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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Math Times Department of Mathematics Fall 2002
From the Department ChairThe fall has brought with it theexcitement of the beginning of theacademic year. New faculty membershave arrived on campus. Newgraduate students have begun theirstudies and new undergraduatestudents are here taking their firstuniversity courses. The new termcarries with it a sense of optimism.The renewal and sustaining oftraditions in our department anduniversity have taken energy fromthis attitude.
A new Undergraduate Mathe-matics Student Lounge wasestablished this fall. It is in AltgeldHall on the second floor, right abovethe front entrance to the building. Aseparate room inside the lounge hasthree computers for undergraduatestudent use. We are encouraging ourundergraduate students to use theroom to meet others, to study, and tomake it a place to gather. Itsproximity to the larger departmentcommons room next to it guaranteesaccess to coffee, tea, and the usualafternoon cookies. We hope this newspace will be enjoyed and usedfrequently by our undergraduatestudents.
This fall we are having a fundraising drive. You may have received
a letter from us asking for yoursupport for our programs. We areespecially interested in increasingsupport for our Summer GroupResearch Experiences for Under-graduates program that had anothersuccessful run this last summer. Seewww.math .u iuc .edu /V IGRE/reu_report.html#summerreu forinformation about this program. Butthere are other aspects of what we do,most notably our excellent ActuarialScience Program, that also could welluse your support. Later this year, wewill know how successful this fundraising drive has been and will let youknow more about it in the spring issueof the Math Times.
Our new honors mathematicssequence is off to an excellent start.Professor Joe Miles is teaching thefirst term’s class. The curriculum isa challenging introduction to calculusand real analysis that includes manyconcepts and techniques not usuallyintroduced in our undergraduatecourses until the student is in muchmore advanced courses. At this time,there are two dozen undergraduatestudents in the class. We are alllearning from this first experiencewith this new course sequence and are
very excited about its potential for thefuture.
The new Applied MathematicsProgram has started up this year witha really interesting seminar beingorganized by Professor Hassan Aref(Department of Theoretical andApplied Mechanics) and ProfessorRobert Ghrist (a new associateprofessor in the Department ofMathematics). They have planned arich and varied program of speakerswith ample time for questions andinteraction during the two hoursreserved for these seminars onMonday afternoons. Seewww.math .u iuc .edu /~ghr i s t /amseminar.html for more informationabout this seminar sequence. To helpdevelop the Applied MathematicsProgram we are also planning regulargatherings for the participants aroundcampus, and the program’s AdvisoryCommittee is meeting this fall todiscuss the development ofcurriculum for students who want topursue applied mathematics as partof their studies.
I send you greetings and wish youthe very best in the coming year.
The Math Times is publishedtwice a year by the Departmentof Mathematics at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The Math Times is available viathe web in pdf format (go towww.math.uiuc.edu/mathtimes).
Editor Tori CorkeryAsst. Editor Cherri DavisonDistribution Lori Dick
Address corrections and changesshould be sent to:
Lori [email protected] Altgeld Hall (MC-382)1409 W. Green StreetUrbana, IL 61801
Joseph Rosenblatt, ChairDepartment of MathematicsMain Office273 Altgeld Hall (MC-382)1409 W. Green StreetUrbana, IL 61801
Telephone: 217-333-3350Fax: 217-333-9576
2Department of Mathematics
T wenty students participated in the 2002 UIUC Undergraduate MathContest, which took place on April 13, 2002. The first prize went to
Michael Baym, who earned 50 out of 60 possible points. In second place wasKen Scheiwe with 44 points, followed by Geoffrey Levine with 40 points.In fourth place with 30 points, and the winner of the Rookie Award, wasSimina Boca, a high school student who is already taking advanced mathclasses at the University of Illinois. The next-highest scorers were JamesKoerber (30), Tyler Smith (29), Gabriel Lerner (28), Derrick Cheng (24),and Louis Kazaglis (22).
Contest problems and solutions have been posted at http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~hildebr/putnam/undergradproblems.html.
2002 UIUC Undergraduate Math Contest
E. Graham Evans Jr., Undergraduate Programs Director of the UIUCDepartment of Mathematics, received the King Broadrick-Allen Award
for Excellence in Honors Teaching this past spring. The King Broadrick-AllenAward is given by the Campus Honors Program (CHP). The award was madepossible by Dr. Sandra Broadrick-Allen in honor of her husband KingBroadrick-Allen, who was a professor of Speech Communication, Directorof the James Scholar Program, and a longtime supporter of honors efforts atIllinois. Professor Evans was awarded the King Broadrick-Allen Award torecognize him as an instructor who goes above and beyond in teaching withcreativity and profound effect, in mentoring CHP students, in supporting CHPspecial events, and in the hard work of reviewing applications to the CHPProgram.
King Broadrick-Allen Award
T ravis Gaertner, a student in the UIUC Department of Mathematics, hasbeen awarded a Wooddy Scholarship for the coming year. This prestigious
award is given by the Actuarial Education and Research Fund to only fourstudents in the United States and Canada. Gaertner won this honor by meansof his outstanding academic record here, in addition to athleticaccomplishments (he was on the Canadian wheelchair basketball team thatwon gold at the Paralympics in Sydney, and recently went to Japan for theworld championship games). He has also passed three of the professionalactuarial exams, a level that many would be glad to attain within severalyears of graduation.
Wooddy Scholarship Award
Barry M. Goldwater Scholar
David I. Smyth, an undergraduate student majoring in mathematics andphysics at UIUC, has been named a 2002 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar.
Smyth, who was awarded the UIUC Department of Mathematics H.R. Brahanaaward this past spring, spent last semester studying in the mathematics programin Budapest. His goal is to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics and tocombine pure and applied mathematical research, science policy analysis,and a love of teaching through a mathematics professorship at a major researchuniversity.
nineteen at Illinois. He has written joint papers with morethan 20 different co-authors.
Everett Dade has been awarded the 2002-2004Distinguished Mathematical Research Award in
memory of Irving Reiner. The DistinguishedMathematical Research Awards recognize seniormembers of the faculty for their outstanding achievementsand provides them more time to focus on their researchactivities. The other purpose of these awards is to honordistinguished department faculty members of the past fortheir contributions to mathematics as a whole and to theUIUC Department of Mathematics in particular.
Professor Dade received his Ph.D. from Princeton in1960. He spent the years 1960-1967 at the CaliforniaInstitute of Technology, where he was variously aBateman Research Fellow, an assistant professor, and anassociate professor. He joined the UIUC Department ofMathematics as a full professor in 1967, and has remainedhere ever since, except for a total of four years as a visitorat the University of Strasbourg, France. He had a SloanFellowship in 1966-1968, and was an associate in theUIUC Center for Advanced Study in 1996.
Professor Dade is a specialist in the representationtheory of finite groups, an area in which he has written
about 50 papers, and supervised ten Ph.D. theses. In thepast he has also been interested in general ring theory,where he has written about 10 papers and supervised twoPh.D. theses.
Professor Irving Reiner received his Master’s andPh.D. from Cornell University. After Cornell, he
spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study atPrinceton, where he met and worked with Professor L.K.Hua. He joined the UIUC Department of Mathematicsfaculty in 1948. During his 38 years at Illinois, he wrote107 research papers, survey papers, books, and otherscholarly works, with many collaborators. He directedthe thesis work for 17 students. His classic and influentialbook on representation theory, written with ProfessorCharles W. Curtis, was published in 1962. During hiscareer, he received many awards for his outstanding work,among these a Guggenheim Fellowship, the DistinguishedAlumnus Award from Brooklyn College, and a NATOSenior Fellowship. Professor Reiner died in 1986 at theage of 62.
Dade receives Distinguished Mathematical Research award
Friedrich Littmann was awarded the first BatemanFellowship in Number Theory. Littman came to the
UIUC in Fall 1998 from the Technical University inClausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany, where he earned a master'sdegree with distinction. During his time here, Littmannhas been a straight A student and has served as a teachingassistant in several different undergraduate classes.
Littmann is studying with Professor Harold Diamond,working on a thesis in analytic number theory. Hisresearch centers on interpolation theorems using entirefunctions of given exponential type that majorize (resp.minorize) some particular functions. Examples of suchapproximations had been found previously by A.Beurling, A. Selberg, and UIUC alum Jeff Vaaler.Littmann has to date established such relations for a largeclass of interesting functions and has applications, e.g. toHilbert-type inequalities. Littmann expects to completehis studies this academic year.
The Bateman Fellowship is named for EmeritusProfessor Paul Bateman who joined the UIUCDepartment of Mathematics in 1950. He served asdepartment chair from 1965-1980. During his tenure hesupervised twenty doctoral dissertations in number theory,
Littman receives Bateman Fellowship in Number Theory
Front, from left are Felice and Paul Bateman; back row,from left are James McLaughlin, Friedrich Littmann,and Kevin O’Bryant. McLaughlin and O’Bryant, bothPh.D. students, received the Bateman Prize in NumberTheory this past spring which is awarded in recognitionof outstanding research in number theory.
3 www.math.uiuc.edu
4Department of Mathematics
Colleen Kilker, a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics,died tragically July 23, 2002, in Champaign. Colleen was a 1995
graduate of Stroudsburg High School, PA. She graduated with honors inmathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1999. She received aMasters Degree from the University of Illinois in 2001 and was a Ph.D.student in the department at the time of her death. Her research interestswere in number theory and computational algebraic geometry. In additionto Colleen’s interest in mathematics, she was a pianist and enjoyed music.
A memorial service was held by the department on August 27 in AltgeldHall. Friends and Colleen’s advisor, Bruce Reznick, remembered her as“She was somebody who was very easy to like—exuberant, outgoing,determined and smart.”
Memorial contributions may be made to the UI Foundation ColleenKilker Memorial Fund, 1305 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801.
In memorium
RetirementsOxford University Press is re-issuing the book Maximal Orders bythe late Professor Irving Reiner of the UIUC Department ofMathematics. The book is in the Monograph series of the LondonMathematical Society and was first published in 1975.
The Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society said about theoriginal book: “Reiner’s book gives by far the most extensive andmost readable account available of the classical theory of maximalorders. The book has been written with great care, and is a pleasure toread. Unlike many books at such an advanced level, it contains manyinteresting exercises, with hints where appropriate. It is essential tothe library of every working algebraist.”
Of this new reprint, Professor T.Y. Lam wrote: “For years, thisbook has served as the standard reference for the local and globaltheory of orders, and has been cited many times in the researchliterature. Workers in representation theory and the theory of algebrasshould find the book a valuable addition to their personal library.”
Reiner’s Maximal Orders re-issued
The Math Times is now available on-line in pdf format atwww.math.uiuc.edu/mathtimes. If you would like to receive e-mailnotification when a new issue is available, please send an e-mail [email protected]. If you do not have access to the internetand would like to receive a hardcopy of the newsletter please sendyour complete mailing address to the main department office c/o LoriDick at the address on page 2 of this newsletter.
The department has 2003 11x17” wall calendars available for members,alumni, and friends of the department. Last year’s theme was pastfamous mathematicians and was very well received. This year’s themeis mathematical places. If you would like a calendar please send yourcomplete mailing address to [email protected] or to the maindepartment office at the address on page 2 of this newsletter.
2003 wall calendars available
Math Times now on-line
Marci Blocherjoined theDepartment ofM a t h e m a t i c sGraduate Officein May 2002.Some of herduties includem a i n t a i n i n grecords ofapplicants andmath graduatestudents, and secretarial support for thedirector of graduate studies. She is the firstperson faculty and students make contactwith in the Graduate Office. Marci camefrom the UIUC history department where shehad been employed since 1997.
Russell Gordon, professor of mathematicsat Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA,received the G. Thomas Edwards FacultyAward for Excellence in Scholarship andTeaching this past May. He joinedWhitman’s Department of Mathematics in1987 where he has taught a full range ofmathematics classes and has published twobooks and more than 20 papers.
Gordon received his Ph.D. in 1987 fromthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the direction of ProfessorJerry Uhl.
Staff News
Alumni After Math
5 www.math.uiuc.edu
In July, the University of Illinois Board of Trusteesapproved promotions effective August 2002. Receivingpromotion to the rank of Professor is AlexanderTumanov. Jared Bronski was promoted to the rankof Associate Professor.
NSF Career Awards were recently awarded to ScottAhlgren, Robert Ghrist, and Igor Mineyev. TheNational Science Foundation Career Programrecognizes and supports the early career-developmentactivities of those teacher-scholars who are most likelyto become the academic leaders of the 21st century.Awardees are selected on the basis of creative, career-development plans that effectively integrate researchand education.
Over a dozen faculty from the department were listedon the Spring 2002 semester Incomplete list of TeachersRanked as Excellent. They are: Stephanie Alexander,Jared Bronski, Harold Diamond, C. Ward Henson,Gerald Janusz, Richard Laugesen, Peter Loeb,Joseph Miles, Robert Muncaster, Bruce Reznick,Zhong-Jin Ruan, Sean Sather-Wagstaff, KarenShuman, Douglas B. West, and AlexandruZaharescu.
Peter Braunfeld, Professor Emeritus, celebrated 50years with the UIUC Department of Mathematics inSeptember 2002. He was hired by Stuart Cairns as ateaching assistant in September 1952. His advisor wasProfessor H.R. Brahana. He was appointed as anassistant professor to the UIUC Department ofMathematics faculty in 1963. During the past 50 yearshe has worked not only for the Department ofMathematics, but also the Control Systems Lab, theCoordinated Science Lab, the University of IllinoisCommittee on School Mathematics, the College ofEducation, all at the UIUC, as well as 2.5 years at theNational Science Foundation, and summers inCarbondale and at the Education Development Centerin Newton, MA.
Peter Brinkmann, a Doob Research AssistantProfessor, was invited to spend two months at theUniversity of Melbourne this fall. Following hisappointment in Melbourne, he will be visiting the MaxPlanck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn, Germanyfrom October 2002 through July 2003.
Robert Fossum attended the European Congress onComputer Vision 2002 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in
May. Together with Kun Huang of the UIUCDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering,he presented a paper at the Congress. At the conclusionof the Congress he attended the Niels Henrik AbelBicentennial Conference in Oslo, Norway, after whichhe gave a lecture on computer vision at the NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology in Trondheim,Norway.
Julian Palmore gave an invited talk at the ICM 2002satellite conference on complex analysis sponsored byShanghai Jiao Tong University in August. He alsovisited Fudan University to discuss internationalsecurity at the Center for American Studies. He wasguest editor of a special issue of Defense and SecurityAnalysis on Ballistic Missile Defense (September 2002)that is now published. He participated in several eventssponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists duringJune and July. The first event was held in WashingtonD.C. and the next two international meetings on securitywere held at UIUC and in Chicago in July. He was amember of the AMS panel of judges for theInternational Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) inLouisville, KY, in May. In April Professor Palmore gavetwo invited lectures at the University of Alaska,Anchorage, on Chaos, Complexity, and Computabilityin the spring lecture series of the Complex SystemsGroup.
A new course entitled Mathematical Issues in NationalSecurity (Math 267) will be offered in Spring 2003.Julian Palmore will be the instructor for this newcourse.
Derek Robinson was a main invited speaker at twointernational conferences this past summer: The“Bimestre Intensivo” on the theory of groups at theUniversity of Naples, Italy, in May, and “Algebra-Geometry and Interactions” at Hattingen, Germany, inJuly.
This past summer, John Sullivan lectured on his workat seven conferences in five different countries inEurope and Asia. He spent three weeks at the NewtonInstitute at Cambridge University, attending a workshopon Foams and Minimal Surfaces, where there wasplenty of opportunity for productive collaborationsbetween mathematicians and physicists. During theworkshop, he donated a plastic maquette of hissculpture “Minimal Flower 3” to the Newton Institute.
Faculty News Notes
6Department of Mathematics
Meet the faculty and postdocs new to the department in fall 2002
Robert Ghrist joined thedepartment this fall as an
associate professor. He began hiscareer as a mechanical engineeringstudent but converted to appliedmathematics, earning a Ph.D. fromCornell University in 1995. Hearrives at Urbana by way ofPrinceton, NJ, Austin, TX, andAtlanta, GA, where he was anassociate professor of mathematics atGeorgia Tech. Ghrist's work is inapplications of topology andgeometry to problems inspired byengineering and computer science.These include fluid dynamics,robotics and assembly, computergraphics, and nonlinear dynamics.When not doing mathematics,Professor Ghrist enjoys playing withhis children or building furniture.
I gor Mineyev joins the departmentas an assistant professor. He
received his “Diploma of HigherEducation with Honors” in 1992 fromNovosibirsk State University, Russia,and his Ph.D. in 1998 from theUniversity of Utah. He then held agrant at the Max-Planck-Institut,Bonn, Germany, for one year,followed by three years as an assistantprofessor at the University of SouthAlabama before coming to UIUC.His research area is geometric (a.k.a.
Dror VarolinJeremy TysonRobert Ghrist
combinatorial) group theory. In thenear future, he is planning to developsome theory for Gromov hyperbolicgroups and their boundaries.Professor Mineyev is one of theorganizers of the Geometric GroupTheory on the Gulf Coast (G3)conference to be held November 8-10, 2002, in Pensacola, Florida.Professor Mineyev used to compose,play, and sing Russian author songs.He is married and has two sons, aged22 months and 1.5 months old.
J eremy Tyson joins thedepartment as an assistant
professor. He received his Ph.D. fromthe University of Michigan in 1999under the direction of Juha Heinonen.Most recently he held an NSFPostdoctoral Fellowship at SUNY-Stony Brook. His research interestsare in analysis and conformalgeometry in singular metric spaces.He is an avid chess player and anoccasional bridge player, and alsoenjoys outdoor activities such ashiking and canoeing. This summer heand his wife, Rachel, celebrated thebirth of their first child, Elizabeth.
Dror Varolin , who joins thedepartment as an assistant
professor, received his BASc inEngineering Science from the
University of Toronto in 1993, and hisPh.D. in mathematics from theUniversity of Wisconsin in 1997.Since then he was a visiting scholarat the Fields Institute in Toronto inthe winter-spring of 1997, and anassistant professor at the Universityof Michigan from 1997-2002. Hisresearch interests are centered aroundseveral complex variables. To date hehas done work related to geometriccontrol theory, dynamical systemsand algebraic geometry. ProfessorVarolin’s personal interests includemusic and sports. He especially likesto play guitar and soccer and listensto music of many genres wheneverhe can.
Igor Mineyev
7 www.math.uiuc.edu
J.L. Doob ResearchAssistant Professors
A lexander Berenstein, a nativeof Columbia, came to the United
States in 1997 and received hisMasters and Ph.D. degrees at theUniversity of Notre Dame. Hisposition here at UIUC as a DoobResearch Assistant Professor is hisfirst since finishing his Ph.D.Berenstein’s field of research ismodel theory. Most of his thesis workwas centered around defining a notionof independence inside structuresrelated to Hilbert spaces. He isinterested in expanding these ideas tosome Banach spaces and findingapplications for these notions.Besides mathematics, he enjoysplaying soccer and hiking.
Janne Heittokangas, a native ofFinland, received his Ph.D. in
2000 from the University of Joensuu.The title of his thesis was "Oncomplex differential equations in theunit disc." He is interested in complexdifferential and functional equations,as well as all the other theories relatedto them. Heittokangas came to USAwith his wife and baby daughter. Heis confident that working as a DoobResearch Assistant Professor in thedepartment will be very fruitful andrewarding.
Janne Heittokangas Piotr Kowalski
Tobias Kaiser
Model Theory Postdoctoral Faculty
Alexander Berenstein
T obias Kaiser joins thedepartment as a Model Theory
postdoc. He was born in Germany.He studied mathematics and physicsat the University of Regensburg,Bavaria, where he received hisdiploma in 1999. Working as ateaching assistant from 1999-2001, hereceived his Ph.D. in 2001 withProfessor Dr. M. Knebusch. Histhesis was on the Dirichlet-problemin o-minimal structures. Prior to hisone year appointment as a ModelTheory postdoc at the UIUCDepartment of Mathematics, he wasa graduate assistant at the Universityof Regensburg in 2002. Kaiser'sresearch interest is the connectionbetween potential theory or partialdifferential equations on the one sideand vent algebraic resp o-minimalgeometry on the other side. In his freetime he likes to play soccer and tennisand he studies history.
Piotr Kowalski , here as a ModelTheory postdoc, was born in
Wroclaw, Poland, where he receivedhis Masters degree in 1997 and hisPh.D. in 2001 from the University ofWroclaw. He is visiting UIUC fromhis position as an assistant professorat the University of Wroclaw that he
began in October 2001. He has beena visiting faculty member of theUIUC Department of Mathematics in1998-99 and spring semester 2002.He has also visited the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley twice for amonth each in 2001 and 2002.Kowalski's research interests includemodel theory with applications toalgebraic geometry and differentialalgebra.
Funding for the model theorypostdoctoral appointments is from aNational Science FoundationFocused Research Grant to the UIUCDepartment of Mathematics.
8Department of Mathematics
VIGRE Research Assistant Professors
Patrick Bahls most recently hailsfrom Nashville, TN, where he
just finished his Ph.D. at VanderbiltUniversity. He lived in Denver for 5years before that, but is originallyfrom Helena, Montana. Bahls'research is mostly in geometric andcombinatorial group theory, althoughhe has also delved a bit into the theoryof ordered structures. He hopes tomake the most of his three years atUIUC, interacting as much aspossible with the group theorists hereand having the opportunity to teachas much as to learn. Bahls' long-termgoal is to acquire a teaching positionat a school where he can remainactive in research and where goodteaching is a priority.
He enjoys studying languages,history, and philosophy, and does abit of writing on the side. He is avegetarian and enjoys cooking. Healso enjoys running and frequentlyparticipates in road races. His wife,Maggie Hoop, is finishing her degreein the history of religion fromVanderbilt University and keepingtheir snake and hamster company.
M atthew Boylan is fromStevens Point, Wisconsin. He
received his undergraduate degreefrom the University of Wisconsin atMadison. He spent one year ofgraduate study at Pennsylvania StateUniversity before transferring back toUW-Madison, where he earned hisPh.D. in 2002 with a dissertation onapplications of congruences forFourier coefficients of modularforms. He is interested in applyingmodular forms to number theory,combinatorics, and arithmeticalgebraic geometry. While a student,he played on intramural basketballand softball teams. He is also an avidfan of college sports (in particularfootball and basketball), and ofprofessional baseball.
Donald Yau is originally fromHong Kong. He received his
B.A. from the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley in 1998 and hisPh.D. from MIT in 2002 under thedirection of Haynes Miller. His thesiswas entitled "Localization Genus ofClassifying Spaces." Yau's mainresearch field is algebraic topology.Currently he is interested in theinteractions between cohomology ofspaces and their algebraic models,such as algebras over the Steenrod
Donald YauPatrick Bahls Matthew Boylan
New faculty, continued
Two other faculty members werehired this past year, who will join
the department in 2003.Dirk Hundertmark will join
the department as an assistantprofessor in January 2003. He isspending the fall 2002 semester at theMittag-Leffler Institute in Djursholm,Sweden, where he received afellowship to attend the specialprogram “Partial DifferentialEquations and Spectral Theory.”
Alina Cojocaru , a J.L. DoobResearch Assistant Professor, is onacademic leave at the Fields Institutein Toronto, Canada, with supportfrom an NSERC postdoctoral award.After spending summer 2003 atMicrosoft, she will join thedepartment beginning in Fall 2003.
algebra for mod p cohomology andlambda-rings for K-theory. Hishobbies include cooking Chinese andKorean food, or an unbalancedmixture of the two.
Funding for the VIGRE researchassistant professor appointmentscomes from the VIGRE grant receivedby the department from the NationalScience Foundation.
9 www.math.uiuc.edu
Teaching Training for Under-graduates (TTUs) aresupervised activities for undergraduate students
interested in teaching. Under the direct supervision of afaculty member, these undergraduate students participatein classroom instruction learning about preparation oflecture materials and examinations. Four TTUs wereconducted during the 2001-2002 academic year.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs)include both individual REUs and summer group
REUs. In an individual REU, an undergraduate studentworks with a faculty member and involves a componentof independent research. Summer group REUs consist ofa group of undergraduate students working with one ormore faculty supervisors. Three summer group REUswere conducted in summer 2001 in the areas of numbertheory, evolutionary games and geometrical computergraphics. In summer 2002 these three REUs were againconducted along with a fourth one on topology (see thearticle on page 12 of this newsletter for more about thesesummer group REUs).
In addition to all these activities, VIGRE funding hasprovided fellowships for 15 graduate students for the2002-2003 academic year and recruitment of threepostdoctoral faculty each year since 2000. There arecurrently nine VIGRE research assistant professors onthe faculty.
In June 2000, the Department of Mathematics receiveda five-year Vertical Integration of Research and Educationin the Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE) grant from theNational Science Foundation (NSF). VIGRE activitieshave flourished within the department. Now in it’s thirdyear it seems appropriate to highlight some of the activitieson-going in the department. A site visit to review thedepartment’s VIGRE activities is scheduled for this fall.
It is not possible to mention every individual or groupVIGRE activity here. However, a more complete listingof VIGRE activities from 2000 to present is available onthe web at www.math.uiuc.edu/VIGRE.
Research Among Peers (RAPs) are groups intendedto be working seminars that consist of faculty,
postdoctoral faculty, and graduate students. Some 20RAPs were conducted during 2001-2002. Research areascovered in these RAPs include knot theory, severalcomplex variables, étale coho-mology, L
pspaces and
modules, geometry and algebra of computer vision,intersection theory, commutative ring theory, metricspaces of non-positive curvature, and conformalinvariance, intersection exponents of Brownian motion.
Across Level Peers (ALPs) are groups intended toconsist of faculty members, graduate students and
undergraduate students. They differ from RAPs becauseundergraduate students are involved. An ALP justbeginning this semester is on evolutionary game theory.
Graduate Students Seminars (GSSs) are run by andfor graduate students. There is usually a faculty
member associated with the group. GSSs have beenconducted in the areas of algebraic geometry, generatingfunctions, problem solving in algebra, number theory, andrandom graphs and logical limit laws.
Department continues into year 3 of VIGRE activities
“Life is good for only two things,discovering mathematics andteaching mathematics.”
—Siméon Poisson (1781-1840)
The Cairns Memorial Lectures series entitled “ Towardsa Calculus of Symmetry” will be presented by ShmuelWeinberger of the University of Chicago, November12-14, 2002. Over the course of three lectures,Weinberger will first describe several classificationproblems in topology and, in particular, some issues of“quantitative topology.” Weinberger will then focuson symmetry and the role of singular spaces in theirstudy. The main result is a very general local-globalprinciple in the classification of stratified spaces thathas implications for the study of embeddings andalgebraic varieties, as well as group actions. In his third
Weinberger to present Cairns memorial lectureslecture, Weinberger will discuss how to apply generalcategorical constructions of algebraic topology in theservice of geometry. More information is available atwww.math.uiuc.edu/Colloquium/.
The Cairns annual lecture series honors the memoryof Stewart S. Cairns (1904-1982), Professor ofMathematics at UIUC from 1948 until his retirementin 1972. The late Professor Cairns’ family establisheda fund to endow an annual series of public lectures onmathematics to be delivered by outstandingmathematicians.
Department of Mathematics 10
On July 31, 2002, Philippe Tondeur finished histhree-year tenure as director of the Division of
Mathematical Sciences (DMS) at the National ScienceFoundation (NSF) in Washington, D.C. Both the Noticesof the American Mathematical Society and the SIAM Newspublished articles about Tondeur’s success at NSF1.During Tondeur’s time at DMS, the NSF established themathematical sciences as a priority area.The division’s budget for the current fiscalyear (2002) is $151 million, a 25 percentincrease over the previous year. The fiscalyear 2003 budget request would addanother $30 million. The number of NSFCareer Awards has grown from four the firstyear to 20 by Tondeur’s third year as DMSdirector.
Tondeur believes that “one of the main,critical needs is to make the mathematicalsciences a discipline attractive to youngpeople.” Through programs like VerticalIntegration of Research and Education inthe Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE) there are anincreased number of DMS-funded graduate students andpostdocs. Undergraduate students are benefiting as wellthrough funding for participants in the VIGRE ResearchExperiences for Undergraduates.
Complementing the VIGRE program is the FocusedResearch Group (FRG) program which has been an“immensely successful program” says Tondeur. FRGfunds are entirely for research. Research areas coveredby the program include dynamics of thin viscous films,analytic properties of discrete groups, epitaxial growth,L-functions, optimal transport, computational conformalmapping and topological methods in data analysis. ManyFRGs are interdisciplinary, but this is not a requirement.
Another important accomplishment during Tondeur’stenure at NSF is the creation of several new institutesthat will complement the IMA, MSRI and the Institutefor Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA. The newinstitutes are the American Institute of MathematicsResearch Conference Center in Palo Alto, CA; theMathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State
University, Columbus; and the Statisticaland Applied Mathematical SciencesInstitute at Duke University, NorthCarolina State University, the Universityof North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and theNational Institute of Statistical Sciencesin Research Triangle Park.
“I took the job to change things,”Tondeur said of his three years at NSF.
Professor Tondeur joined the departmentin 1968 and served as department chairfrom 1996-1999. He retired in 2002 andis now a Professor Emeritus. During his
career, Philippe Tondeur received research distinctionsthrough two appointments as Associate Member in theUIUC Center for Advanced Study, and numerous researchgrants from NSF and NATO. He served as Editor andManaging Editor of the Illinois Journal of Mathematicsfor eight years. He was a recipient of the William F.Prokasy Award for excellence in undergraduate teachingat UIUC in 1994.
1 “Interview with Philippe Tondeur,” Notices of the AMS49:8 (September 2002) pp. 918-921.
“Proud but Humble, Departing DMS Director Reflectson Three Productive Years,” SIAM News 35:6 (July/August 2002) pp. 11-12.
Tondeur completes three-year term as director of DMS at NSF
Graphic used courtesy of John Sullivan; www.math.uiuc.edu/~jms.
11 www.math.uiuc.edu
I want to support the Department of Mathematics with a gift of $________ to the fund(s) checked: ❑ Actuarial Science Fund (#3030225)
❑ Allstate Foundation Actuary (#3030342)
❑ Allstate Minority Actuary§ (#3040110)
❑ Altgeld Hall Restoration (#3030316)
❑ Bateman Fellowship† (#3071248)
❑ Bateman Prize* (#3071254)
❑ Benzinger Memorial (#3071466)
❑ Bourgin Fellowship† (#3071526)
❑ Brahana and Math Instructor Award* (#3075500)
❑ Kuo Tsai Chen Award* (#3071574)
❑ Coble Memorial Lectureship (#3075820)
❑ Cogdal Math Library (#3071546)
❑ Elizabeth R. Bennett§ (#0062778)
❑ Goldberg Memorial Math Fund (#3031593)
❑ Greenwood and Trjitzinsky Prize* (#3041392)
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❑ Enclosed is my check for $________ made payable to UIF/Department of Mathematics.
❑ I authorize the U of I Foundation to collect my gift of $__________ through the credit card checked. ❑ Visa ❑ MasterCard ❑ Discover ❑ American Express
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This is a joint gift. Please also credit: ______________________________________________________________________
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Contributions should be sent to:The University of Illinois Foundation, Harker Hall, 1305 W. Green Street (MC-386), Urbana, IL 61801; (217) 333-0810.5M 5TJ
There are many different ways that you can support the Department of Mathematics in its educational and research missions.One way to do this is by contributing to funds at the University of Illinois Foundation that are meant specifically for the
Department of Mathematics. Below is a list that shows the variety of individual funds available. Some of these funds areunrestricted in use, while others provide support for the library, funds for maintaining Altgeld Hall, or funding for scholarshipsor fellowships for undergraduate or graduate students.
If you would like more information about a particular fund, please contact Joseph Rosenblatt, Chair, Department ofMathematics (217-333-3352, [email protected]); Robin Fossum, the Department of Mathematics representative at theUniversity of Illinois Foundation (217-333-7344, [email protected]); or Carolyn Pribble, LAS Development (217-333-7108,[email protected]). We enthusiastically welcome your interest in the Department of Mathematics.
❑ Healy Jr. Fund (#3072182)
❑ Hogan Scholarship§ (#3072301)
❑ Hohn-Nash Scholarship§ (#3072826)
❑ Mathematics Fellowships† (#3042439)
❑ Mathematics Library Fund (#3032384)
❑ Mathematics Unrestricted Funds (#3032346)
❑ Nancy Anderson Library Endowment Fund (#3071042)
❑ Number Theory Fund (#3032964)
❑ Parker Memorial* (#3073141)
❑ Reiner Memorial Award* (#3073289)
❑ Schark Student Aid† (#3073396)
❑ Suzuki Memorial (#3034081)
❑ Trjitzinsky Memorial Lectureship (#3073810)
❑ Jerry Uhl NetMath Fund§ (#3043558)
❑ Barbara J. Waldemar† (#0062266)
†support for fellowships §support for scholarships/student aid *support for prizes/awards
Department of Mathematics Contribution Form
Department of MathematicsUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign273 Altgeld Hall (MC-382)1409 W. Green StreetUrbana, IL 61801
NON-PROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE
PAIDCHAMPAIGN IL 61820
PERMIT #75
Twenty-two undergraduate students participated ingroup Research Experiences for Undergraduates(REUs) this past summer.
Professor Slawomir Solecki led a group of fivestudents in topology, both point-set topology and fractalgeometry. The topic area offers many very interestingtopics of study for students. Also, there are a numberof open problems that are accessible to undergraduatestudents in these areas, especially in issues connectedwith the dimension of fractals.
Participants were: Prudence Heck (Rutgers), BryceJohnson (Washington Univ.), Christopher Jones(Youngstown), Michael Mulligan (UIUC), and PatrickWatts (Augustana).
Professor George Francis led a group of six studentsin an REU focused on computational mathematics andcomputer visualization.
Participants were: Amit Chatwani (Princeton), BenFarmer (UIUC), Michael Henry (Augustana), AbdulHamide (Xavier), Wendy Hubbard (UIUC), and YanaMalysheva (UIUC).
Professor Robert Muncaster led a group REUfocused on game theory, Markov chains, and basicevolutionary theory with five participants.
Participants were: Whitney Bush (Bradley), KristieEngemann (UIUC), Ana Pavasovic (College Intl), KenScheiwe (UIUC), and Tim Teravainen (New CollegeFlorida).
Professor A. J. Hildebrand supervised a group REUin number theory with six students. The programconsisted of short courses and lectures, weeklyseminars, group meetings, and individually supervisedresearch and concluded with student presentations.
Participants were: Sharon Chuba (Penn State),David Dueber (UIUC), Aleck Johnsen (UIUC), PaulPollack (Univ. of Georgia), Jeremy Rouse (College Intl),and Erin Wolf (UIUC).
For additional information about the 2002 summerREUs, see the webpage http://www.math.uiuc.edu/VIGRE/reu.
Twenty-two undergrads participate in summer group REUs
