News Archive - 2008-09

Putnam Competition 2008

Nine students participated in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. The students were advised by Florin Maris, Ph.D. student. The following students participated: Jesse Mark Bowers, Kara Greenfield, Nghia Tuan Hoang, Minh Le, Pan Liu, George Matthew Shakan, Alexander Volfson, Veselin D. Iliev and Jin Xing. The top scorer was Veselin D. Iliev and Jin Xing received honorable mention.

21st Math Meet, October, 2008

The 21st Annual Mathematics Meet was held on the WPI campus on October 21 under the direction of John Goulet. Marcel Blais coordinated the proctoring of the exams. Suzanne Weekes coordinated the grading activities. More than 300 high school students from 90 high schools participated. Students competed as individuals and as teams answering challenging questions in secondary-level pre-calculus mathematics. Kyumin Lee of Lexington High School, Soomin Heo of Northfield Mount Hermon High School and Pat McDaniel of Hollis Brookline High School, tied for first place in the individual competition, each received a $3,000 scholarship to WPI.  The Lexington High School team, advised by Albert Roos, took first place in the team competition; team members were Kyumin Lee, Noah Arbesfeld, Joshua Leung and Julia Zheng. Northfield Mount Hermon High School team took second place; team members were Seonmin Heo, Soomin Heo, Joon Ho Suh and Min Hyung Kang. Third place honors went to the Wilbraham & Monson Academy team; team members were Yun Seong Nam, Xixi Wu, Zhixun Wu and Congyi Qian. WPI funding for the event was supplemented by generous contributions from Sullivan, Garrity and Donnelly Insurance Agencies, Rosenlund Travel Service, Barnes & Noble @WPI Bookstore. For anyone wishing to try their hand at the exams, they are welcome to go to www.wpi.edu/+mathmeet.

COMAP Mathematical Modeling Contest, February 09, 2009

The WPI Chapter of SIAM sponsored a team of two students in the 2009 COMAP Mathematical Modeling Contest.  The students, Minh Le and Mingzhu Zheng, worked on a problem involving the energy consequences of the cellular phone revolution.  

YouTube Clip

In an effort to explore new ways to market the WPI experience to prospective mathematics majors, a group of undergraduate and graduate students led by Jonathan Adler, developed a YouTube clip Math from WPI, which is now linked from the undergraduate section of our webpages.  In six months the clip had 1,113 hits. We plan to encourage other students to continue this activity and add new clips about their activities in the department.

Awards and Recognition

Christopher Larsen was awarded the prestigious Visiting Professorship from the Leverhulme Trust. The award is offered to "outstandingly distinguished academics" to spend some time in UK universities, to "facilitate the enhancement of the skills of researchers and/or teachers at the host institution".   Larsen will spend a few months, over the next two years, at the University of Bristol and will also visit other UK universities, continuing his research work on the mathematical modeling and analysis of damage and fracture in materials.

A conference Perspectives in PDEs was held in honor of Umberto Mosco in Rome, June 24 -26, 2009, organized by the University of Roma, "Sapienza". The invited speakers were Jürgen Appell (Würzburg), Henry Berestycki (Paris), Haïm Brézis (Paris), Nobuyuki Kenmochi (Chiba), David Kinderlehrer (Pittsburgh), Louis Nirenberg (New York), Vsevolod Solonnikov (St. Petersburg),  Gilbert Strang (MIT),  Bogdan Vernescu (Worcester). The conference gathered a large number of researchers and students in analysis, calculus of variations and PDEs, who shared the influence that Umberto Mosco's scientific contributions had on their work.

Student Awards 2009

Undergraduate and graduate students were recognized for departmental and university distinction in the 2008-2009 Mathematical Sciences Awards Ceremony, held on May 1, 2009.

Nicholas LeCompte and Ilan Shomorony received the Salisbury Award, following a nomination by the department. This award, given to the most meritorious seniors, was established by Stephen Salisbury II, a WPI founder and the first president of the WPI Board of Trustees.

The Senior Math Award, presented annually, to one or more senior mathematical sciences majors who have shown outstanding performance and who have made a valuable contribution to the WPI community, went to Dante Amoroso and Nicholas LeCompte.

Chao Zhang 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 Professor Richard V. Olson, who taught at WPI from 1962 until his death in 1983.

The Dimensions Award is presented to a highly meritorious member of the graduating class of WPI who has faithfully, industriously, and with distinguished attainment completed all requirements (and beyond) for the B.S. degree in Mathematical Sciences went to Ilan Shomorony.

Criselda Santos Toto, Ph.D. student, is the first recipient of the Mathematical Teaching Assistant of the Year Award, introduced in 2009. This award is presented to the teaching assistant who has made the most exemplary contribution to the department's educational activities by aiding the students in their learning experience of mathematical sciences.

Project Presentation Day Awards, 2009

The annual WPI Project Presentation Day took place on April 23 in the Higgins House Great hall. The following projects were presented:

Graduate Research Achievement Day

Graduate Research day, April 1, 2009, one graduate student participated with a poster: Peng Ni. His poster subject was, "Anderson Acceleration of Fixed-point Iteration with Applications to Electronic Structure Computations".

Graduate Degrees Awarded, May, 2009

MS in Applied Mathematics:
Jonathan Adler, Michael Gagnon, Haodong Liang, Sergio Obando, Budhinth Padhy, Alla Shved, and Sergey Zheltukhin

MS in Applied Statistics:
Mei Jin, Jonathan Legare, Yiwen Li, Dayang Liu and James Russell

MS in Financial Mathematics:
Tyler Chase, Jessica Copp, Zhipeng Lin and Karl Shen

Master of Mathematics for Educators:
Patricia Carnevale, Jennifer Durost, Kara Immonen, Brian Lehtinen, Irgena Lito, Jeffrey Qamoos, Maria Rao, Linda Rice-Mosher, Robert Ringuette, Jinyung Runsey, Joseph Sullivan and Lisa Sypek.

Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences:
Xueying Huang (advised by Dalin Tang) with a thesis on "In vivo MRI-based three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction models and mechanical image analysis for human carotid atherosclerotic plaques."  She has accepted an Associate Professor position at Xiamen University in Fujian, China.

Undergraduate Degrees Awarded, May, 2009

WPI's one hundred forty-first commencement was held on May 16. Graduates receiving a BS in Mathematical Sciences were Dante Amoroso (with high distinction), Kate Boulanger, Matthew Dailey (with high distinction), Kathleen Haas (with high distinction), Matthew Houde (with distinction), Brian Janice (with high distinction), Nicholas LeCompte (with high distinction), Aaron Nahabedian (with distinction), Ilan Shomorony (with high distinction), Scott Steinmetz (with high distinction), Joseph Strong (with high distinction), and Nadia Zahid (with distinction). Those receiving a BS in Actuarial Mathematics were Ethan Brown, Theresa Cheng (with high distinction), Benjamin Gilde (with high distinction), Norman Lam, Haiying Liu, Charlotte McAuliffe (with high distinction), Aryeh Shatz, and Shengshi Zhao(with high distinction).

AMS Meeting, April, 2009

The Eastern Sectional AMS Meeting was organized by our Department on April 25-26, 2009. It was the first time that the department organized this meeting. The well attended event (with over 150 participants) was opened by President Dennis Berkey.

The invited addresses were given by:

 Octav Cornea, Université de Montréal, Lagrangian submanifolds: From physics to number theory.  

 Fengbo Hang, Courant Institute of New York University, Topology of weakly differentiable maps.  

Umberto Mosco, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Fractal spectra between Scylla and Charybdis. 

 Kevin Whyte, University of Illinois at Chicago, A rapid survey of coarse geometry

Eleven special sessions were organized, out of which four by faculty members in the department:

Special Session on Algebraic Graph Theory, Association Schemes, and Related Topics
William J. Martin, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Sylvia A. Hobart, University of Wyoming

Special Session on Analysis of Weakly Differentiable Maps with Constraints and Applications
Fengbo Hang, Courant Institute, New York University
Mohammad Reza Pakzad, University of Pittsburgh

Special Session on Discrete Geometry and Combinatorics
Egon Schulte, Northeastern University
Brigitte Servatius, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Special Session on Effective Dynamics and Interactions of Localized Structures in Schrödinger Type Equations
Fridolin Ting, Lakehead University

Special Session on The Mathematics of Climate Change
Catherine A. Roberts, College of the Holy Cross
Gareth E. Roberts, College of the Holy Cross
Mary Lou Zeeman, Bowdoin College

Special Session on Number Theory
John T. Cullinan, Bard College
Siman Wong, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Special Session on Quasi-Static and Dynamic Evolution in Fracture Mechanics
Christopher J. Larsen, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Special Session on Real and Complex Dynamics of Rational Difference Equations with Applications
M. R. S. Kulenovic, University of Rhode Island
Orlando Merino, University of Rhode Island

Special Session on Scaling, Irregularities, and Partial Differential Equations
Umberto Mosco, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Bogdan M. Vernescu, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Special Session on Symplectic and Contact Topology
Peter Albers, Purdue University/ETH Zurich
Basak Gurel, Vanderbilt University

Special Session on Topological Robotics
Li Han, Clark University
Lee N. Rudolph, Clark University

Our staff and students provided excellent support with the registration, computers and A/V, which made the meeting extremely successful.

 

 

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Last modified: October 27, 2009 14:51:15