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Tabachnikov publishes book, hosts coauthor.
Professor Sergei Tabachnikov, Director of the MASS program, has published a new book, Mathematical Omnibus: Thirty Lectures on Classic Mathematics. His coauthor, Professor Dmitry Fuchs of the University of California at Davis, will visit our department from late January to late March.
12 / 17 / 2007

Mullen and Mummert publish new book.
Recently Professor and former Department Head Gary L. Mullen, jointly with Assistant Professor Carl Mummert of the University of Michigan, published a book in the AMS Student Mathematical Library book series. The book, entitled Finite Fields and Applications, is based on a MASS course of the same title taught by Mullen in 2004 with Mummert as the Teaching Assistant. Mummert obtained his Penn State Ph.D. degree in 2005 under the supervision of Professor Stephen G. Simpson.
12 / 14 / 2007

Sellers to spend Spring 2008 at Cambridge University.
Associate Professor James Sellers, Director of Undergraduate Mathematics, has been invited to spend the spring 2008 semester as a visiting fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Sellers will take part in an INI program on Combinatorics and Statistical Mechanics.
12 / 13 / 2007

Department of Mathematics to host conference in honor of Andrews' birthday.
On December 5-7, 2008 the Department of Mathematics will host a conference: Combinatory Analysis 2008: Partitions, q-series, and Applications. The conference is in honor of the 70th birthday of Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews. An excellent lineup of plenary speakers is already set. The conference will bring together numerous mathematicians interested in partitions, q-series, and related areas.
12 / 13 / 2007

Long elected as Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Lyle Long, Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Bioengineering, and Mathematics, was recently elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Professor Long is currently on sabbatical leave at Caltech as a Moore Distinguished Scholar.
12 / 12 / 2007

Vaserstein's paper accepted for Annals of Mathematics.
Professor Leonid Vaserstein's paper Polynomial parametrization for the solutions of Diophantine equations and arithmetic groups (31 pages) was recently accepted for publication in the Annals of Mathematics.
12 / 12 / 2007

Visitors.
Prof. Qiya Hu from Chinese Academy of Sciences is visiting 12/2/07-2/28/08. His host is Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. His office is 209 McAllister. Dr. Ilie Ugarcovici from DePaul University is visiting 12/16/07-12/22/07. His office is 209 McAllister. His hosts are Shibley Professor Anatole Katok and Professor Svetlana Katok.
12 / 10 / 2007

Simpson receives grant from Templeton Foundation.
The John Templeton Foundation has granted $30,000 to support Professor Stephen G. Simpson's research project Degree Theory: A New Beginning. The project is being funded as part of the foundation's initiative, Exploring the Infinite.
12 / 10 / 2007

NSF Mathematical Sciences director visits Department of Mathematics.
On Friday November 16, 2007, Dr. Tony Chan visited our Department of Mathematics and gave a "pizza seminar" talk entitled NSF in a Nutshell. Dr. Chan is director of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences within the U.S. National Science Foundation.
12 / 05 / 2007

Andrews delivers Cherry Award lecture.
On November 13 Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews delivered his Cherry Award Lecture entitled Teaching as an Art in our department. Professor Andrews is one of three finalists nationwide for this award which is created at Baylor University to "honor great teachers, to stimulate discussion in the academy about the value of teaching, and to encourage departments and institutions to value their own great teachers."
12 / 05 / 2007

Sabbatical leave applications approved.
We congratulate Professors Leonid Berlyand, Dima Burago, Victor Nistor, Anton Petrunin, Leonid Vaserstein, Ping Xu, and Ludmil Zikatanov. Their applications for sabbatical leave for all or part of the 2008-2009 academic year have been approved.
12 / 05 / 2007

Tapia to leave Department.
Ron Tapia, our senior computer system administrator for the last five years, is planning to leave our Department at the end of 2007 to pursue an opportunity elsewhere. Ron has kept our computer network operating at peak efficiency through some major transitions. We thank Ron for his service and wish him all the best in his new position.
12 / 05 / 2007

Holiday Tea to be held on Tuesday December 11.
On Tuesday December 11 we will hold what has become a regular departmental tradition - the "Staff Appreciation of the Faculty" Tea. Staff members will supply a feast of seasonal goodies in the Synergistic Room, 113 McAllister. All are invited to enjoy the festivities.
12 / 05 / 2007

Andrews elected president of the American Mathematical Society.
Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews was recently elected to be the next president of the American Mathematical Society. The AMS is well known as the leading professional organization for United States mathematicians. Congratulations, George!
11 / 19 / 2007

Higley and Signori receive Graduate Teaching Awards.
Michael Higley and Daniele Signori are the recipients of the Departmental Graduate Assistant Teaching Awards for Fall 2007. These awards are given by the Department of Mathematics to Teaching Assistants who have made an outstanding contribution as determined by faculty visits, student evaluations, and solicited and unsolicited student comments. The value of each award is $250. Michael and Daniele will receive award certificates at the departmental awards recognition night in April 2008.
11 / 19 / 2007

Conference on Undergraduate Research in Mathematics.
On Friday and Saturday, November 9 and 10, 2007, we will host our first Conference on Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Over 100 undergraduate students from across the nation will be visiting us to present papers and posters on their research, to hear plenary speakers George Andrews and Frank Morgan, and to meet with other students and Penn State faculty.
11 / 05 / 2007

J. Xu hosts visitors.
Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu is hosting the following visitors: Prof. Qiya Hu from Chinese Academy of Sciences is visiting 11/1/07-1/31/08. His office is 209 McAllister. Dr. Lars Grasedyck from MPI is visiting 11/5/07-11/16/07. His office is 209 McAllister.
10 / 29 / 2007

Visitors.
The Department of Mathematics welcomes the following visitors: Prof. Leonid Polterovich from Tel Aviv University is visiting 10/1/07-10/5/07. His office is 234 McAllister. His host is Professor Dmitri Burago. Dr. Siman Yang from East China Normal University is visiting 10/9/07-9/30/08. His office is 316 McAllister. His host is Professor Winnie Li.
10 / 29 / 2007

Signori, L. Zhang, Y. Zhu win Pritchard Dissertation Fellowships.
After reviewing nominations for the Pritchard Dissertation Fellowship, the Graduate Studies Committee has selected Daniele Signori, Lei Zhang and Yunrong Zhu as the recipients of the Fellowship for the Spring 2008 semester. The Fellowships are awarded in recognition of very high quality of the recipients' thesis work. The advisers are Professors Ping Xu and Adrian Ocneanu for Daniele, Qiang Du for Lei, and Jinchao Xu for Yunrong.
10 / 26 / 2007

Brannick selected for workshop on Modeling and High Performance Computing.
Our S. Chowla Research Assistant Professor James Brannick is one of approximately 20 researchers from the US and France who have been invited to participate in a US/France bilateral workshop on Modeling and High Performance Computing, October 22-24, 2007, at Georgetown University and Maison Francaise. The purpose of the workshop is for a select group of young scientists to exchange ideas in applied mathematics, high performance computing, and cyberinfrastructure for modeling in the physical and life sciences.
10 / 22 / 2007

Andrews to give special lecture, Teaching as an Art.
Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews is a finalist for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for outstanding mathematics teaching. In connection with the award process, Professor Andrews will deliver a public lecture on November 13, 2007 at 1:00 PM entitled "Teaching as an Art". This will serve as our Teaching Seminar for this semester.
10 / 22 / 2007

Jech wins prize for outstanding expository writing.
Emeritus Professor Thomas Jech together with his colleague Bohuslav Balcar in Prague, Czech Republic, has won the inaugural Shoenfield Prize for an outstanding expository article in the field of logic. This $1000 prize is awarded by the Association for Symbolic Logic and will be shared by the coauthors. The prize-winning article is entitled Weak distributivity, a problem of von Neumann, and the mystery of measurability and was published in 2006 in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.
10 / 18 / 2007

Simpson to deliver plenary talk at ASL's LC08.
Professor Stephen G. Simpson will deliver an invited one-hour plenary talk at Logic Colloquium 2008 in Bern, Switzerland, July 3-8, 2008. This is the Annual Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, the leading professional organization for logicians.
10 / 18 / 2007

Marker Lectures by Terence Tao.
Professor Terence Tao of UCLA has agreed to deliver the Marker Lectures in Fall 2008. This will be an event to look forward to! Recently Tao and Green shared a Fields Medal for proving that there exist arbitrarily long sequences of prime numbers in arithmetic progression.
10 / 15 / 2007

Bressan wins SIAM Best Paper award.
A paper by Eberly Professor Alberto Bressan, Vanishing viscosity solutions of nonlinear hyperbolic systems, Annals of Mathematics, 2005, has been selected as the winner of the biennial SIAM Analysis of Partial Differential Equations Best Paper Prize.
10 / 02 / 2007

Ocneanu receives 25-year chair.
The Pennsylvania State University recently awarded Professor Adrian Ocneanu a plaque and a rocking chair in honor of 25 years of service in the Department of Mathematics.
10 / 02 / 2007

Rotman receives tenure and promotion.
Our colleague Regina Rotman has just been awarded tenure and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor. Congratulations, Rina!
10 / 02 / 2007

Visitors.
The Department of Mathematics welcomes the following visitors: Prof. Leonid Polterovich from Tel Aviv University is visiting 10/1/07-10/5/07. His office is 234 McAllister. His host is Professor Dmitri Burago. Dr. Siman Yang from East China Normal University is visiting 10/9/07-9/30/08. His office is 316 McAllister. His host is Professor Winnie Li.
10 / 02 / 2007

Bressan appointed to Eberly Chair.
Distinguished Professor Alberto Bressan has been appointed to an important endowed chair, the Eberly Family Professorship of Mathematics. This appointment has been made by the Office of the President, based on the recommendations of colleagues and of the Dean. We congratulate Professor Bressan on this well-deserved appointment.
09 / 20 / 2007

Bressan publishes new book on control theory.
Eberly Professor Alberto Bressan, along with coauthor Benedetto Piccoli, has published Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Control. This new book appears in the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences book series on Applied Mathematics.
09 / 20 / 2007

A. Katok chairs Brin Prize committee.
Shibley Professor Anatole Katok has been named chair of the award committee for the newly announced Brin Prize in Dynamical Systems. This prestigious award will be presented regularly at meetings of the Penn State Workshop in Dynamical Systems.
09 / 12 / 2007

Visitors.
The Department of Mathematics welcomes the following visitors: Mr. Jiwei Jia from Peking University is visiting 9/1/07-8/31/08. His office is 10 McAllister. His host is Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. Dr. Laurent Claessens from University Catholique de Louvain la Neuve is visiting 9/19/07-8/31/08. His office is 420 McAllister. His hosts are Professor Ping Xu as well as Professor Abhay Ashtekar of the Physics Department. Dr. Yong Moo Chung from Hiroshima University is visiting from 9/5/07-2/28/08. His office is 308 McAllister. His host is Distinguished Professor Yakov Pesin. Mr. Xiaozhe Hu from Zhejiang University is visiting 9/2/07-8/31/08. His office is 10 McAllister. His host is Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. Ms. Liyun Zhao from Beijing Normal University of China is visiting 9/9/07-6/30/08. Her office is 331 McAllister. Her host is Professor Chun Liu. Mr. Shaofan Wang from Dalian University of Technology is visiting 9/5/07-8/31/08. His office is 118 McAllister. His host is Willaman Professor Qiang Du. Dr. Jesus Moreno Damas from Complutense University of Madrid is visiting 9/9/07-12/31/07. His office is 16 McAllister. His host is Professor and Department Head John Roe. Prof. Jon Aaronson from Tel Aviv University is visiting 9/17/07-9/21/07. His office is 234 McAllister. His host is Associate Professor Omri Sarig.
09 / 05 / 2007

New initiative in support of faculty research.
The Research Support Committee has a modest budget for one-time, small-scale, research expenses that faculty cannot cover from other sources. Guidelines for internal proposals are available, or consult Associate Department Head Diane Henderson.
08 / 20 / 2007

Fixed-term faculty and visitors.
The Department of Mathematics welcomes the following new fixed-term faculty members and visitors: Gregory Ginot got his Ph.D. in 2002 under the direction of Christian Kassel and recently was Maitre de Conferences, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6. He will be working with Professor Ping Xu. Krerley Oliveira got his Ph.D. in 2002 under the direction of Marcelo Miranda Viana da Silva and recently held an adjoint professor III position at the Federal University of Alagoas - UFAL/Brazil. He will be working with Associate Professor Omri Sarig. Matthew Patterson expects his Ph.D. in 2007 under the direction of Bernard Deconinck and was a VIGRE research fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle. He joins us as a Chowla postdoc and will be working with Professor Diane Henderson. Mike Rowell got his Ph.D. under the direction of Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews and Assistant Professor Ae Ja Yee and was a VIGRE fellow. He will be a Lecturer in the department this year. Plinio Santos got his Ph.D. in 1991 under the direction of Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews and is an associate professor at IMECC-UNICAMP, Brazil. Mathieu Stienon got his Ph.D. in 2004 under the direction of Professor Cohen and recently was a postdoctoral research at ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. He will be a Chowla postdoc. Sankaran Viswanath got his Ph.D. in 2004 under the direction of Richard Borcherds and Michael Kleber and recently was teaching at the University of California, Davis. He joins us as a Lecturer and he will also be pursuing his research program on Kac-Moody algebras. Maosheng Xiong expects his P.D. in 2007 under the direction of Alexandru Zaharascu and recently held a fellowship from the Math Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He will be a Chowla postdoc. Joseph Yucas got his Ph.D. in 1978 from Penn State and is a professor at the Southern Illinois University. He will be working with Professor Gary Mullen. Chensong Zhang expects his Ph.D. in 2007 under the direction of Ricardo Nochetto and recently was awarded the Graduate School Dean Dissertation-completion Fellowship at the University of Maryland, College Park. He will be working as a postdoc with Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu.
08 / 20 / 2007

Conference on Undergraduate Research in Mathematics.
A Conference on Undergraduate Research in Mathematics will take place at Penn State on November 9-10. For more information, please contact Associate Professor and Undergraduate Studies Director James Sellers.
08 / 13 / 2007

Nigel Higson and Anatole Katok receive ECoS Medals.
Congratulations to Evan Pugh Professor Nigel Higson and Shibley Professor Anatole Katok, who were recently presented with Eberly College of Science Medals by Dean Larson. Other recipients in our department have been Evan Pugh Professors George Andrews and Paul Baum, Distinguished Professor Alberto Bressan, and Willaman Professor Qiang Du. According to the dean, the purpose of the medals is "to recognize distinguished faculty and supporters of the College."
08 / 13 / 2007

Department of Mathematics hosts visitors.
Professor Erik Guentner, from University of Hawaii, Manoa, visiting 8/15-12/14, 428 McAllister, hosted by Evan Pugh Professor Nigel Higson. Dr. Trygve Karper, from University of Oslo, visiting 8/15-12/20, 232 McAllister, hosted by Associate Professor Kris Jenssen. Dr. Weizhu Bao, from National University of Singapore, visiting 8/17-10/5, 316 McAllister, hosted by Willaman Professor Qiang Du. Professor Dave Morris, from University of Lethbridge, on sabbatical at the University of Chicago, visiting 8/26-9/5 and 9/10-9/19, 316 McAllister, hosted by Shibley Professor Anatole Katok.
08 / 07 / 2007

Meeting in honor of Paul Baum's birthday.
A meeting in honor of the 70th birthday of Evan Pugh Professor Paul Baum is being held at the Stefan Banach International Mathematical Center in Warsaw, Poland, July 30 through August 2, 2007. The subject of the meeting is Noncommutative Geometry and Quantum Groups.
07 / 30 / 2007

H. Li receives Teaching with Technology certificate.
This summer our PhD student Hengguang Li received the Graduate School Teaching with Technology (TWT) certificate.
07 / 27 / 2007

J. Xu named Distinguished Professor.
Our colleague Jinchao Xu has been named Distinguished Professor of Mathematics.
07 / 23 / 2007

New Mathematics PhDs.
Congratulations to our new Mathematics PhDs: Seunghoon Bang, Hunseok Kang, William Keith, Mike Rowell, Jiakou Wang and Ke Zhang. Information about our past PhD alumni and current PhD students is available.
07 / 23 / 2007

Papikian named Humboldt fellow.
Our new colleague Mihran Papikian has been awarded a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. He will use the fellowship to study in Germany for the 2008-09 academic year.
07 / 23 / 2007

Edward Green receives courtesy appointment.
Beginning next academic year Professor Edward Green of the Department of Economics will receive the courtesy title of Professor of Mathematics. Early in the fall semester Professor Green will give an inaugural lecture in the Department of Mathematics.
06 / 25 / 2007

Vandemeulebroeke replaces Battaglia as coordinator of GTA program.
Our Graduate Teaching Assistant Mentoring Program provides detailed advice and feedback to GTAs during their first teaching semester. For many years Jo Battaglia has coordinated the program. At the end of this month, Lynn Vandemeulebroeke will be taking over as the new coordinator. We thank Jo and Lynn for their valuable work.
06 / 25 / 2007

Department hosts a visitor from Italy.
Professor Rinaldo Colombo, from Universita degli Studi de Brescia, visiting 7/6/07-8/4/07, 209 McAllister, hosted by Distinguished Professor Alberto Bressan.
06 / 25 / 2007

Winnie Li to give invited address for American Mathematical Society.
Professor Winnie Li will give an AMS invited address at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, January 6-9, 2008. The title of her talk will be Combinatorics and Number Theory.
06 / 22 / 2007

Pritchard Lab featured in Physical Review Letters.
The cover of this week's issue of Physical Review Letters features a project of the William G. Pritchard Fluid Mechanics Laboratory here in the Department of Mathematics. The study was carried out by Dr. Andrew Belmonte, Associate Professor of Mathematics, and Dr. Josh Gladden, a Penn State Physics Ph.D. who did a postdoc at the Pritchard Lab with Dr. Belmonte in 2003-2005.
06 / 01 / 2007

Jenssen and Zikatanov receive tenure and promotion.
Our colleagues Drs. Helge Kristian Jenssen and Ludmil Zikatanov have just been awarded tenure and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor. Kris and Ludmil, congratulations!
05 / 28 / 2007

Sellers to participate in INI workshops.
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Studies Director James Sellers has been invited to participate in the Isaac Newton Institute's Combinatorics and Statistical Mechanics workshops to be held throughout Spring 2008.
05 / 17 / 2007

Andrews named finalist for national teaching award.
Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews was recently named a finalist in the competition for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching at Baylor University. This is the single largest national award made to an individual for exceptional teaching. The three finalists will lecture at Baylor this fall, and the winner will be announced in spring 2008.
05 / 17 / 2007

Ocneanu elected as honorary member of Romanian Academy.
Professor Adrian Ocneanu was recently elected an honorary member of the Mathematics Institute of the Romanian Academy "for outstanding results in the domain of mathematics, and for a remarkable contribution to the development of the Romanian mathematics school."
05 / 17 / 2007

Department of Mathematics hosts visitors.
Professor Guoping Liang, from Chinese Academy of Sciences, visiting 5/15-5/31, 209 McAllister, hosted by Assistant Professor Pengtao Sun and Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. Professor Jiling Lin from Beijing FEGEN Co. Ltd.,visiting 5/15-5/31, 232 McAllister, hosted by Assistant Professor Pengtao Sun and Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu. Professor Franco Rampazzo, from University of Padova, visiting 5/13-5/26, 219B McAllister, hosted by Distinguished Professor Alberto Bressan. Professor Harvey Segur, from University of Colorado, visiting 5/14-5/20, 234 McAllister, hosted by Professor and Associate Department Head Diane Henderson.
05 / 17 / 2007

J. Xu affilated with College of Information Sciences and Technology.
Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu has been made an affiliate faculty member of the College of Information Sciences and Technology.
05 / 17 / 2007

Article by R. Ayoub reprinted in Euler volume.
In honor of the 300th birthday of the great mathematician Leonhard Euler, a commemorative volume edited by William Dunham has been published. The volume includes a reprinted article by Emeritus Professor and former Department Head Raymond Ayoub entitled "Euler and the Zeta Function".
05 / 10 / 2007

S. Katok publishes new book.
Recently the American Mathematical Society published Professor Svetlana Katok's new book p-adic Analysis Compared with Real.
05 / 10 / 2007

Mortenson to give seminar at Stanford.
Eric Mortenson, an S. Chowla Research Assistant Professor in our department, has been invited to give a number theory seminar talk at Stanford University. The talk will take place on May 25.
05 / 10 / 2007

Timothy Reluga to join faculty.
Dr. Timothy Reluga has accepted a position beginning this fall as a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, joint with the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. Tim's research involves mathematical modeling related to public policy issues such as vaccination and the use of antibiotics.
04 / 27 / 2007

Michael Dunne to join computer support staff.
Michael Dunne will join our computer support staff on the MS Windows side, replacing Brian Broking who left us a few weeks ago. Michael comes to us from Accuweather, Inc., where he has worked since June 2003 as a network support administrator.
04 / 27 / 2007

Conference in honor of Banyaga's birthday.
A Conference on Geometry and Its Applications will be held at the Institute of Mathematics and Physical Sciences in Porto Novo, Benin, from June 10 to June 17 in honor of the 60th birthday of Professor Augustin Banyaga. Congratulations, Augustin!
04 / 16 / 2007

Srikrishnan receives ZZRQ Award.
Vivek Srikrishnan has been selected to receive the ZZRQ Award, honoring outstanding achievement by a doctoral candidate who has contributed to the sense of community within the department. This award is made possible through annual contributions from alumni and friends of the Department of Mathematics.
04 / 13 / 2007

Brannick invited to speak at Yale workshop.
James Brannick, one of our S. Chowla Research Assistant Professors, has been invited to speak at a workshop at Yale University.
04 / 12 / 2007

Hengguang Li wins SIAM travel award.
Graduate student Hengguang Li has recieved a SIAM travel award ($1500) to attend the 6th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Zurich, Switzerland (ICIAM 07). Mr. Li will give a talk and a poster presentation.
04 / 12 / 2007

Annual Awards Recognition Ceremony.
The Department's annual Awards Recognition Ceremony will take place Tuesday April 17 at 6:00 PM in the Synergistic Room, 114 McAllister. Among the awardees will be Assistant Professor Wen Shen: Mary Lister McCammon Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching. Mr. John Ethier: Don Rung Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching. Mr. Hengguang Li: Charles H. Hoover Memorial Award and Graduate Teaching Award. Professors James Sellers and Charles Helou: Teresa Cohen Award for exemplary service to the Department of Mathematics and its students. Professor Helou is a faculty member at Penn State Delaware. Undergraduate students Gregory Zeimann, Zachary Lebo, Kyle Retallick, Leslie Ross, James Greene, Derek Seiple, Tad Whitenight, Tina Lin, Amanda Nowicki, Samanvitha Vangala, Kevin Kurtz, Keith Reber.
04 / 09 / 2007

Department of Mathematics hosts visitors.
Distinguished Professor Alberto Bressan is hosting two visitors: Laura Spinola, Northwestern, visiting 4/9-4/21. Debora Amadori, D'Aquila, visiting 4/14-4/22.
04 / 09 / 2007

Former Ph.D. students obtain tenure-track positions.
Two former Ph.D. students of Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu have recently accepted tenure-track positions. Dr. Youngju Lee (2004 Ph.D.) will move to Rutgers from his current position as a postdoc at UCLA. Dr. Long Chen (2005 Ph.D.) will move to the University of California at Irvine from his current position as a postdoc at UMD.
04 / 09 / 2007

Seminar by J. Xu cited at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In the November/December 2006 issue of LLNL Institutes News Notes, a seminar talk given in March 2006 by Distinguished Professor Jinchao Xu is cited as the catalyst for a recent addition to LLNL's scalable solver library.
04 / 09 / 2007

Simpson obtains FRG grant.
Recently Professor Stephen G. Simpson received a Focused Research Group grant from the National Science Foundation entitled Collaborative Research in Algorithmic Randomness. This project is part of a national research network on algorithmic randomness to be funded by NSF at the level of $523,000 over three years.
04 / 03 / 2007

Department of Mathematics hosts visitors.
Oliver Butterley, from Imperial College, visiting 3/30-4/13, hosted by Professor Dmitry Dolgopyat. Sergei Ivanov, from Steklov Mathematical Institute, visiting 4/3-4/26, hosted by Professor Dmitri Burago. Raphael Krikorian, from Paris 6 and Ecole Polytechnique, visiting 4/6-4/23, hosted by Professor Vadim Kaloshin. Izabella Laba, from University of British Columbia, visiting 4/9-5/5, hosted by Shibley Professor Anatole Katok. Zhang-Ju Liu, from Peking University, visiting 4/15-5/20, hosted by Professor Ping Xu.
04 / 02 / 2007

Gomez-Calderon receives teaching award.
Recently Javier Gomez-Calderon, a Mathematics faculty member at the New Kensington campus of Penn State, received the Milton S. Eisenhower Teaching Award. On receiving the award Professor Calderon said: "I am lucky because my dream of teaching mathematics is still alive and because I have been living my dream for more than half of my life."
04 / 02 / 2007

Conference in honor of Pesin's birthday.
In honor of the 60th birthday of Yakov Pesin, a conference on Nonuniformly Hyperbolic Dynamics and Smooth Ergodic Theory will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on June 25-29, 2007. Topics will include nonuniform hyperbolicity, smooth ergodic theory, partial hyperbolicity, thermodynamic formalism, dimension theory in dynamics, and related subjects. Congratulations to Yasha on this special occasion!
04 / 02 / 2007

Mike Rowell certified as Teaching Associate.
Recently our graduate student Mike Rowell completed the requirements to earn status as a Teaching Associate. This is under the auspices of our graduate student teaching certification program.
03 / 28 / 2007

New mathematics librarian, John Meier.
Mr. John Meier has been appointed as a Subject Specialist Librarian for Mathematics and Statistics. He holds an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He will work in the Physics and Mathematical Sciences Library in 201 Davey Laboratory, across the street from McAllister Building.
03 / 28 / 2007

Patterson joins faculty as Chowla Assistant Professor.
Dr. Matt Patterson has accepted an offer to join our faculty in Fall 2007 as an S. Chowla Research Assistant Professor. Dr. Patterson's research area is applied mathematics, and he will be affiliated with the Pritchard and SCREMS laboratories in McAllister Building.
03 / 28 / 2007

L. Craig Evans to deliver Marker Lectures.
The Eberly College of Science Marker Lectures will be given by Professor L. Craig Evans of the University of California at Berkeley, during the week March 26-30, 2007. Professor Evans is a leading international figure in the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and has authored several influential books including the AMS textbook Partial Differential Equations, now in its third printing.
03 / 09 / 2007

George Andrews to deliver Pitcher Lectures.
Evan Pugh Professor and former Department Head George Andrews will deliver the Everett Pitcher Lectures on April 16-18, 2007 at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Everett Pitcher was the long-time Secretary of the American Mathematical Society.
03 / 09 / 2007

Eisentrager, Papikian, and Xiong join faculty.
Drs. Kirsten Eisentraeger and Mihran Papikian have accepted offers to join our faculty in Fall 2007 as tenure-track Assistant Professors. In addition, Dr. Maosheng Xiong has accepted an offer to join our faculty in Fall 2007 as an S. Chowla Research Assistant Professor. Drs. Eisentraeger, Papikian, and Xiong will add to our department's already considerable strength in the area of Number Theory.
03 / 09 / 2007

Xiantao Li wins Sloan Fellowship.
Assistant Professor Xiantao Li has been awarded a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. These fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young researchers in science and technology. Among recent Sloan Fellows in our department are Omri Sarig (2006) and Ae Ja Yee (2004).
02 / 27 / 2007

Hengguang Li wins best paper award.
Graduate student Hengguang Li has been named one of three coequal winners of the Student Paper Competition for the 13th Copper Mountain Conference on Multigrid Methods, March 19-23, 2007. The award includes travel expenses to attend the conference and present the paper.
02 / 19 / 2007

John Roe assumes new editorship.
Professor and Department Head John Roe is one of the founding editors of a newly launched journal, the Journal of Topology, published by the London Mathematical Society. Professor Roe will speak at a conference March 19-21, 2007 in the UK marking the start of the new venture.
02 / 18 / 2007

Simpson wins Grove Award.
Professor Stephen G. Simpson has been named winner of the Grove Award for Interdisciplinary Research Initiation, funded by the Cada and Susan Grove Mathematics Enhancement Endowment. Simpson's research project, entitled Randomness and Computational Complexity, involves collaboration with Professor Martin Fürer of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
02 / 16 / 2007

Conference in honor of Svetlana Katok.
A conference and banquet celebrating the birthday of Professor Svetlana Katok will take place at the Department of Mathematics, Penn State (University Park) on May 5-6, 2007. The theme of the conference is Dynamics Ideas in Geometry, Topology and Number Theory. Congratulations, Svetlana!
02 / 12 / 2007

Brian Broking moves to Dean's office.
Our Windows System Administrator, Brian Broking, will leave the Department of Mathematics at the end of February to take up a new position in the Dean's office. We thank Brian for all his hard work in our department, and we wish him every success.
02 / 12 / 2007

George Andrews named Polya Lecturer.
The Mathematical Association of America has named Evan Pugh Professor George Andrews as Polya Lecturer for 2007-08 and 2008-09. The MAA established the Polya program in 1990 in order to bring lectures by outstanding expositors to MAA regional conferences.
01 / 31 / 2007

Chemerda Lectures.
This year the Chemerda Lectures will be given by Professor Robert V. Kohn of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. The lectures will take place Febrary 5-8, 2007.
01 / 24 / 2007

Chris George wins university-wide teaching award.
Our student Chris George has won this year's university-wide Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award. The list of past recipients shows that we have a very solid tradition of winners in Math!
01 / 24 / 2007

Tabachnikov invited to speak at conference.
Professor Sergei Tabachnikov been invited to give a 1 hour plenary talk at the conference "Different approaches to complexity in mathematics and mathematical physics", Haifa, June 2007.
01 / 18 / 2007

Ryan Daut wins poker tournament.
Recently our first-year graduate student Ryan Daut walked away $1.5 million richer when he won the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure tournament.
01 / 15 / 2007

Carl Mummert gets 3-year postdoc at Michigan.
Recently Dr. Carl Mummert took up a 3-year postdoctoral position in Mathematics at the University of Michigan. His 2005 Penn State PhD thesis was supervised by Professor Steve Simpson.
01 / 15 / 2007

Faculty ranks high in scholarly productivity.
According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, among all US math departments, ours ranks 10th in faculty scholarly productivity.
01 / 10 / 2007

Sergei Tabachnikov to speak at conferences.
Professor Sergei Tabachnikov will be a principal lecturer at the Summer School on Billiards at the Institute of Mathematics, University of Cologne, in July 2007, and at the Summer Program "Novos Talentos em Matematica" in Portugal (funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation) in September of 2007. He will also give a one hour address at the AMS Southeast Sectional Meeting in the fall of 2007.
01 / 04 / 2007

Sergei Tabachnikov to participate in research programs.
In summer of 2007, Professor Tabachnikov will participate at Research in Pairs program at Mathematics Institute at Oberwolfach (with D. Fuchs). This will be his 6th time to participate in RiP program. In addition, Professor Tabachnikov will spend 3 months at Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik in Bonn in summer of 2008.
01 / 04 / 2007

Sergei Tabachnikov publishes two books.
In 2005 Professor Tabachnikov published two books: Projective differential geometry, old and new: from Schwarzian derivative to cohomology of diffeomorphism groups, with V. Ovsienko, Cambridge Univ. Press, and Geometry and billiards, Amer. Math. Soc. (This book is based on a MASS and REU courses taught by Professor Tabachnikov in 2005.)
01 / 04 / 2007