News Archives - 1999-2000
Sarkis receives NSF CAREER Award
Marcus Sarkis has been notified by the National Science Foundation that he will receive a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, NSF's most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. The CAREER program, established in 1995, is a Foundation-wide activity to help top-performing scientists and engineers early in their careers to develop simultaneously their contributions and commitment to research and to education. In a recent press release, NSF Director Rita Colwell said "CAREER awards support exceptionally promising college and university junior faculty who are committed to the integration of research and education. We recognize these faculty members, new in their careers, as most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st Century." Marcus's CAREER award will enable him to pursue research in new discretization schemes and fast iterative solvers for the solution of complex materials science problems; target applications will include crack propagation, granular and semisolid materials, impact problems, fragmentation, and damage. The ultimate goal will be to develop a software "problem solving environment" that can be used for undergraduate and graduate education as well as for further research.
Goulet, Heinricher voted Favorite Professors in Newspeak Poll
John Goulet and Arthur Heinricher were voted first and third, respectively, in the Favorite Professor category in the Tenth Annual Readers' Poll conducted by Newspeak, the student newspaper of WPI. The results were published in the April 25 edition.
Undergraduates score in Math Modeling, Putnam competitions
Two WPI student teams brought home honors in the 2000 Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The contest is an international event sponsored annually by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP), in which teams of up to three undergraduates research and submit solutions to open-ended modeling problems. This year's participants included 445 teams from nine countries, with 282 U.S. teams representing 163 institutions. Each team worked from 12:01AM Friday, February 4, until 5:00PM the following Monday (local time) to research and submit their best solution to one of two specified problems. This activity has been compared to doing an MQP in three days. The first WPI team, composed of Jon Kennedy, William Kennerly, and Casey Richardson and advised by Bogdan Vernescu, addressed a problem entitled "Assisting Air Traffic Controllers: An Early Warning Collision System" and received a "Meritorious" rating, achieved by only the top 15% of participants. The second WPI team, consisting of Brian Ball, Jonathan Moussa, and James Stickney and advised by Richard Jordan, treated a problem entitled "Packing in the Good Vibrations" and received an "Honorable Mention" rating, placing them in the top 44% of participants.
Two WPI students scored in the Sixtieth Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, held on Saturday, December 4, 1999. The competition is administered by the Mathematical Association of America and consisted of an examination constructed to test originality as well as technical competence. Jonathan Moussa received 20 points on the exam, ranking him 289.5 among 2900 contestants. Matthew Shaw earned 10 points, finishing 729th.
Tang Promoted to Full Professor
Congratulations are in order for Dalin Tang , who has been promoted to full professor. Dalin, right, received official notification in a letter from President Parrish dated February 29.
Chen co-authors new book, elected to ISI
Ming-Hui Chen has co-authored a new book, Monte Carlo Methods in Bayesian Computation , with Qi-Man Shao of the University of Oregon and Joseph G. Ibrahim of the Harvard School of Public Health. Ming is shown at right with the book, published in the Springer Series in Statistics. In February, Ming also received word that he has been elected to Ordinary Member status in the International Statistical Institute (ISI). The ISI, established in 1885, is an autonomous society that seeks to develop and improve statistical methods and their application through the promotion of international activity and cooperation. Ordinary members are elected by virtue of their distinguished contributions to the development or application of statistical methods, or to the administration of statistical services. Candidates for ordinary membership must be nominated by five honorary or ordinary members.
Baptista and Christopher share top honors in President's IQP Awards Competition
First place in this year's President's IQP Awards Competition went to Jovanna Baptista (MAC), Sean Landrette (BBT), and Alyssa Schlichting (BE) for their project "Refining the Wheelchair Prescription Process." The team is shown at right with President Parrish. Advisors were Joel Brattin (Humanities and Arts) and Peter Christopher (Mathematical Sciences). The project, carried out at the London Project Center in C99, analyzed the current practice for prescribing wheelchairs, identified shortcomings in the process, and outlined possible improvements. Congratulations to all!
Servatius becomes Pi Mu Epsilon Journal editor
Brigitte Servatius is the new editor of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. She is shown at right holding the Fall 1999 issue, the first produced under her editorship. Her husband Herman Servatius, Adjunct Associate Professor in the department, also contributed to producing the issue. Pi Mu Epsilon is a national honorary society dedicated to the promotion of mathematics and recognition of students who successfully pursue mathematical understanding. The Journal is one means by which Pi Mu Epsilon promotes scholarship in mathematics. Papers by students are especially encouraged.
IBM SP Acquisition
The department and university acquired an IBM RS/6000 SP parallel computer with 16 POWER3 nodes (32 processors), 16 GB RAM, and 290 GB disk storage. This machine is the first major parallel machine on the WPI campus. It will be used by faculty and students in Mathematical Sciences and other departments and will enable leading edge research in computational modeling and numerical algorithms. The acquisition was made possible by an IBM Shared University Research grant, a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant, and cost sharing from United Technologies Corporation and WPI research funds. The grant from IBM included a control workstation, two dual-processor enhanced graphics workstations, and a significant amount of software in addition to the SP system. For more information, see the WPI press release.
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