banquet were several of Professor Ehrenpreis' children and grandchildren. The conference was organized by Temple mathematics department members Shiferaw Berhanu, Marvin Knopp, Edward Letzter, and Gerardo Mendoza.
Professor John Paulos in national media.
October 2010
John Paulos' commentary appeared three times in the national media this month: New York Times, Washington Post, and ABC News.
Benjamin Seibold in local, national, and international media for traffic research
September 2010
Assistant Professor Benjamin Seibold was featured in several media outlets for his research on traffic modeling, including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Journal, The Financial Times (London), KYW Newsradio, NBC Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and News 1130 (Vancouver, Canada). Temple converage included Temple News here and here. The articles concern his research on ``phantom traffic jams.'' To quote from the New York Times piece (appearing under his own byline): "These so-called 'phantom traffic jams' can happen without any obstacles on the road. Instead they are a property of the flow. Traffic models and simulations show that once traffic volume exceeds a critical threshold, small perturbations in the flow amplify, and traffic waves develop. These traffic waves, so called 'jamitons,' can travel backward along the road, forcing drivers to brake and accelerate constantly." And: "Our research group, consisting of researchers in the United States, Canada, and Saudi-Arabia, has found that jamitons behave much like detonation waves. Using theories that were originally developed to study explosions, fundamental properties of traffic waves can be explained and predicted."
David Futer awarded new NSF grant
August 2010
Assistant Professor David Futer has been awarded a new NSF research grant, Hyperbolic geometry of knots and 3-manifolds, for $112,096. From the absract: "A 3-manifold is a space where an object such as a helicopter can move around in three distinct perpendicular directions. The universe that we inhabit is a 3-manifold whose global geometry we do not yet understand. Another rich source of examples comes from the spaces that surround different knots. Powerful theorems of Thurston, Perelman, and Mostow imply that almost every knot complement, and more generally almost every 3-manifold, has a unique hyperbolic metric. That is, there is a standard way to measure the space, so that every 2-dimensional cross-section curves like a saddle. At the moment, while we know that this standard hyperbolic metric exists, very little is known about how to relate it to easily computable quantities such as the complexity of a knot diagram. The main goal of this project is to make these relations much more concrete."
Benjamin Seibold awarded new NSF grant
August 2010
Assistant Professor Benjamin Seibold has been awarded a new NSF research grant, Phantom traffic jams, continuum modeling, and connections with detonation wave theory. From the abstract: "A 'phantom' traffic jam is a small congestion in vehicular traffic that occurs spontaneously, in the absence of bottlenecks, obstacles, or any discernible causes on the road. Observations show that uniform traffic flow can develop inhomogeneities, which turn into traveling traffic jams. These traffic jam waves ('jamitons') enforce unexpected braking maneuvers, and thus impose stress on drivers and materials, waste fuel and increase pollution, and are hot spots for potential vehicle collisions. In this project, the behavior of phantom traffic jams and jamitons is studied. Theoretical analogies between traffic modeling and gas dynamics, hydraulics, and astrophysics, are established and used to advance the understanding of traffic flow. These connections yield insight into the situations under which phantom traffic jams can occur, and allow the prediction of the shape and velocity of the resulting jamitons. A fundamental understanding of phantom traffic jams is a key step in devising appropriate countermeasures to avoid or ameliorate them. The development of effective ways to manage or prevent phantom traffic jams could have a considerable impact on the reduction of fuel consumption and pollution. Two possible strategies that will be incorporated into the models and investigated are: assisted driving devices in the individual vehicles, and adaptively controlled speed limits on highways. A crucial component of this study is the interplay between theoretical analysis and numerical experiments. The research in this project involves three international collaborations, as well as graduate and undergraduate research projects."
Professor Leon Ehrenpreis, 1930-2010.
August 2010
With great sadness we report the passing of Professor Leon Ehrenpreis. Professor Ehrenpreis, an internationally renowned mathematician and scholar, had been a member of the Temple University Department of Mathematics since 1984. Before joining Temple he was a professor at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and at Yeshiva University. He also held positions at Brandeis University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Among his significant contributions to mathematics was the Malgrange-Ehrenpreis Theorem.
Update: Obituaries for Professor Ehrenpreis appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, and The Temple News.
Yury Grabovsky awarded new NSF grant
August 2010
Yury Grabovsky has been awarded a new NSF grant, Stability and macroscopic properties of heterogeneous media, for $102,641. From the abstract: "The investigator studies problems related to composite materials, martensitic phase transformations, and morphological stability in materials. First, he considers exact relations and links for effective tensors of fiber-reinforced elastic composites, by applying the general theory developed by him and his collaborators. The general theory provides a strategy for finding every relation and link. However, the actual execution of that strategy is far from trivial. The case of fiber-reinforced elastic composites is both important for applications and incredibly challenging technically, because the microstructure is two-dimensional while the properties of the composite are represented by three-dimensional fully anisotropic elastic tensors. This topic builds on the successful solution of a similar, simpler problem in the context of Hall-effect conductivity. A second problem concerns morphological stability of phase boundaries in materials capable of undergoing martensitic phase transformations." Also: "Heterogeneous media, or media with internal structure, are of great importance in applications. Composite materials, which have by now become ubiquitous, are one example. Another example is shape memory alloys and other smart materials."
Edward Letzter co-organizer of New Trends in Noncommutative Algebra
August 2010
Edward Letzter was co-organizer, together with Toby Stafford (Manchester), James Zhang (U. Washington), Pere Arra (Barcelona), Ken Brown (Glasgow), Steven O'Hagan (Glasgow) and Tom Lenagan (Edinburgh) of New Trends in Noncommutative Algebra: A Conference in Honor of Ken Goodearl's 65th Birthday. The conference took place August 9-13. Letzter is co-PI on an NSF grant for $35,000 that provided partial funding for the conference.
New Faculty Member: Vasily Dolgushev
July 2010
Dr. Vasily Dolgushev joined our department as an Associate Professor in July. Dr. Dolgushev received his Ph.D. in mathematics from M.I.T. in 2005, and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia) in 2003. He was a postdoc at Northwestern University, and until coming to Temple he was an assistant professor at University of California, Riverside. His research interests are in noncommutative geometry, homological algebra, category theory and mathematical physics. Most of the problems he is working on are motivated by questions in mathematical physics. The approaches to these problems involve elaborate techniques of higher algebraic structures such as homotopy algebras, higher operads, and higher categories. The solutions of these problems are also applied to questions in Lie theory, algebraic geometry, and algebraic topology. Dr. Dolgushev's research is funded by the NSF.
New Faculty Member: Prince Chidyagwai
July 2010
Dr. Prince Chidyagwai joined our department in July as a postdoctoral research assistant professor. Dr. Chidyagwai received his Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University in 2010. Dr. Chidyagwai's research interests are in numerical methods for partial differential equations, in particular: discontinuous Galerkin methods, flow and transport in porous media, and multi-numerics approaches for solving coupled multi-physics problems.
Visiting Fulbright Scholar: Lahcen Laayouni
June 2010
Dr. Lahcen Laayouni, of the School of Science and Engineering, Al Akhawayn University, Morocco, is a Fulbright Scholar visiting our department during June, July, and August. He is collaborating with Daniel Szyld.
Shiferaw Berhanu co-organizer of Marrakesh Workshop
May 2010
Shiferaw Berhanu was co-organizer, together with Moulay Youssef Barkatou (Poitiers), Abdelhamid Meziani (Florida International), Rafik Meziani (Kenitra), and Nordine Mir (Rouen) of the Marrakesh Workshop Geometric Analysis of Several Complex Variables and its interactions, May 10-14, 2010.
Igor Rivin named member of IAS for 2010-2011
May 2010
Igor Rivin has been named a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, for the 2010-2011 academic year. He will be on leave from Temple during this time.
Gerardo Mendoza co-organizer of AIMS special session
May 2010
Gerardo Mendoza was co-organizer, with Michael Ruzhansky and B.-Wolfgang Schulze, of the special session Geometric and Singular Analysis, at the 8th American Institute of Mathematical Sciences Conference on Dynamical Systems, Differential Equations and Applications, May 25-28, in Dresden, Germany.
Yury Grabovsky co-organizer of SIAM minisymposium
May 2010
Yury Grabovsky and Lev Truskinovsky co-organized the minisymposium, Instabilities and Micro-structures in Non-linear Elasticity at the May 23-26 SIAM Conference on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science.
Henok Mawi fellow at MSRI
May 2010
Henok Mawi was invited to spend the Spring 2011 semester as a fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, participating in the program Free Boundary Problems, Theory and Applications.
John Paulos article in Sunday New York Times Magazine
May 2010
John Paulos published his article, Metric Mania in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.
Henok Mawi defends Ph.D. dissertation
April 2010
Henok Mawi successfully defended his dissertaion, The refractor problem with loss of energy and Monge-Ampere type equations. Cristian Gutierrez was his thesis advisor.
Igor Rivin co-PI on new NSF grant
April 2010
An NSF grant has been awarded to Jie Wu (PI), Yuan Shi (co-PI), Saroj Biswas (co-PI), Igor Rivin (co-PI), and Michael Klein (co-PI), Acquisition: A Hybrid High-Performance GPU/CPU System, for $839,221. From the abstract: "This project, acquiring a hybrid high-performance GPU (graphics processing unit)/CPU system, enables broader heterogeneous computing by deploying multiple types of computing nodes and allowing each to perform the tasks to which it is best suited in traditional CPU-based, GPU based, and hybrid GPU/CPU applications."
Shiferaw Berhanu awarded new NSF grant
April 2010
Shiferaw Berhanu has received a new grant from the National Science Foundation, Semilinear and nonlinear pdes motivated by complex variables and CR manifolds and the Bochner extension phenomenon, for $134,705. From the abstract: "The research in this project is expected to have applications to partial differential equations and geometry. The semilinear equations arise from a geometrical problem that concerns the existence of nontrivial infinitesimal bendings for a given surface. This problem has physical applications to the elasticity of thin shells. The nonlinear equations arise in numerous geometrical and physical applications including in the modeling of atmospheric phenomena, and in the study of limit shapes of surfaces that minimize surface tension."
Grosswald Lectures 2010:
Andrei Okounkov, Princeton University (Fields Medal 2006):
From the longest increasing subsequence to instanton counting, April 20, 21, and 22.
John Paulos article in New York Review of Books
April 2010
John Allen Paulos published a review of the Grigory Perelman biography "Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century" in the April 29, 2010 edition of the New York Review of Books.
Edward Letzter awarded NSA grant
April 2010
Edward Letzter has received a grant from the National Security Agency for his project "Complete Noncommutative Algebras." The award provides $65,000 for a two-year period and will focus on "the structure of certain natural, noncommutative analogues of classical, commutative, formal power series rings. Noncommutative power series expansions arise in mathematical physics, noncommutative geometry, combinatorics, and number theory."
Daniel Szyld appointed to program committee
March 2010
Daniel Szyld was appointed to the Program Committee of the Conference on Computer Aspects of Numerical Algorithms (CANA'10), to be held is Wisla, Poland, October 18-20, 2010.
David Fritzsche defends PhD dissertation
March 2010
David Fritzsche successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Overlapping and Nonoverlapping Orderings for Preconditioning". His degreee was obtained under a joint PhD program between the Temple mathematics department and the University of Wuppertal, Germany.
Benjamin Seibold traffic modeling project
January 2010
Benjamin Seibold was part of a traffic modelling project that was 39th on Discover magazine's Top 100 Stories of 2009.
Cristian Gutierrez receives NSF funding
January 2010
Cristian Gutierrez has received NSF funding for his project "Nonlinear equations of Monge-Ampere type." The award provides $200,000 for a three-year period beginning September 1, 2009. A description of the project: The project investigates nonlinear partial differential equations of Monge-Ampere type (i.e., equations involving the Jacobian determinant of a map) arising in the mathematical description of numerous optical, acoustic, and electromagnetic applications, in particular, in lens and reflector antenna design. The questions concern existence, uniqueness and regularity of solutions. The project has connections, interactions, and applications within several areas in mathematics and outside.