News Archives - 2002-03
Balgobin Nandram Wins CDC Best Paper in Applied Statistics
"A Hierarchical Bayesian Nonignorable Nonresponse Model for Multinomial Data from Small Areas", Survey Methodology, 28, 145-156, by Balgobin Nandram, Geunshik Han, and Jai Won Choi (2002), has won the Statistical Science Award. It was judged in this stiff annual competition by the Statistical Awards Ceremony Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Balgobin Nandram Named American Statistical Association Fellow
Professor Balgobin Nandram has been selected to be a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA). This honorary title of Fellow recognizes full members of established reputation who have made outstanding contributions in some aspect of statistical work. Congratulations to Bal for this recognition of his scholarly achievements!
Summer Positions for Math Sciences Graduate Students
A number of WPI Math Sciences graduate students are heading for interesting summer positions that will contribute to their professional development.
Ning Liu and Xiao Li are both working as summer interns at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, in the Actuarial Department. The WPI advisor for their internships is Professor Balgobin Nandram.
Erik B. Erhardt will visit the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in Hyattsville, Maryland for the summer. While there, he will work on his thesis under Professor Balgobin Nandram, the subject of which is presenting variation in maps and methods for simultaneous intervals over a large number of small areas. He will also be assisting researchers at NCHS in their work.
Patricia Howard has accepted a position with Sandia National Laboratories. She will work at Sandia's facility in Livermore, California, with Dr. Paul Boggs and Dr. Kevin Long on applied optimization problems of interest to Sandia.
Jon Kennedy will spend the summer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, working with the Space Systems group on issues related to ballistic missile defense systems and tracking and filtering algorithms for missile detection.
Daniel Pulido has received an internship from the Office of Naval Research to spend the summer at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California. He will work in the Applied Mathematics and Signal Processing Division under the sponsorship of Dr. James Barnett. He expects the work to involve some aspect of electromagnetic/acoustic signal processing.
Joseph Simonis will join Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the summer. While there, he will work with Dr. John Shadid, Dr. Roger Pawlowski, and others in the Computer Science Research Institute and the Computational Sciences Department to investigate numerical algorithms for solving large-scale systems of nonlinear equations and applications to fluid flow modeling on massively parallel computers.
WPI Students Accepted into Summer Research Programs in Mathematics
David Carchedi, Mathematical Sciences class of '04, has been accepted to participate in the 2003 REU program in Representation Theory at Temple University.
Brian Cordes, Mathematical Sciences class of '05, has been awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
Jessica Jajosky, Biology & Biotechnology class of '05, has been admitted to the 2003 WPI REU program in Industrial Mathematics and Statistics.
David LeRay, Mathematical Sciences and Mechanical Engineering class of '05, will be a summer intern at MIT's Lincoln Labs in Lexington, MA.
Two WPI Students Named 2003 Goldwater Scholars
Congratulations to Ravi Srinivasan '04, and Ann C. Skulas '05, who have been named winners of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2003.
Ravi Srinivasan, a junior Mathematics and Physics double major from Worcester, Mass., plans a Ph.D. in Physics to become a professor at a major research university contributing to the theoretical understanding of the earth's ocean-atmosphere system. He did research on digitally processed speech for the DEKA Research and Development Corporation as part of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Program at WPI in 2002. Ravi is active on the tennis team, International Students Council, the Power of One, and the outing club, and has been a Peer Learning Assistant in Math.
Ann Skulas, a sophomore Chemistry major from Vine Grove, Kentucky, plans a Ph.D. in Chemistry to pursue research in the field of nanotechnology to increase societal applications and develop novel uses. Ann has worked in several chemistry labs at WPI and did research on cyclodextrin derivatives in environmental remediation at Washington State University as part of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Program in 2002. She is active in the Student Government Association, the cross-country team, and the Power of One, and serves as a Resident Advisor.
The Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,093 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. One hundred sixty-one of the Scholars are men, 139 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their degree objective. Thirty-one Scholars are mathematics majors, 210 are science majors, 45 are majoring in engineering, 12 are computer science related majors. Many of the Scholars have dual majors in a variety of mathematics, science, engineering, and computer disciplines. Goldwater Scholars have very impressive academic qualifications that have garnered the attention of prestigious post-graduate fellowship programs.
The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
A list of this year's winners is located on the Goldwater website.
Congratulations to Ravi and Ann, and thanks to Suzanne Weekes, Bogdan Vernescu, Joe Fehribach, Jim Dittami, Nick Kildahl, and Alexander Li of Washington State University, who wrote letters of recommendation on their behalf.
COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling
Results are in for the 2003 COMAP Contest!
WPI was proudly represented by two teams.
Tom Howard and Patrick Groulx were recognized as Successful Participants.
Dave LeRay, Sid Rupani, and Jesse Tippett received the Meritorious designation for their solution, putting them in the top 16% or so of all solutions received.
Please wish them all a hearty congratulations!
Corinne Burgos Awarded 2003 ISI Young Statistician's Prize
Corinne Burgos, from the Institute of Statistics, University of the Philippines at Los Banos, was awarded the 2003 International Statistical Institute (ISI) Young Statistician's Prize. Dr. Burgos was a PhD student of WPI's Balgobin Nandram, and spent two months at WPI in the summer of 2001. She is now a faculty member at De La Salle University in Manila.
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: September 27, 2006 15:37:43