1999-2000 Events
Commencement
WPI's one hundred thirty-second commencement took place on May 20. The rain that had dominated the week's weather held off long enough for ceremonies to take place outdoors. Graduates receiving a BS in Mathematical Sciences were Andre Lawrence Freeman, Matthew David Lavoie, Forest Abraham Lee-Elkin (with distinction, awarded February 2000), Samuel T. Lehane-Abraham (awarded October 1999), Jin Tao Lin (with distinction, awarded February 2000), and Matthew L. Shaw (with high distinction). Those receiving a BS in Actuarial Mathematics were Jovanna Rose Baptista (with high distinction) and Larissa Lynn Gilbreath (with distinction). The MS in Applied Mathematics was awarded to Xueke Chen, Barry John Posterro, and Matthew Liam Weiss. Those receiving the MS in Applied Statistics were Sophie M. Delcroix, James J. Nigrelli (awarded October 1999), Yuehui Wu, and Fang Zhang (awarded October 1999). Recipients of the Master of Mathematics for Educators were Christine Marie Bonini (awarded October 1999), Maureen E. Brids, and Timothy Clifford Gardner (awarded October 1999). The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was awarded to Ani Piro Velo. She was the department's second recipient of the doctorate, following Lucille Kimball, PhD 1997. Congratulations and best wishes to all! Click here for more photos.
Mathematical Sciences Awards Ceremony
The 1999-2000 Mathematical Sciences Awards Ceremony was held on April 24, 2000. Jovanna Baptista received a Salisbury Award from the university, following nomination by the department. This award is given annually to 14 highly meritorious WPI seniors and was established by Stephen Salisbury, a WPI founder and former president of the Board of Trustees. The Senior Math Award, presented annually to the senior mathematical sciences major who has shown outstanding performance and who has made valuable contributions to the WPI mathematical community, went to Jin Tao (Justin) Lin. Yakov Kronrad was the recipient of the Olson Award, which recognizes excellence in freshman and sophomore mathematics courses and outstanding overall academic achievement. This award was established to honor the memory of mathematics professor Richard V. Olson, who taught at WPI from 1963 until his death in 1983. In awards following MQP presentations on Project Presentation Day, Matthew Shaw was the winner of the Provost's MQP Competition for his project, "The Material Point Method: Matlab Simulations and New Algorithms," advised by Marcus Sarkis, and a team composed of Jovanna Baptista, Larissa Gilbreath, and Robert Jaeger received the CIMS MQP Award for their project "Pricing a Waiver of Premium Upon Disability," advised by Ann Wiedie and sponsored by John Hancock Insurance Company. Other participating teams and their projects were Andre Freeman and Matthew Lavoie, "Comparing Heuristics for the Traveling Salesman Problem," advised by Brigitte Servatius, and Elizabeth Hogan and Nicholas Allgaier, "Credibility Analysis for Automobile Cession Strategies," advised by Arthur Heinricher and sponsored by Premier Insurance of Massaschusetts. Jonathan Moussa and Matt Shaw were recognized for their strong performance on the Putnam exam, and two teams composed of Brian Ball, Jonathan Moussa, and James Stickney and Jon Kennedy, Will Kennerly, and Casey Richardson, respectively, were recognized for honors received in the COMAP 2000 Mathematical Contest in Modeling. See news item Undergraduates score in Math Modeling, Putnam competitions for more details. Brian Ball and Joel Smith were recognized for their contributions to maintaining and solving the bulletin board problems.
Brent Morris reveals math behind card magic to PME
On March 31, Dr. S. Brent Morris of the National Security Agency gave a delightful talk to Pi Mu Epsilon on the mathematics of card shuffling, especially the perfect or "faro" shuffle. After amazing the audience with a card trick in which a card selected by a volunteer was "magically" produced, he derived a formula for moving the location of any card through a sequence of perfect shuffles and showed how the formula can be used to explain the trick ... almost. (For full details, see his book "Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling, and Dynamic Computer Memories," published by the Mathematical Association of America .) Morris went on to discuss applications of the formula to the design of dynamic computer memories, concluding that modern algorithms invented by electrical engineers for efficiently moving data to specified locations on memory chips are based on card shuffling principles described in gambling books 200 years ago. Pi Mu Epsilon presented the talk in conjunction with Math Awareness Month (April 2000). Morris handed out questions for a mathematics contest sponsored by United Technologies Corporation in recognition of Math Awareness Month. Contestants worked on these problems through the month of April. The best solutions were those submitted by Robert Jaeger, a senior MAC major, and Patrick Dingle, a high school student from the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science. They shared the $500 prize and also received an autographed copy of Morris' book.
Frank Morgan gives double talks on double bubbles
Professor Frank Morgan of Williams College gave two talks in the department on on March 24: a colloquium in the morning and a talk to Pi Mu Epsilon in the afternoon. In both talks, he described recent results on the Double Bubble Conjecture, which says that the familiar double soap bubble is the least-area way to enclose and separate two given volumes of air. Morgan is shown at right blowing real bubbles, with a computer-generated image of a double bubble in the background. His talk also touched on some of the many other activities in which he is involved, especially undegraduate research supervision and the "Math Chat" column and TV show; see his home page for more information.
J. J. Malone retirement celebration
Can you believe it! It looks like J. J. Malone can't either! But it's true --- J. J. is retiring after 38 years in higher education, the last 29 of which were spent at WPI. His distinguished contributions to WPI and the Mathematical Sciences Department include appointments as Department Head 1971-1978 and John E. Sinclair Professor 1983-1988. A retirement celebration was held in his honor on January 12 in the department office.
Hans Winold colloquium
On November 4, Hans Winold of LucasArts Entertainment Company spoke to an audience of about 200 students and faculty on trends in the games industry and current methods used in game design. His talk, entitled "Dancing on the Unit Hypersphere: Looking to Higher Dimensions for Elegant Solutions to Issues in Computer Games," touched on how quaternion representations allow for improved interpolation between keyed frames in animation and on the ability of neural network modeling to achieve both more organic and more computationally efficient character behavior. Winold also gave a general summary of trends in the games industry and an insider's view into how things work at LucasArts Entertainment. He is shown at right with host Suzanne Weekes discussing an animation relating to his current project.
The Twelfth Annual Invitational Mathematics Meet
More than 300 high school students from 88 high schools in four states participated in the Twelfth Annual Invitational Mathematics Meet, held on the WPI campus on October 21 under the direction of John Goulet. Students competed first as individuals and then as teams, answering challenging questions in secondary-level pre-calculus mathematics. The first-place individual winner was Yuen-Jong Liu of Lexington High School, shown at top right with the Lexington team adviser Saleh Rahman (left) and Goulet (right). Liu also took top individual honors in the previous three Math Meets. The second- and third-place individual winners were Ji-Hoon Ryu of Waltham High School and Mark Lipson of Lexington High School. In the team competition, Lexington High School came in first for the second year in a row; team members Amal Dorai, Jacob Bernstein, Yuen-Jong Liu, and Mark Lipson and adviser Saleh Rahman are shown at lower right. The second-place team was Somerville High School, with team members Eric Gaudet, Jason Goggin, John Hennessy, and Sidd Jha and adviser Joseph Caruso. Third place team honors went to the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science, located on the WPI campus, with team members Peter Cooper, Patrick Dingle, Tzufan Ling, and Matthew Weber and adviser Jon Bartelson. In addition to the student competition, a colloquium was held for faculty advisers entitled "Industrial Projects in Mathematics: Experiences and Opportunities," given by Arthur Heinricher, and advisers and students attended a panel discussion on career opportunities in mathematics featuring three WPI alumni, William Montbleau of Keenan Systems Corporation, Elizabeth Poulin of NEPSCO, and Jeremy Olszewski of Financial Investments Actuarial and Consulting Services. WPI funding for the event was supplemented by generous contributions from Norton Company, Neles-Jamesbury, Inc., Rosenlund Travel Service, Tatnuck Booksellers, Texas Instruments, and the Wyman-Gordon Foundation.
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