Math Department Announcements

1996-09-02: AAUW Educational Foundation awards American Fellow to Shandelle Henson..The AAUW Educational Foundation Board of Directors selected Dr. Shandelle Marie Henson as an American Fellow for the 1996-97 year. The 1996-97 year class of American Fellows included nine one-year postdoctoral scholars, who work in various fields such as philosophy, mathematics, education, and archaeology. Henson received the Sarah Berliner Fellowship, a one-year award for postdoctoral research. The host institution is the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Henson will be constructing a partial differential equations model of insect population dynamics, studying the solutions and bifurcation behaviors, and designing testable laboratory hypotheses regarding transitions of the populations between various attractors (including strange and chaotic attractors). This work will be a continuous version of the landmark discrete work done by Costantino et al. [Nature, 1995, 375:227-230]. Henson served as the Hanno Rund Visiting Research Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona for the last two years.

1996-10-07: Don Myers receives department's Outstanding Advisor Award..On the advice of the Math Center, the Undergraduate Committee has awarded the annual departmental OUTSTANDING ADVISOR AWARD to Donald Myers, for his tireless and exemplary service to students following the Probability and Statistics and Economics/Finance options in the mathematics major, most of whom are his advisees. Don was active in setting up and maintaining the UA Student Actuary Club, and, through his association with the Actuary Society of America, he regularly provides students with information about the actuarial profession and study materials for the preliminary actuary exams. He has also developed and maintained contacts with businesses that hire interns and have positions for mathematics department graduates. He encouraged one of his advisees who was writing an honors thesis to enter his research project in the 1995 Student Showcase, where the student won a monetary prize. The award, consisting of a plaque and $1,000 in departmental funds, will be presented to Don at the annual open house for math majors, this Wednesday, October 9, at 4:00 PM. Previous recipients of the award are: John Leonard, David Lomen, and Bill Velez.

1996-10-21: Matthew Kruse receives honorable mention for excellence in teaching..Matthew T. Kruse, graduate associate in the Mathematics Department, has been selected to receive an honorable mention award from the "Excellence in Teaching" Summer Session faculty award at the University of Arizona. Each Summer Session, instructors are nominated by students and colleagues for their techniques, ability to motivate, and true understanding of the subject matter. Matt was described as highly effective, with excellent skills for illustrating three-dimensional math and clearly projecting his voice while lecturing. Congratulations Matt!

1996-10-26: William Velez receives award at SACNAS Awards Banquet..SACNAS Awards Banquet: on October 26, 1996, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), held at the Airport Hilton in Los Angeles, CA, Dr. Eugene Levy, Dean of the College of Science at the University of Arizona, presented to Dr. William Yslas Velez, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona and President of SACNAS, the 1996 College of Science Outstanding Advisor Award. The is the second time that Dr. Velez has won this award, the first time being in 1989. Dr. Velez has also been awarded the University of Arizona College of Engineering Outstanding Student Advisor Award in 1990 and the Outstanding Departmental Advisor Award in 1994 by the Mathematics Department at the University of Arizona.

1996-10-28: Don Myers paper selected..Congratulations to Don Myers: the 1995 Prize Paper selected by the Production Ecology Graduate School, Wageningen, The Netherlands as co-authored by Dr. Myers with A. Stein, C. G. Kocks, J. C. Zakoks, H. D. Fringking, and M. A. Ruissen ("A Geostatistical Analysis of the Spatio-Temporal Development of Downy Mildew Epidemics in Cabbage", Phytopathology 84 (1994) 122701239. The selection was made from 16 nominations. The report read "Paper of high scientific quality, application of modern geostatistical techniques in a new area of research. Innovative and interdisciplinary article, partly the result of international cooperation. The journal has a high impact factor of 2.0; the paper has been well written with a clear conclusion; the subject is a core activity of PE: spatial and temporal development of a plant disease. There is a clear link between subprogramme 5 (methodology) and subprogramme 3 (growth reducing factors).

1996-11-04: Graduate Evi Dube to meet grads and undergrads to discuss employment opportunities at Lawrence Livermore Lab..Evi Dube, a mathematics graduate of the University of Arizona, is currently a researcher at Lawrence Livermore Lab. She will be available in Room 401 from 3-4 PM on Monday to talk about employment opportunities at her lab. She is interested in talking with both undergraduate and graduate students. If you would like to talk to Evi, but have a conflict at that time, please contact Kathleen in Room 410 or David Lomen for other times when Evi will be available.

1996-11-18: William Velez receives UA CoS Outstanding Advisor Award.Congratulations to William Velez! At a meeting of College of Science Undergraduate Advisors on Monday, November 18, William Velez was presented, in absentia, with an award in recognition of being named the Outstanding Advisor for the College of Science, by Randy Richardson, Associate Dean of the College of Science. The award is in the form of a paperweight with the inscription, "Imagination: A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

1996-11-18: Math majors Tood David Murphey and Andrew Scott Klein elected to Phi Beta Kappa..Congratulations to Todd David Murphey and Andrew Scott Klein: undergraduate Math majors who have been invited to accept election to Phi Beta Kappa. If faculty who are members of Phi Beta Kappa are interested in the revitalization efforts of the campus Chapter, please contact the newly elected President Helen Henderson (Anthropology 621-4818).

1997-01-17: Putnam Competition Results.On Saturday, December 7, twelve of our undergraduates devoted most of the day to pondering the twelve brain-teasers that constituted the Fifty-seventh Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. We thank the following stalwarts for representing the Department: Shao-Chu Yu, Sofiya Vasina, Kirill Shokhirev, Elena Shoshitaishvili, Lyn Reid, Robert Macomber, Cheryl Lacotta, Antonina Kolokolova, Pavlos Konstadinidis, Christine Keller, Gary Gongwer, and Brian David. Gender-sensitive observers will note that seven of these twelve represent the fairer sex - a first, I believe. However, Keith Schon and Noah Goodman were slated to take the exam in Budapest, and if indeed that came to pass, we can boast an amazing fourteen competitors, amongst whom the sexes were precisely balanced. Our thanks, also, to Robert Beals and John Leonard for invigilating the exam.

1997-02-03: Bill McCallum receives UA FoS Innovation in Teaching Award..Belated Congratulations!: At the Faculty of Science Commencement Breakfast (December 19, 1996) BILL MCCALLUM received the FoS Innovation in Teaching Award!!

1997-03-03: Cheryl Delorme offered post-doctoral fellowship at MSRI..Belated Congratulations to Cheryl Delorme, who has been offered a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California.

1997-04-07: Donna Krawczyk receives UA Foundation Leicester and Kathryn Sherrill Creative Teaching Award..Congratulations to Donna Krawczyk , recipient of the University of Arizona Foundation Leicester and Kathryn Sherrill Creative Teaching Award. Donna will be honored on April 29 at the Annual Recognition dinner.

1997-04-07: Cindy Kaus receives 2-year assistant professorship..Congratulations to Cindy Kaus who received a 2 year assistant professorship at the University of Minnesota. The position is renewable for a second 2 year term.

1997-04-07: Matt Davies awarded Fulbright Fellowship to study in Bombay, India..Our Congratulations to Graduating Senior Matt Davies, who has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study and do research at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India.

1997-04-14: Putname results: UA Team ranked 51st, three UA students top participants..Putnam Results: The returns from last December's William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition are in, and they are very heartening. The U of A team was ranked 51st out of 294 institutions which had teams competing. Three U of A students, Sofiya Vasina, Kirill Shokhirev, and Lyn Reid, were listed in the prestigious list of "Top Participants", approximately the top 20% of those competing. Our thanks to the fourteen undergraduates who spent a grueling six hours defending the department's honor: Shao-Chu Yu, Sofiya Vasina, Kirill Shokhirev, Elena Shoshitaishvili, Keith Schon, Lyn Reid, Robert Macomber, Cheryl Lacotta, Antonina Kolokolova, Pavlos Konstadinidis, Christine Keller, Noah Goodman, Gary Gongwer, and Brian David.

1997-04-21: Carole Anderson receives 1997 CoS Staff Recognition Award..Congratulations! Carole Anderson won the 1997 College of Science Staff Recognition Award for the Mathematics Department, and will be honored at a luncheon May 1st for all College of Science Classified Staff. Congratulations also to nominees Jerrie Bieberstein, Robert Lanza, Laurie Lefebvre, Jennifer Roll, Sandy Sutton, Bernadette Thomas, Faye Villalobos, and Brooke Zang. The department received over 30 nomination forms, and more staff were nominated this year than in any other year. Thank you to all who took the time to recognize what great staff we have here in the Mathematics Department!

1997-04-25: Congratulations to Dr. Cheryl Delorme, who passed her Doctoral Defense last week!.

1997-05-01: Lyn Reid receives $50 for decoding message..

The Message has been Decoded! David Lovelock and Bill Velez received the following message from Lyn Reid. She was the first to break our message and we have gladly paid her the $50. It is clear that David Lovelock composed the message!

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 23:15:58 -0700 
To: velez@math.arizona.edu 
From: Lyn R Reid 

I brought the Enigma program home to give it a shot tonight. In under an hour of playing with the program, I decoded the message. 

On the settings for day 117, I noticed that the first six characters read "ZULZUL". Remembering the additional trick you said the Germans used, I decided to change my rotor settings to Z, U, L. After doing that, I decoded the message "David is handsome, intelligent, and modest. Bill is not." (The spacing and punctuation I added, obviously). 

For reference, the settings for day 117 were: 

Rotors V, I, IV 
Init settings R, E, D 
Plugboard C-G, H-I, M-O 

Lyn Reid

1997-09-19: Presidential Award goes to Dr. William Velez.CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. William Velez for being selected one of the recipients of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring Program from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, its National Science and Technology Council and the National Science Foundation. We will receive, as part of the award, a $10,000 grant for the purpose of improving our mentoring activities. He will be honored in Washington, DC on Friday, September 12 at the "Mentoring for the Twenty-First Century Workforce: A Symposium", at a White House Awards Ceremony, and a farewell breakfast. There were 19 awardees.

1997-10-24: Deborah Hughes Hallett receives Louise Hay Award.Congratulations to Deborah Hughes Hallett for receiving the 8th Annual Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education, given by the Association for Women in Mathematics.

1998-01-16: Dr. William Yslas Velez elected as delegate to AAAS..Congratulations to Dr. William Yslas Velez who was elected to a three year term as Council Delegate of the electorate of the Section on Mathematics of the AAAS.

1998-01-16: Putnam Competition Results.On Saturday, December 6, 1997, 11 determined undergraduates participated in the MAA-sponsored 58th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. [One more competed in Budapest, but I'm not sure of the date there.] Our thanks to Sofiya Vasina, Michael Todd Thompson, Steve Steinke, Patrick Shipman, David Morales, Moses Milazzo, Robert Macomber, Carolyn Lanser, Cheryl Lacotta, Antonina Kolokolova, and Brian David for representing the department (and to Weldon Gilcrease, in far-off Hungary). We also thank Richard Thompson and John Leonard for invigilating the exam.

1998-03-06: Congratulations to William Y Velez for winning an Alumni Association Centennial Achievement Award.

1998-03-27: Putnam Competition Results.In the 58th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, held last December, the UofA can be proud to have placed two students in the prestigious "Top Participants" list (essentially the top 25%). They were Steven Steinke and Antonina Kolokolova. A third UofA student, Sofiya Vasina, missed that honor by a single point. Our thanks to the twelve undergraduates who devoted a Saturday to representing the Department. They are Sofiya Vasina, Michael Todd Thompson, Steve Steinke, Patrick Shipman, David Morales, Moses Milazzo, Robert Macomber, Carolyn Lanser, Cheryl Lacotta, Antonina Kolokolova, Weldon Gilcrease, and Brian David.

1998-09-04: Qualifying Exam Results.Hearty Congratulations to Yuko Fukatsu, Guadalupe Lozano, and Steve Phillips for having passed the PhD Qualifying Examinations.

1999-01-15: Putnam results.On Saturday, December 5, seven undergraduates ushered in the festive season by spending six hours puzzling over the 12 problems posed on the MAA's 59th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Our thanks to Todd Thompson, Steve Steinke, Max Shkarayev, Patrick Shipman, Mark Lyon, Carolyn Lanser, and David Coughlin for upholding the honor of the UofA. Thanks also to Robert Beals and John Leonard for invigilating the exam. A copy of the twelve puzzlers (one for each Day of Christmas, with no partridges) is appended to sharpen your wits.

1999-04-02: Congratulations to William Y. Velez.William Y Velez has been elected by the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America to serve as a member of that board as Governor-at-Large for Minority Interests from the end of the January 1999 meeting until the conclusion of the January meeting in 2002.

1999-04-11: Deborah Hughes Hallet to be on radio program.On Saturday, April 17, Deborah Hughes Hallett, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, will be the guest on Math Medley, a radio talk show from Phoenix at 11:00 AM on KFNX. Hosted by Dr. Pat Kenschaft, the topic of the show will be "Learning Mathematics: Opportunity or Obstacle?".

1999-04-26: Orna Amir and Susan Marshall receive Scholar Awards from the P.E.O. Sisterhood..Congratulations to Orna Amir and Susan Marshall for receiving Scholar Awards from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. These highly competitive grants are awarded on merit, recognizing their academic achievements. Out of 600 applicants nationwide, 50 women received grants, 8 of whom are in Arizona. To be eligible a woman must be a citizen of the United States or Canada and be a full time graduate student within two years of completing their academic program with at least one full year remaining. For more information about this program or projects funded by this organization, please contact Nancy Greenlee (Prof. Marty Greenlee's wife) at 749-4373.

1999-08-27: Qualifying Exam Results.Hearty Congratulations to those students having passed the qualifying examinations: Thomas Hoffman, Virgil Pierce, Christopher Rasmussen, Jeffrey Selden, and Aaron Wooton. Bravo! Keep up the good work!

1999-11-04: VIGRE fellowships.Hearty congratulations to Jeffrey Edmunds, Thomas Hoffman, Dmitry Kondrashov, Andre Lehovich, Guadalupe Lozano, David Marshall, Susan Marshall, Tyler McMillen, Christopher Rasmussen, Jeffrey Selden, and Jeanine Smallwood, all of whom will be supported by VIGRE fellowships in the Spring semester.

2000-08-20: Donald Myers to give invited lecture at the Fourth International Conference on Environmetrics and Chemometrics..

Donald E. Myers, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, will be giving an invited lecture at The Fourth International Conference on Environmetrics and Chemometrics, 18-20 September 2000. The Conference will be held in Las Vegas, NV. The conference is sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, Texas A & M University and the University of Nevada LV.

2000-11-03: 2000 ICTCM Award awarded to Richard Thompson's Business Mathematics project.Richard Thompson's Business Mathematics project has been selected to receive the 2000 ICTCM Award for Excellence and Innovation with the Use of Technology in Collegiate Mathematics. The award will be presented on November 17 at the 13th annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, held in Atlanta, Georgia.

2001-02-26: Fifteenth Annual Recruiting Workshop.March 3-6. Together with the Program in Applied Mathematics, the Department of Mathematics is hosting its annual workshop for prospective graduate students, "Current Ideas in the Mathematical Sciences." Participants will be arriving Saturday, March 3rd to begin their stay, with the workshop activities planned through Tuesday, March 6th. Please join the Graduate Committees in extending a warm welcome to these visiting students!

2001-04-06: Putnam Competition Results.The U of A team placed an impressive 59 out of 322 schools competing in the MAA's Putnam Competition, held last December. Two students, Joshua Green and Mark Lyon, earned places on the prestigious "List of Top 497 Entrants", and one more, Jason Young, missed that honor by a single point. Our thanks to the thirteen students who devoted a day to representing the Math Department: Annie Ahnert, Ed Carter, Joshua Green, Andrew Hill, Justin Gaberdiel, Mark Lyon, Justin Miller, Lee Miller, Althea Moorhead, Max Shkarayev, Steven Steinke, Allen Whitt, and Jason Young.

2001-04-16: Spring Fling Booth.Kudos to Bruce Bayly, Chris Mikel, Maria Robinson, Marek Rychlik, Joe Watkins, and Stan Yoshinobu for engaging the public in hands-on math activities last Saturday at the Spring Fling in the Wild About Sciences Math "Booth".

2001-08-24: Donald Myers to present paper at the meeting of the International Association of Mathematical Geologists in Cancun, Mexico..

Donald Myers, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, will present a paper at the meeting of the International Association of Mathematical Geologists in Cancun, Mexico. The conference will be held 9-12 September 2001. The title of his presentation is Space-Time Modeling and the Linear Coregionalization Model, this joint work with S. De Iaco and D. Posa, Universita di Leece, Italy.

2002-03-21: Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award goes to Emily Lane..The Graduate Committee would like to announce that Emily Lane, Applied Mathematics student, has been chosen as Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant for Fall 2001. The Award will include a monetary prize of $300. Emily will also be nominated by the Mathematics Department for the College of Science Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for academic year 2001-2002.

2002-03-29: Putnam results. Our team placed 75th out of 336 schools. Our students Edward Carter and Joshua Green received "Top Competitors" ranking..The returns of the December 1st William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition are in. The U of A team placed 75th out of 336 schools which fielded teams. Two U of A students, Edward Carter and Joshua Green, scored high enough to be listed in the prestigious "Top Competitors" ranking roughly the top 15% of the 2,954 students participating. We thank again those 15 undergraduates who took part in the competition: Allen Whitt, Kevin Wampler, Alice Trimble, Max Shkarayev, Amanda Paull, Peter Lewis, Adam Kiel, Andrew Hill, Joshua Green, Chi-Lwan Chan, Ed Carter, Santiago Canez, David Brown, Nathaniel Blair-Stahl, and Benjamin Armbruster.

2002-05-02: UGC Awards Announcements. Recognizing various achievements and awards, including the Mathematics Department Senior of the Year award..

UGC Awards Announcements:

• Mathematics Department Senior of the Year: Ivo Seitenzahl
• Semifinalists: Stephen Beathard, Jeremie Korta, Britt Zitterkopf, Ivo Seitenzahl
• Ivo Seitenzahl has a triple major in math, physics, and astrononmy, and he is also Senior of the Year in Physics.
• Jeremie Korta was Senior of the Year in Physics last semester and is the winner of Outstanding Research award in Physics this semester.
• Shanna Shaked and Johanna Schmidtke, other strong candidates that we considered, are Senior of the Year in Astronomy and Biochemistry, respectively.
• Oustanding Research Project: Catherine Ott. Catherine is one of the finalists for the College of Science Outstanding Research Award.

The UGC would like to express its appreciation to everyone who assisted us in evaluating candidates for these awards. The accomplishments of our candidates this year were truly awesome, and evidence that our program is headed in a positive direction.

The UGC: Bayly, Laetsch, Lozano, Lu, Madden, Mikel, Pickrell, Smith, Yoshinobu.

2002-09-13: Invited Guest: Professor Donald E. Myers, Emeritus, during the week of 26 August, was an invited guest at the Centro de Investigacions en Matematicas (CIMAT), Guanajuato, Mexico.

Invited Guest: Professor Donald E. Myers, Emeritus, during the week of 26 August, was an invited guest at the Centro de Investigacions en Matematicas (CIMAT), Guanajuato, Mexico http://www.cimat.mx/info_general/english.html. He gave two lectures: On 27 August, one lecture "Space-Time Structure Functions: Model, Fitting and Parameter Estimation. On 28 August, another lecture, "Kriging, Radial Basis Functions and Space-Time". He also served on a PhD Final oral exam committee while there (defense of dissertation).

2002-09-20: Former UA math major Dr. Todd D. Murphy, California Institute of Technology, will speak at a seminar on Monday, September 23, 2002..Former UA math major Dr. Todd D. Murphy, California Institute of Technology, a candidate for a faculty position in the AME Department, will speak at a seminar on Monday, September 23, 2002 at 4:00PM in AME Lecture Hall S212. Title: Accelerated Control of Multiple Model Systems. Todd was a math major here at the University, graduating in 1997. He would be pleased to see any former classmates and instructors at his talk.

2002-10-11: Congratulations to Nellie Rios and Brooke Zang, who are the recipients of the UA Star Award for this quarter..

Congratulations to Nellie Rios and Brooke Zang, who are the recipients of the UA Star Award for this quarter. Nominations by members of the department were submitted to the Staff Recognition Committee of CoSSAC and the committee selected Nellie and Brooke. If anyone would like to submit a nomination for other Math Department staff and A/P, the main office has forms or they are on line at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/cossac and click on UA Star Program. It's a nice way to show your appreciation for staff and A/P personnel. Again, congratulations Nellie and Brooke.

2002-11-22: Math major Andy Gulbis elected Homecoming King..For the second year in a row, a math major has been elected Homecoming King. Congratulations to Andy Gulbis, Mathematics senior, who is also pursuing majors in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry.

2003-01-20: Remember Pearl Harbor.December 7, 2002, will be well-remembered by some 19 U of A undergraduates, not as a day of infamy, but rather as the day they matched wits with the Question Committee of the 63rd Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. We thank: Jason Young, Allen Whitt, Alice Trimble, Jens Arne Sukkestad, Kenneth Porter, Amanda Morrow, Anita Lee, Gergely Kota, Becket Hui, Andrew Hill, James Hatch, Joshua Green, Sujoy Ganguly, Amy Nicole Dashiell, Edward Carter, Breanne Bushu, David Brown, Mathazin Aung, and Benjamin Armbruster for their generosity in spending six hours in a critical period of the semester to uphold the honor of our department. Just how high that honor was held we will know toward the end of March, when results are communicated. In the meantime, you're welcome to whet your wits on the attached problems (no peeking at various solutions posted on the web).

2003-02-24: On Thursday, February 27, 2003, Dr. Donald E, Myers, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, has been invited to give a talk at the Department of Mathematics, University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The title is "Is a Stochastic Formulation for Radial Basis Functions Useful?"

2003-03-03: 17th Annual Recruitment Workshop for Prospective Graduate Students (March 8-11).Together with the Program in Applied Mathematics, the Department of Mathematics is hosting its annual undergraduate recruitment workshop for prospective graduate students, "Current Ideas in the Mathematical Sciences." Participants will be arriving Saturday, March 8th to begin their stay, with workshop activities planned through Tuesday, March 11th. Please join the Graduate Committees in extending a warm welcome to these visiting students!

2003-03-24: The Department of Mathematics Graduate Committee would like to announce that Michael Kuecken, Program in Applied Mathematics, has been chosen as Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant for Fall 2002. The award will include a monetary prize of $300.

2003-03-31: 63rd Putnam Competition Results.The results of the Sixty Third Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition have arrived, and they are most gratifying. The University of Arizona team placed 29th out of 376 schools fielding teams in the top eight percent! Three of our students Ed Carter, Josh Green and Jens Sukkestadscored high enough to make the prestigious "Top Participants" List, roughly the top 15% of the contestants. We thank the nineteen undergraduates who took six hours on a Saturday, at a critical period of the semester, to participate in the competition: Jason Young, Allen Whitt, Alice Trimble, Jens Arne Sukkestad, Kenneth Porter, Amanda Morrow, Anita Lee, Gergely Kota, Becket Hui, Andrew Hill, James Hatch, Joshua Green, Sujoy Ganguly, Amy Nicole Dashiell, Edward Carter, Breanne Bushu, David Brown, Mathazin Aung, and Benjamin Armbruster.

2003-05-03: Congratulations to Mohammed Maagoul who passed his Master's Final Oral Defense. Congratulations to Robert Pawloski who passed his Oral Comprehensive Exam.

2003-09-01: The following students have completed the Ph.D. qualifying exam: Lisa Berger, Assane Lo, Cameron McLeman, Rob Pawloski. Congratulations!

2003-09-08: Dr. V. Zakharov has been awarded the 2003 Dirac Medal and Prize together with Prof. R. H. Kraichnan. The Dirac Medal and Prize was instituted by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1985 and is awarded yearly on P.A.M. Dirac's birthday, August 8 for contribution to the field of theoretical physics. Zakharov and Kraichnan were awarded for their distinct contributions to the theory of turbulence.

2003-10-13: Putnam Competition.The 64th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition will take place on Saturday, December 6. If you have any outstanding undergraduate students, who rank high on mathematical ingenuity, please mention the Competition to them. More information and a sign-up sheet are available at Math 619. They must sign up by Tuesday, October 14, 2003.

2004-01-12: 64th Putnam Competition Participants.On Saturday, December 6, two undergraduates, Mel Koppens and Eric Welch, spent a sunny day indoors matching wits with the question committee of the 64th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. We thank them for representing our department, and thank Klaus Lux and John Leonard for invigilating the competition. Should you wish to challenge your wits, the twelve competition problems are available: Putnam Competition Problems.

2004-03-29: Putnam Competition Results.In December's Putnam Mathematical Competition, the U of A team did quite well, placing 42nd out of 401 schools fielding teams --- just missing the top ten percent! Two of our competitors, Andrew Crites and Mel Koppens, earned the honor of being listed in the "Top Participants" --- roughly the top fifteen percent!

2004-04-12: Congratulations to Deborah Hughes Hallet, the recipient of this year's award from the Mathematical Association of America for Distinguished University Teaching of Mathematics. Join us all in congratulating Deb on this well-deserved distinction.

2004-04-12: Congratulations to Dr. Jeffry Selden and Dr. Aaron Wootton, both of whom passed their Final Oral Dissertation Defense. Congratulations to Panagiota Konstantinou and John Arlo Caine, both of whom passed their Oral Comprehensive Exam.

2004-04-12: Larry Wright presented an invited paper at the International Workshop for Applied Probability on March 22. The title was "Equilibrium Bidding Strategies in First Price Sealed Price Auctions", and was joint work with Richard Thompson.

2004-04-19: Congratulations to Dr. Michael Kuecken and Dr. Virgil Pierce, both of whom passed their Final Oral Dissertation Defense.

2004-04-26: Chuck Newman, who was a member of this department for several years, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Our congratulations are extended to him for this well-deserved recognition of his accomplishments.

2004-05-10: Congratulations.Congratulations to Dr. Chris Rasmussen who passed his Final Oral Dissertation Defense. Congratulations to Sacha Swenson and Alan Von Herrmann, both of whom passed their Master's Final Oral Exam.

2004-08-30: Ph.D. Qualifying Exam.The following students have completed their exam: Daniel Bartlett, Milos Ivkovic, and Predrag Punosevac. Congratulations!

2004-10-25: Undergraduate Committee Meeting Minutes.The minutes are posted at http://intranet.math.arizona.edu/~ugc/minutes/.

2004-12-13: Congratulations to Alejandra Alvarado, Ali Amjad, Cristi Guevara, and Selin Kalaycioglu, all of whom passed their Master's Final Oral Exam.

2004-12-13: 65th Putnam Competition Participants.On the rainy Saturday of December 4, ten stalwart undergraduates matched wits with the problem committee of the 65th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. We thank Sam Rawlins, Genevieve Patterson, Taylor Dupuy, Christopher McMurdie, Andrew Lebovitz, James Hatch, Ted Glaza, Jeffrey Gilbert, Andrew Crites, and Samuel Alexander for representing our department. A copy of the Putnam Competition Problems is available for your delectation.

2005-10-11: William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.The 65th annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition will take place on December 4, 2004. If you have any unusually inventive students, please mention the competition to them. They may sign up at Room 619 of the Math Building until Wednesday, October 13.

2005-12-04: 66th Putnam Competition Participants.On Saturday, December 4, eleven UofA undergraduates spent a grueling six hours matching wits with the question committee of the 66th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Our thanks to Haokun (Sam) Xu, Gregory Prill, Nikhil Patil, Petr Moravsky, Benjamin McGahee, Adam Labay, Ted Glaza, Jeffrey Gilbert, Taylor Dupuy, Luke Diaz, and Ivan Barrientos for representing the department. The problems they pondered are viewable at http://cr.yp.to/putnam/putnam2005.pdf. Unofficial solutions are there, also, but it's no fair peeking.

2005-12-06: New milestone for undergraduate program.Greg Farneth is the first student to be the 450th math major. In honor of the occasion, alumna Dr. Abbie Warrick presented Greg with a book about the history of mathematics (see photo below). This is especially fitting in light of Dr. Warrick’s long history with the University of Arizona Mathematics Department, having received three degrees with us (and one in electrical engineering). Her undergraduate degree in Engineering Mathematics was received in 1989. She received MS degrees in Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering in 1991 and 1993, respectively, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1996. She has been employed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as an electrical engineer since completing the PhD in 1996. She returns frequently to the University of Arizona to recruit UA students for permanent and internship positions at LLNL. Greg Farneth is a new transfer student to the University of Arizona this semester, majoring in Mathematics and Molecular and Cellular Biology. He is considering combining these interests for a career in epidemiology.

2008-03-24: The results of the 2007 William Lowell Putnam Competition have arrived..The results of the 2007 William Lowell Putnam Competition have arrived. I am happy to report that the University of Arizona team (Brendan Pawlowski, Derrick Sund, and Sam Xu) placed 34th among competing institutions. Individually, Derrick Sund placed in the top 200, and Sean Howe and Sam Xu placed in the top 500. Congratulations to them, and to all the participants!

2008-12-23: Bill Velez elected to American Association for the Advancement of Science..William Y. Vélez, a distinguished professor of mathematics, was elected as an AAAS fellow for distinguished contributions in mentoring mathematics students and for leadership as president of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science. For more info: http://uanews.org/node/23114.

2009-01-31: Mathematicians Show How Beetles can Share a Niche. For more info: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39715/title/Mathematicians_show_how_beetles_can_share_a_niche.

2009-03-15: Math Circle Student Wins MathCounts Competition.

Tucsonan Joshua Sloane, 13, and three of his peers from the Phoenix area have earned the right to be called champions.

Sonoran Science Academy was recognized as the top team in the competition, which brought together more than 30 middle schools from across the state.

Kadir Bahar, Sonoran Science Academy's coach, will accompany the four winners to the national competition, which will be held May 7-10 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando.

For more info: http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/284438.php.

2009-03-29: 2008 William Lowell Putnam Competition Results.

The Department of Mathematics would like to congratulate the University of Arizona team—Sean Howe, Kyle Marshall, and Derrick Sund—on the team's 31st ranking among over 1600 competing teams in the William Lowell Putnam Competition. Individually, Derrick Sund placed in the top 200 and Sean Howe placed in the top 500, both for the second year in a row.

The Putnam competition is constructed to test originality as well as technical competence. Contestants are expected to be familiar with the formal theories embodied in undergraduate mathematics. It is also expected that questions involving elementary concepts from group theory, set theory, graph theory, lattice theory, number theory, and cardinal arithmetic will not be entirely foreign to the contestants. In addition, questions may be included that cut across the bounds of various disciplines, and questions may be included that do not fit into any of the usual categories.

The examination is held on the first Saturday of December and consists of two periods of exactly three hours each with a two-hour break between the two sessions, under the official supervision of a faculty member, in our case, David Savitt.

2009-04-08: Joe Watkins is named College of Science Galileo Circle Fellow. For more info: http://lqp.arizona.edu/node/1278.

2009-04-10: Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

We are very happy to announce that both Mathematics Department teams participating in this year’s COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling received “meritorious” for their solutions!

The team made up of Ivan Grubisic, Dustin Keys and Alex Blount selected problem A. Their paper was entitled Comparative Analysis of Traffic Control Systems for Roundabouts, Including Enzyme Catalyst Reaction Based Scheme.

The team made up of Livia Zarnescu, Emily Hartley and Ben Wilson chose problem B and the name of their paper was Modeling the Energy Consequences of the Current Telecommunications Transition.

COMAP (The Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications) whose mission is to improve mathematics education for students of all ages, conducts the Mathematical Contest in Modeling each year. This contest challenges teams of three students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems. Each team receives their problem at 8:00 pm EST on a Thursday and is required to turn in their solution in the form of a research paper on the following Monday at 8:00 pm EST. The contest attracts students and faculty advisors from over 500 institutions around the world.

Of the 1695 teams, nine teams received an “outstanding” and only 18% received “meritorious,” the second highest ranking.

Please join us in congratulating these undergraduates for their success!

2009-04-13: Yijun Shao is Recipient of Daniel Bartlett Memorial Fellowship.

We are pleased to announce that Yijun Shao has been selected to receive the Daniel Bartlett Memorial Fellowship for summer 2009. Several very strong candidates were nominated and selecting just one was not easy. Yijun's outstanding research in a difficult area of geometry makes him a very deserving recipient of this award.

Yijun entered the PhD program in Mathematics in August 2004, passed his qualifying exams in August 2005, and his comprehensive exam in Spring 2007. He is working on his dissertation research with Prof. Yi Hu. His joint work with his advisor on the moduli space of algebraic maps from the projective line to a projective space has already been submitted for publication. He is now working on vastly generalizing this work to moduli spaces of maps to all homogeneous spaces, in particular to the Grassmannians.

In addition to teaching a variety of courses, Yijun has also served as a super-TA for Introduction to Proofs, Principles of Analysis, and Lie Groups and Lie Algebras.

Yijun entered the graduate program one year after Daniel Bartlett. He took several courses with Daniel and remembers him as being "really smart" and able to absorb new material very quickly.

This summer, Yijun will concentrate on his dissertation research. He expects to finish his PhD next year. Please join me in congratulating him on his accomplishments to date and wishing him the best for the future.

2009-04-17: Arshed Al-Obeidi, UA Honors College student majoring in mathematics, named a Goldwater Scholar. For more info: http://uanews.org/node/25098.

2009-04-22: Undergrad receives National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship.

We are very pleased to announce that Amanda Schaeffer has been awarded a National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship. This fellowship will provide up to six years of support while she pursues her PhD. Amanda is finishing her BS in Mathematics at the U of A and will be joining our Mathematics graduate program in the Fall.

Please join us in congratulating Amanda for this prestigious award.

2009-05-11: Native American Student Affairs Honors Two Math Students.

Native American Student Affairs (NASA) has selected two math students as recipients of their 2008/2009 annual awards. Angela Yazzie, an undergraduate math major, has been selected as the recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Award, and Belin Tsinnajinnie, a mathematics graduate student, is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Academic Award. Both students will be honored during the NASA Convocation on Friday, May 15, 2009 from 5:00-7:00pm at the UA Mall, East of Old Main. The event is open to the public.

For more information please go to http://nasa.web.arizona.edu/. Please plan to attend this event and offer your congratulations to both Angela and Belin.

2009-05-11: Piegorsch named Environmetrics Editor.

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics GIDP Chair Walter W. Piegorsch has been named an Editor of the journal Environmetrics, the oldest scientific journal presenting peer-reviewed research on development and application of quantitative methods in the environmental sciences. The journal is the official organ of The International Environmetrics Society (TIES) and is published by John Wiley & Sons. Professor Piegorsch began his term in January of 2009. His own research interest in benchmark dose markers for environmental hazard analyses, quantitative risk assessment & geo-spatially referenced disaster informatics, and the historical development of statistical thought as prompted by problems in the biological and environmental sciences dovetails with his new editorial duties for the journal.

2009-05-26: Kevin Lin awarded NSF Applied Mathematics Grant for Computational Analysis of Large Dynamical Systems. The grant will support the study of dynamical systems with many strongly-interacting degrees of freedom, focusing on some model systems coming from biology and physics. It will also support the development of efficient computer algorithms for the analysis of these systems. For more information on Dr. Lin's research the following URL. For more info: http://math.arizona.edu/~klin.

2009-05-28: UA Alumnus magazine articles feature Center for Recruitment and Retention and Graesser Endowed Chair. For more info: http://www.arizonaalumni.com/Alumnus/sp09/endowed.html.

2009-06-01: NSF Grant awarded to Romyar Sharifi for Iwasawa Theory and Galois Representations research project.The project involves a study of operations in the Galois cohomology of number fields and their application in Iwasawa theory. The PI has conjectured an explicit relationship between the values of a cup product on cyclotomic p-units and p-adic L-values, taken modulo p, of newforms that satisfy congruences with Eisenstein series at a prime above p. The proposed research relates to this through a number of distinct but intertwined sub-projects, including an algebraic study of the structure of the Selmer groups of the associated modular representations, the exploration of relationships with Kato's Euler system and classical main conjectures, and the precise formulation of certain generalizations. A remarkable aspect of algebraic number theory lies in the connections it finds between objects that appear to be of entirely different natures. These objects can roughly be described as falling into two classes: those that are algebraic, and those that are analytic. The algebraic objects are typically found by considering numbers that can be formed by applying the standard operations of arithmetic to the roots of polynomial equations, or by considering the symmetries of those roots. The analytic objects are often functions on interesting spaces with values that are complex numbers. The project concerns an unexpected direct comparison between the algebraic values of a function on pairs of numbers and the analytic power series attached to highly symmetrical complex-valued functions known as modular forms. The PI is exploring this and its many consequences in arithmetic.

2009-06-03: NSF GK-12 Grant Teams Math Grad Students with K-12 Teachers..NSF GK-12 Grant Teams Math Grad Students with K-12 Teachers. For more information please visit this URL. For more info: http://uanews.org/node/25858.

2009-06-03: Yi Hu Funded by NSF for Projects on Modular Algebraic Geometry.. Continuing his previous work on elliptic stable maps, the PI's near-term objective is to complete his joint work on the structures of the moduli spaces of genus-two stable maps; then strengthen the results that they already obtained in high-genus cases; for any genus, they recently obtained the enumerative invariants using derived resolutions over the primary components of the moduli spaces of stable maps; these new invariants were then used to formulate a precise recursive relation for high-genus GW invariants of smooth quintic; these should be useful for verifying physicists' high-genus Mirror Symmetry prediction. Further, the PI plans to push and apply the techniques that they have developed to Gromov-Witten theory, to Mirror Symmetry, and possibly also to birational geometry. In addition to the above, the PI has introduced a modular compactification of the space of n points in general linear position on the projective plane; this potentially has significant consequences on singularity theory. Lastly, he is also working toward the weighted strong factorization for projective varieties with at worst finite quotient singularities through GIT approach.

2009-06-04: McCallum Participates in Push for Common Standards.. For more info: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/01/33standards.h28.html?tkn=ZRSFUUPjnNnFNHrwP7Ft2mT5MhAAc%2B8oqQ6g.

2009-06-15: U of A Math Dept graduate students and Tucson teachers collaborate to improve K-12 math education..U of A Math Dept graduate students and Tucson teachers collaborate to improve K-12 math education. For more info: http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/mailstory-clickthru/297034.php.

2009-06-19: William Yslas Vélez has been selected to receive the Peter W. Likins Inclusive Excellence Award for the 2008-2009 academic year. .William Yslas Vélez has been selected to receive the Peter W. Likins Inclusive Excellence Award for the 2008-2009 academic year. The Inclusive Excellence Award (IEA) recognizes individuals or groups who have demonstrated a significant contribution toward enhancing the academic distinction of The University of Arizona by creating a diverse and inclusive community. Peter W. Likins was the inaugural recipient of the IEA in 2005. As UA President, he led by example, demonstrating that diversity is an indicator of academic quality. President Likins further demonstrated his commitment to diversity through the creation and support of numerous diversity initiatives. Vélez is being recognized for continuing and extending Dr. Likins’ legacy of “excellence through diversity.” There will be a reception to honor the recipients on Tuesday, October 13, 2009, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

2009-06-19: David Savitt Selected to Receive College of Science, Early Career Teaching Award .While still an untenured assistant professor, working on a research program in a very demanding area of modern mathematics, David has built up an astonishing record of accomplishment in education. While teaching the normal load of research active faculty (with excellent evaluations) David has implemented many programs that cover the range from high school to graduate school. The award will be formally announced at the annual College of Science Faculty Reception on September 9, 2009 at 5:00 pm at the Arizona Inn.

2009-06-23: Pham Huu Tiep's project "Group Representations and Applications" has been recently funded by the NSF.. This proposal focuses on several important problems in representation theory of finite groups and its applications. It ties together different areas of mathematics, such as finite groups and algebraic groups, finite permutation group theory, group cohomology, combinatorics and finite geometry, algebraic geometry, and string theory, with the main unifying ingredient being the representation theory. Many of the problems addressed in the proposal come up naturally – some long-standing and play a central role – in the group representation theory, and others are motivated by various important applications.

2009-06-23: David Savitt is funded by the NSF for p-ADIC AND MOD p GALOIS REPRESENTATIONS..The PI’s research areas are number theory and representation theory. In particular, the PI studies p-adic Galois representations and p-adic Hodge theory, with an eye towards applications to the modularity of Galois representations and the Langlands program. Following the recent proof of the Fontaine-Mazur conjecture for GL2 (Q), attention to groups other than GL2 and fields other than Q has intensified. The PI proposes a number of projects that will contribute significantly to this effort, organized around the theme of p-adic representations and their reduction modulo p. The PI will study the weight in Serre’s conjecture for arbitrary split reductive groups and arbitrary number fields, with the goal of giving an explicit Serre weight recipe in considerable generality. The PI will produce evidence for generalizations of the Breuil-M ́zard conjecture in both qualitative and quanetitative forms, and will prove some cases of such a generalization, yielding applications to modularity. A third component of the project involves the explicit reduction modulo p of p-adic Galois representations, again with applications to the Langlands program.

2009-07-01: MAPPS Program conducts pecial sessions and workshops to teach parents math..

Title I resources were used during this school year to provide math opportunities for parents to develop math skills to better support their children with homework in math. Parents who attended math parent workshops and a mini-course earlier in the year found that math can be fun while exploring challenging math concepts.

For more information see pg 6 and 7 of online version of the May 2009 issue of TUSD's publication May 2009 issue of TUSD's Focus.

2009-07-22: TUSD University High School teacher and former UofA Math Dept ATI Education specialist Robert “Mike” Schmidt is selected for suborbital astronaut teacher program.. For more info: http://teachersinspace.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/seven-astronaut-teacher-candidates-announced/.

2009-08-10: McGraw, Madden and McCallum receive Arizona Master Teacher Program grant.The Institute for Mathematics and Education (IM&E) and the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona (UA) propose a planning grant to develop a Phase I Master Teaching Fellows proposal. A consortium of key stakeholders will participate in the program planning, including high-needs schools and districts, university departments and programs, local educational agencies, non-profits and businesses. The core partners that have identified so far are • The Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona • Sunnyside Unified School District • Tucson Unified School District • Tucson Values Teachers • Pima County Regional Support Center We anticipate adding partners during the planning period. During the planning period the consortium will collaborate to design a comprehensive program for the Arizona Master Teacher Program for Mathematics (AZ-MTM), making use of existing professional development opportunities, identifying and securing commitments for matching funds, and developing a comprehensive evaluation plan. Planning activities will include a one-day retreat to establish a timeline and process for a needs assessment regarding teacher shortages as well as an action plan for designing the AZ-MTM program. A second full day retreat will be used refine the program plan, including protocols for recruiting teachers, courses and professional development and comprehensive program evaluation. INTELLECTUAL MERIT The Department of Mathematics has a well-established record of outreach, including three institutions and centers, The Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA), The Center for Recruitment and Retention of Mathematics Teachers (CRR) and the Institute for Mathematics and Education (IM&E). An extensive list and brief descriptions of all the outreach projects can be found on our web pages (http://math.arizona.edu/outreach/ and http://math.arizona.edu/~merp/medra.html). The IM&E will coordinate the planning year. In the last two years the Institute has acquired a national reputation for bringing together mathematicians, educators and teachers for effective collaboration. The program will build on courses being developed under a NSF Math Science Partnership grant, the Arizona Teacher Initiative (ATI). BROADER IMPACT The AZ-MTM Consortium will bring together a wide group of stakeholders interested in the retention of mathematics teachers in low-income schools through the development of teacher leaders. Participants in the planning will include high needs schools and districts (Tucson and Sunnyside Unified School districts); experts in mathematics education and professional development (CRR, IM&E, and ATI); and regional education and business agencies: the Office of Pima County Schools, a State Education Agency (SEA), and Tucson Values Teachers, a regional business/education partnership working to provide incentives, internships and professional development opportunities for teachers.

2009-08-18: Cushing Funded for study of The Dynamics and Evolution of Semelparity. Intellectual merits. Biological semelparity is a life history adaptation in which an individual organism reproduces once and then, or shortly thereafter, dies. This reproductive strategy is found throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. The trade-offs between reproduction and survival and the distinctions between semelparous and iteroparous life cycles have long been recognized as key issues involved in the study of life history strategies. Major topics of interest are (1) the population dynamic consequences and (2) the evolutionary advantage or disadvantage of semelparity (versus iteroparity). Recent developments in the modeling of semelparity, using methods of nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory, have established a fundamental dynamic dichotomy that is of both biological and mathematical interest. From a mathematical point of view, models for the dynamics of semelparous species lie outside the standard theory of general structured population dynamics in that the primary bifurcation from extinction to persistence that occurs at R0 = 1 is of high codimension. The challenge of determining the dynamic consequences of this fact have been met only in the low dimensional cases (shorter maturation periods), and even then not thoroughly. These preliminary results establish a dynamic dichotomy for semelparous species that consists, roughly speaking, of an alternative between equilibration with overlapping generations or oscillations (not necessarily periodic) with non-overlapping generations. The nature of the oscillations in the later case, however, are not well understood, except in the lowest dimensional cases which show that they can be complex. The first goal of the proposed research is to carry out a mathematical study of this dynamic dichotomy that will clarify the nature of these oscillations. The methods will involve stability analysis, bifurcation methods, perturbation expansions, monotone semi-flow theory, the use average Lyapunov functions, persistence theory, and numerical simulations. The second goal of the proposed research is to address questions about the evolution of semelparity and the possibility of its being an ESS (evolutionary stable strategy). The method to be used is Darwinian dynamics (based on evolutionary game theory), a methodology that extends a population dynamic model to include the dynamics of an evolving (mean phenotypic) trait which in turn affects the population dynamics (through its influence on birth and death rates). Using biologically reasonable trade- offs to build sub-models for fecundity and survivorships as functions of an evolving trait, we will study the circumstances under which semelparity is evolutionarily favored and when it is not. The Darwinian dynamics approach allows the methods of nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory to be applied to these evolutionary questions. Broader impacts. The investigation of many problems in the biosciences is based on population dynamics, including problems concerning the spread of diseases, invasion of non-native species, the stability and diversity of ecosystems, endangered species, the management of agricultural systems, the operation of fisheries, and the design of nature preserves. The life history strategy of a species is, in turn, fundamental to understanding its population dynamics. A thorough understanding of the dynamics and evolution of semelparous (and iteroparous) species promotes a deeper understanding of those disciplines built on and related to population dynamics. Furthermore, the development of a modeling methodology for studying the dynamics and evolution of semelparous species allows for the construction of more accurate models for applications to specific species. For example, many diseases are spread by semelparous organisms, many parasites are semelparous, and many plants of agriculture importance are semelparous. The dynamic models to be used in this research are of types (difference equations) that are particularly accessible to those (including undergraduates) with a limited background in dynamical systems. Because of the quick learning curve for becoming adept at using these kinds of models, the proposed research provides abundant research opportunities for undergraduates and graduates that introduces them, an accessible context, to sophisticated concepts and methods in the theory of dynamical systems and permits them to make interesting applications that make solid contributions to biological problems.

2009-08-27: *You like our 'gem?' We'll trade you * Re: the Aug. 21Arizona Daily Star article "'Modern' gems are cited.".I think I speak on behalf of everyone in the department when I say that we were honored to have our building recognized as a gem. So honored, in fact, that we would be delighted to trade it with anybody who truly appreciates it. In addition to its architectural distinction, the building solves an interesting mathematical problem: how to provide the least space for the largest footprint. I'm sure that one day we will miss its sloping floors, disintegrating walls and cranky elevator. But that day, long awaited, has not yet come. /William McCallum / /Chair, UA Department of Mathematics, Tucson /

2009-09-08: IM&E selected to be Intel National Training Agency.The Institute for Mathematics and Education has been selected by Intel Corporation to be the National Training Agency for the Intel Math program. Intel Math is a professional development program for K-8 mathematics teachers that focuses on content knowledge and emphasizes that mathematics is best learned by doing. The IM&E received a $150,000 grant from the Intel Foundation to establish the National Training Agency, whose principal role will be to disseminate the Intel Math program at the national level.

2009-09-16: Alan Newell has received funding for his grant entitled "Patterns in Nature and in the Laboratory.". Patterns of an almost periodic nature are to be found almost everywhere in nature and are the subject of many laboratory experiments. Open any journal these days in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Optics and Geophysics and one will find articles on some remarkable aspect and utility of self-organizing patterns. One area of much current interest, especially given the new NSF supported iPlant consortium, has been the grand challenge of understanding how biological systems evolve and self organize. One of the new foci of interest is also one of the oldest, the appearance of organized patterns and configurations on the surfaces of plants near the shoot apical meristem. New experiments on the important role of auxin, many on the plant Arabidopsis, suggest that biochemical processes are involved in initiating the observed phyllotactic patterns. The PI, who has forty years experience in the field, and his former and current graduate students Patrick Shipman and Zhiying Sun (supported by NSF grant DMS 0501243), have built models involving both biochemical and mechanical processes which are inspired and informed by the experiments of Kuhlmeier et. al. and Meyerowitz et. al. which appear to give results in close harmony with observations. The proposal also addresses properties of patterns far from onset; gradient-like behaviors, condensation of the Gaussian curvature of the phase function and a remarkable correspondence between three dimensional line singularity loops and quarks and leptons.

2009-09-22: College and Career Readiness Standards for Mathematics.William G. McCallum, a University Distinguished Professor and mathematics department head, was among 15 education leaders and researchers across the nation to draft, "College and Career Readiness Standards for Mathematics." A separate working group wrote the report on English-language art skills. For more info: http://www.uanews.org/forward/emailref/27366.

2009-10-14: Jim Cushing elected President of International Society of Difference Equations.In September 2009, Professor Jim Cushing was elected President of the International Society of Difference Equations. The goals of this Society are: - To promote difference equations and discrete dynamical systems, defined broadly, as two of the fundamental subjects in Mathematics. - To promote discrete models as models of premiere mathematical importance in the natural sciences, engineering, economics, etc. - To coordinate activities in the areas of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems such as organizing conferences, annual meetings, workshops, special sessions, etc. - To lend support to researchers in difference equations and discrete dynamical systems from developing countries and those who need help by making available copies of research articles, lecture notes, technical reports, journal articles, and books. - To promote the publication of books, monographs, lecture notes and expository articles in the areas of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems.

2009-10-15: UA prof William Yslas Vélez hailed for initiative on math education..

By focusing on student advising, especially with minority students, Vélez has nearly doubled the number of math majors at the University of Arizona in five years. Of the 538 math majors, 21 percent are minorities.

For more information see http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/byauthor/312820.

2009-10-29: Teaching for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics (TEEM)..The purpose of TODOS and of /TEEM/ is to "advocate for an equitable and high quality mathematics education for all students in particular, Hispanic/Latino students by increasing the equity awareness of educators and their ability to foster students' proficiency in rigorous and coherent mathematics." The debut issue (TEEM 2009 Vol.1 No.1) is now available. The full issue is generally accessible only to members of TODOS: Mathematics for All. Those who may be interested in the journal can access an excerpt from the issue at the link provided. For more info: http://www.todos-math.org/.

2009-11-04: Student Assistant Megan John named Magellan Scholar.We are happy to announce that Student Assistant Megan John is a recipient of the Magellan Circle Scholarship from the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences (SBS). Megan, a Junior majoring in History, has been with our Department nearly two years. Please stop by Math 109 to congratulate her.

2009-11-19: Shankar Venkataramani funded by US Israel Foundation for his proposal: EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL STUDY OF ACTIVELY DEFORMING SHEETS.Abstract Many natural structures are made of soft tissue that undergoes complicated continuous shape transformations that accurately and reliably serve specific elaborate tasks. Such processes can be slow, as in growth of a tissue, or rapid and be used for the production of mechanical work, as in the case of the action of the hart. In contrast, most man made "machines" are based on translation or rotation of rigid "driving" components that , in some cases, deform passive soft components. One can see the potential in mimicking natural shaping mechanisms with artificial materials. However, our ability to produce controlled motions of soft tissue is poor. The difficulties in controlling this type of shaping involve mathematical and experimental problems. Problems such as definitions of strains in evolving bodies, designe of responsive materials and understanding the underlying mechanical instabilities are of central importance. We propose a research that will join our expertise in mathematics, mechanics, experimental physics and chemical engineering (Ron correct), that will be focused on studying the principles of shaping via active growth and will take the first steps in implementing them. The work will consist of intensive interaction between theoretical and experimental work.

2009-11-19: Per Jakobsen visiting ACMS from Norway.*Per Jakobsen*, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics, Institute for Mathematics and Statistics, University of Tromsø , Norway will visit the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences from November 23 through December 13. If you would like to meet with Professor Jakobsen, please contact Roxanne Pizano at rpizano@math.arizona.edu. Jakobsen will office in the Optical Sciences Building, Room 532. Jakobsen will be here for research collaboration with ACMS, which has expertise in computational electromagnetics and optics. Jakobsen is a former doctoral student at the UA and his research interests are in: The calculation of classical and quantum electrodynamically induced forces on wavelength sized objects in the linear response regime is a mathematically challenging problem of considerable technological interest. In this size regime the dipole and geometric optics approximations breaks down and the goal is to develop effective computational methods. For classically induced forces I am using a reformulation of the Maxwell equations in terms of a set of singular boundary integral equation. The challenge is to solve these integral equations effectively for complex geometries and material properties. For quantum electrodynamically induced forces(Casimir forces) the mathematical object of interest is the Feynman propagator. Because of the usual ultraviolet divergences of quantum fields, no boundary integral formulation for the propagator is known. My current research activity in this area is aimed at finding a boundary integral formulation for the electromagnetic Feynman propagator with the ultimate goal of developing an effective computational approach for the computation of Casimir forces.