Department of Mathematics - NC State University

Drexel Professor of Mathematics Tim Kelley has been named chair of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics effective January 1, 2012.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Tao Pang and two coauthors have won a 2011 Best Paper Prize of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory. Their paper, "Optimal Stopping Problem for Stochastic Differential Equations with Random Coefficients," was judged one of the two best published in the last two years in the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Mette Olufsen is collaborating with researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin and six universities on a five-year, $13 million NIH-funded project to produce a "virtual rat." The computational models will help decipher the underlying causes of diseases, including hypertension, renal disease, heart failure, and metabolic syndromes. Professor Olufsen is the only mathematician on the project, which will include an NC State graduate student and postdoc.
In its September 2011 issue, the bimonthly electronic newsletter PAMS Focus featured the Mathematics Department's Math Circle in the Triangle. This Saturday morning program for middle-school students does "cool stuff" in fun setting.
Professor Alun Lloyd is part of a team that reported in the August 25 issue of Nature on a promising technique for suppressing the dengue fever virus, which infects over 50 million people per year world wide. The virus is spread by a mosquito. The team reported that a strain of the Wolbachia bacterium, which is harmless to humans, can be introduced into a captive mosquito population; the captives are then released into the environment and mate with wild mosquitoes, which pass the bacterium on to their offspring. The bacterium protects mosquitoes from becoming infected with the dengue virus, thus protecting humans. Lloyd did the mathematical modeling for the project, which enabled the experimenters to find the most promising strain of the Wolbachia bacterium. (story)
Mathematics Department graduate Ashley Walls has won Arts NC State's 2010-2011 Creative Award for Dance. Walls, who will begin graduate study in the Mathematics Department this fall, won the award for her modern dance, "That One Should Always." Four earlier works by Walls have been presented in NC State Dance Company performances and other venues. (story)
Mathematics Department Ph.D. student Terrance Pendleton's poster, "Global Weak Solutions for a Family of Evolutionary PDEs," was named best in the Theory category at CAARMS 17 (Conference for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences), held at UCLA June 1- 4, 2011. CAARMS spotlights the accomplishments of mathematicians from underrepresented minority backgrounds. Pendleton's advisor is Professor Alina Chertock.
Professor Ilse Ipsen, an expert on numerical linear algebra, was named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics on March 31, 2011. She is the fifth member of the NC State Mathematics Department to achieve this distinction.
Elizabeth Dempster, a Lecturer in the Mathematics Department, has won an NC State Outstanding Teacher Award for 2010-2011.
Professor Moody Chu is the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences recipient of the 2011 Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.
The Hubert V. Park Classroom, SAS 2102, was dedicated on March 1. Dr. Park (1911-2005) was a member of the NC State Mathematics Department from 1934 to 1978. He was the recipient of two Outstanding Teacher awards, an Alumni Distinguished Professorship, the Alumni Association Award of Merit, and the Watauga Medal, NC State's highest non-academic honor, which recognizes "those persons who have made notable contributions to the advancement of the University." A brief biography is here. The photo of Dr. Park's son Richard B. Park was taken at the dedication.
NC State Ph.D. Rachel Levy, an assistant professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, has been selected as Harvey Mudd's Critchell Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2011. The Critchell Assistant Professorship, a college-wide honor, recognizes a junior faculty member who has "exhibited an unusual talent for mentoring and counseling students in all aspects of their lives." Harvey Mudd is a highly selective liberal arts college that focuses on science, engineering, and mathematics. Among all US colleges and universities, it ranks second to Caltech in the percentage of its graduates who earn Ph.D.'s in science and engineering.
2011 graduate Senior Zach Clawson was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which he will use to study applied mathematics at Cornell University. Clawson, a Caldwell Fellow from Manteo, did an undergraduate research project with Professor Robert Martin and participated in an REU program at Cornell.
NC State University has appointed Professor Steve Campbell a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. The position of Distinguished Professor recognizes faculty members who have "achieved recognition well above the criteria for full professor and [are] considered one of the best scholars in their discipline." Campbell is a world leader in the study of differential algebraic equations, including their numerical solution, control, and engineering applications. He is the third member of the Mathematics Department to be appointed to one of NC State's Professorships of Distinction. The others are Distinguished University Professor and Drexel Professor H. T. Banks, and Drexel Professor Tim Kelley.
Associate Professor Mette Olufsen has been elected Program Director of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Activity Group on the Life Sciences. She will serve from January 2011 to December 2012.
Associate Professor Patricia Hersh has been elected to a three-year term (2011 - 2013) on the Council of the American Mathematical Society.
Susan Crook has been selected to represent NC State at the upcoming Preparing Future Faculty workshop in Washington, DC, organized by the Council of Graduate Schools. Susan is one of just five graduate students from across the country selected to attend the workshop. Read more about her here.

2010

Paul Nickel, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, died on December 10, 2010. Nickel did his undergraduate work at Brown University and received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1959 under Leo Sario. He taught at Montana State University before joining the Mathematics Department at NC State in 1965. Nickel's strong mathematical intuition sometimes left his colleagues behind. He worked in function theory, and was also interested in ordinary and partial differential equations. He was an important factor in the development of a Ph.D. program in mathematics at NC State. Nickel had one Ph.D. student at Montana State (Dennis Garoutte, who was a member of the NC State Mathematics Department from 1966 until 2001) and two at NC State. He retired in 1989. A News and Observer obituary is here.
Emeritus faculty member Herbert E. Speece died on October 14, fifteen days before his 96th birthday. Herbert Speece came to NC State as an instructor in the Mathematics Department in 1947. He was the first Ph.D. student of Jack Levine in 1956; the degree was from UNC Chapel Hill, since NC State did not yet have a Ph.D. program. He obtained a joint appointment with the School of Education in 1949 and administered the mathematics and science teaching programs. He became the first head of the Mathematics and Science Education Department and held that position until he retired in 1980. Speece retained his joint appointment in the Mathematics Department and was the main reason for the close working relations between the Mathematics and the Mathematics and Science Education Departments. A News and Observer obituary is here.
Mathematics Department Head Loek Helminck announced on September 1 that the Alliance for Building Faculty Diversity in the Mathematical Sciences is now accepting applications for its first class of three-year postdoctoral fellows. The fellowships are targeted at minority candidates. The Alliance, which is directed by Professor Helminck, includes, in addition to NC State, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Howard University, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, the University of Nebraska, and the National Science Foundation-funded math institutes. It is funded by an NSF grant awarded in March 2009. Fellows will typically spend two years at an Alliance university and one year at one of the math institutes.
The membership of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has elected Drexel Professor of Mathematics Tim Kelley to a three-year term (2011 - 2013) on the SIAM Board of Trustees.
Kathleen (Katie) Fowler, a 2003 NC State Ph.D. and associate professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, has won this year's Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member from the Mathematical Association of America. The award is given each year to up to three mathematics faculty in the US or Canada with at most seven years' teaching experience. Fowler, who works in computational applied mathematics, has directed ten student research projects in such areas as hydrology, polymer processing, psychology, and physiology, and this work has resulted in five publications. She works with or directs programs including Mathcounts, Pi Day, a summer math camp for middle and high school students, and summer institutes for teachers. She started a student chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics with over fifty members, and she advises the university‘s Mathematical Contest in Modeling teams. She has received two university-wide teaching awards.
An NC State - Harvard Medical School team has won one of first two Lord Robert May Best Paper Prizes, awarded by the Journal of Biological Dynamics to top papers in volumes 1 (2007) and 2 (2008) of the journal. The team, H. T. Banks (NC State Mathematics professor), Marie Davidian (NC State Statistics professor), Shuhua Hu (NC State CRSC postdoc), Grace Kepler (NC State Mathematics research associate professor), and Eric S. Rosenberg (Harvard Medical School), authored the paper "Modeling HIV immune response and validation with clinical data," J. Biological Dynamics 2 (2008), 357--385.
NC State mathematics alumna Maria Hernandez (BS 1982), a math teacher at the North Carolina School of Mathematics and Science in Durham, is one of two North Carolina teachers named by President Obama on June 7 as recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (story). On July 4 the News and Observer of Raleigh named Hernandez Tar Heel of the Week.
Professor C. T. Kelley has been appointed as the next editor-in-chief of SIAM Review. Prof. Kelley takes over from the current editor, Robert Schnabel, on January 1, 2011.
Michael Shearer (Mathematics) and Karen Daniels (Physics), together with colleagues at Duke and Harvey Mudd College, have been awarded a three-year Focused Research Group grant from the National Science Foundation for research into thin liquid films. NC State's share is over $750,000. The principal investigator at Harvey Mudd is NC State Mathematics Ph.D. Rachel Levy. In addition to the research of the PIs, the grant will fund undergraduate and graduate student research, and a postdoctoral fellow.
Professor Sharon Lubkin is the principal investigator on a new four-year R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The project,"Mechanistic mixture models of mechanics of morphogenesis with murine measurement," aims to understand the mechanics and cell/tissue behavior governing the formation of the embryonic lung. The $1.3M project, with co-investigators Zhilin Li (NC State) and David Warburton (Childrens Hospital Los Angeles), involves modeling, PDE methods for interfaces, and experimental measurements in mice. Only about one in five NIH R01 grant proposals is funded, and it is particularly unusual for a proposal with a mathematician as principal investigator to be funded. At the November 6-7 American Mathematical Society Southeastern Section Meeting in Richmond, Lubkin will give one of the four plenary talks. Her subject is "Model perspectives on self-organizing tissues."
Assistant Professor Seth Sullivant has won a National Science Foundation CAREER award. The award, one of NSF's most prestigious for young faculty, is for research using algebraic approaches to statistical models in evolutionary biology. The CAREER award is Sullivant's second major award this academic year. In Fall 2009 he won one of 16 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. He was the only mathematician in the group.
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) announced April 1 that the NC State Mathematics Department has received the 2010 AMS Award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department. This annual award recognizes a college or university mathematics department that has distinguished itself by undertaking an unusual or particularly effective program of value to the mathematics community, internally or in relation to the rest of society. The award was given for "NC State's particular combination of a strong commitment to outreach, well thought-out programs for students, and a long-standing dedication to diversity in the mathematics work force. ...This is a department that manages to do it all---research in a broad range of areas, high-quality teaching and mentoring, strong ties to industry, and a welcoming environment for underrepresented groups. An article in the April Notices of the AMS tells the story of how NC State earned this award.
Professors Steve Campbell and Carl Meyer are among 34 new Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) named on March 31. The 2010 class of Fellows is SIAM's second and the first to be nominated by the SIAM community. The Fellows were chosen for their significant contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science.
John Griggs, Teaching Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Classroom Instruction, and Leslie Kurtz, a Lecturer in the Mathematics Department, were named NC State teaching award winners for 2009-2010 on March 23. Griggs was one of five NC State faculty named to an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professorship, and Kurtz was one of 18 winners of an Outstanding Teacher Award.
Alexey Ovchinnikov, a 2007 NC State Ph.D. and faculty member at Queens College in New York City, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER award, one of NSF's most prestigious awards for young researchers. The award is for research using differential algebraic techniques to develop algorithms for solving partial differential algebraic equations.
Graduate student Anne Costolanski received a 2010 SIAM Student Chapter Certificate of Recognition from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Anne has served for two years as the NC State chapter president. She was recognized for her leadership and creativity in organizing chapter events. The award was presented by faculty advisors Michael Shearer and Ralph Smith on March 31.
SAS Hall, the new home for the NC State University Mathematics and Statistics departments, received an honor award at the 2009 American Institute of Architecture South Atlantic Region conference held in Greenville, SC. Twenty projects were selected from over 200 entries submitted by AIA South Atlantic Region members. The South Atlantic Region includes North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Park Shops also received an honor award. The architectural firm PBC+L (Pearce, Brinkley, Cease and Lee) received a total of three honor awards, the most of any firm in the region. Pictures and a news announcement can be found at http://www.pbclarchitecture.com. Thanks to Don Kranbuehl of PBC+L for providing this good news!
The Mathematics Department has established two tracks to the Ph.D's in both Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. One is the current track. The other is a new track in Interdisciplinary Mathematics. The interdisciplinary tracks maintain a strong requirement in mathematics but offer more flexibility in course requirements in order to accommodate the required interdisciplinary research activities.
The NC State Mathematics Department is launching a local Math Circle beginning Saturday, January 9, 2010. A math circle is a gathering of young people who are interested in learning new mathematics in a fun and enriching environment. There are many math circles across the country, loosely organized through a web site. More details about the NC State Math Circle in the Triangle may be found here.
Patricia Hersh is the 2010-11 recipient of the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize, cited for her "outstanding contributions to mathematical research and to the mathematical community."The Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize of the Association for Women in Mathematics is awarded annually to a woman recently promoted to Associate Professor or an equivalent position in the mathematical sciences. The prize provides a fellowship for the awardee to spend a semester in the Mathematics Department of Cornell University without teaching obligations. More details can be found here.

2009

The NC State Mathematics Department is launching a local Math Circle beginning Saturday, January 9, 2010. A math circle is a gathering of young people who are interested in learning new mathematics in a fun and enriching environment. There are many math circles across the country, loosely organized through a web site. More details about the NC State Math Circle in the Triangle may be found here http://www.math.ncsu.edu/MathCircles/
Professor Emeritus J. M. A. (Tony) Danby, an expert in celestial mechanics who was recognized by an Outstanding Teacher award and an Alumni Distinguished Professorship, died on Dec. 8. (News and Observer obituary)
Professor Erich Kaltofen has been selected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. The official announcement can be found here:
http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/fellows-2009
SAS Hall, the new home for the NC State University Mathematics and Statistics departments, received an honor award at the 2009 American Institute of Architecture South Atlantic Region conference held in Greenville, SC. Twenty projects were selected from over 200 entries
submitted by AIA South Atlantic Region members. The South Atlantic Region includes North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Park Shops also received an honor award. The architectural firm PBC+L (Pearce, Brinkley, Cease and Lee) received a total of three Honor awards, the most of any firm in the region. Pictures and a news announcement can be found at http://www.pbclarchitecture.com .
Tim Kelley's research group on linear/nonlinear equations and multilevel methods is currently featured on NC State's High-Performance Computing web site.
Assistant Professor Seth Sullivant has been awarded a prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Professor Sullivant is one of 16 recipients of the 2009 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering and the only mathematician receiving the award this year. Previous to this year, there have been only three Fellows selected from NC State and only 21 have ever been awarded in mathematics. The announcement can be viewed here.
Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering:
In 1988, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation established the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering to allow the nation's most promising professors to pursue science and engineering research early in their careers with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork requirements. Every year, the Foundation invites the presidents of 50 universities to nominate two professors each from their institutions. Nominations are reviewed by an advisory panel of distinguished scientists and engineers. The panel then selects 16 Fellows to receive individual awards of $875,000, payable over five consecutive years.
For more info, see http://www.packard.org/genericDetails.aspx?RootCatID=3&CategoryID=152
New SIAM Fellows in the Mathematics Department. Professors H. Thomas Banks and Carl T. Kelley were inducted as fellows of SIAM, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, at the SIAM Annual Meeting, held in Denver, Colorado July 6-10, 2009.
Angelean Hendrix, a first year Applied Mathematics graduate student, has been awarded a prestigious three year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to work with Prof. Selgrade. Hers was one of 62 awards in all of mathematics, applied mathematics, and biostatistics.
Ryan Going, a senior in applied mathematics and electrical and computer enginnering, is one of 37 U.S. students to win a Gates Cambridge Scholarship for study at Cambridge University. He is the subject of a NCSU feature story and News and Observer feature story.
Emeritus Professor LeRoy B. Martin passed away on February 12, 2009.
News and Observer obituary
Autobiography
Emeritus Professor Kwangil Koh died unexpectedly on January 26, 2009.
Departmental obituary
News and Observer obituary
Brief biography
Remarks by Emeritus Professor Nicholas Rose

2008

James M. Ortega, head of the NC State Mathematics Department from 1977 to 1979, died on October 24, 2008. A brief biography and an obituary are here.
Congratulations to Denise Seabrooks for 30 years of service and Carolyn Gunton for 20 years of service to the Mathematics Department.
Assistant Professor Patricia Hersh's op ed column on the contributions of the Big Three automakers to science education appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer on December 11.
Professor Emeritus LeRoy Martin has been honored with the nineteenth PAMS Distinguished Alumni Award. Complete details on Dr. Martin's award can be found here: http://www.pams.ncsu.edu/development/awards/da.php.
In recognition of Dr. Martin's contributions to mathematics at NC State, Jim Goodnight from SAS has endowed the "LeRoy Martin Distinguished Professorship." This is the first privately endowed distinguished professorship for the mathematics department.

Leroy B. Martin, Jr. came to NC State University (then NC State College) as a Teaching Fellow in 1949, teaching half-time and working toward a masters degree. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1958, and after a stint with IBM, returned to NC State as Assistant Professor in 1961. Martin served the university in a variety of leadership capacities, including directing the early development of computer science programs and facilities on campus in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1983, he returned to full-time teaching in the mathematics department as Full Professor, and has been Professor Emeritus since 1996.

Martin wrote a more extended biography for the department Web page. It can be found, along with other historical records, at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~njrose/Special/Bios/MartinL.html

Jim Goodnight is one of the founders and CEO of SAS, the world's leading business intelligence software vendor. He received a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics in 1965, a master's degree in experimental statistics in 1968 and a doctorate in statistics in 1972, all from NC State, where he was also a faculty member from 1972 to 1976. Jim and his wife, Ann, are longtime supporters of PAMS and the university through their continued leadership and financial generosity.
Demetrio Labate has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty. The award is described here.
The The NCSU Alumni Association has named H. Thomas Banks as one of the 2008 recipients of the Association's Outstanding Research Award. Professor Banks also won the award in 1996.
Nicole Kroeger, a sophomore majoring in mathematics, won a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2008-2009. (link)
Senior Kasey Phillips, a double-major in mathematics and physics, has been awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowship. She will first attend the University of Cambridge to study applied mathematics, after which she will move to Harvard University to pursue a PhD in applied physics.
Denise Seabrooks was nominated for the 2008 PAMS/Mathematics SPA Awards for Excellence. (link)
Graduate student Anjela Govan's paper and presentation "Generalizing Google's PageRank to Rank National Football League Teams" was given an award for a best contributed paper in the area Data Mining and Predictive Modeling at the SAS Global Forum 2008 conference that was held in San Antonio, TX, March 16-19. This is an annual international conference sponsored by SAS, and this year there were over 3700 participants. Russell Albright from SAS Institute (Cary, NC) and Carl Meyer are co-authors. The announcement and the paper are posted here.
The NC State Alumni Association has named Bob Martin an Alumni Distinguished
Undergraduate Professor for 2008-2010.
Marilyn McCollum has been named an NC State Outstanding Teacher for 2007 -
2008, and has become a member of the Academy of Outstanding Teachers.
NC State Mathematics PhD John Haws discussed his experience teaching high school algebra in the Rio Grande Valley, and how it influenced his subsequent career, in the February 2008 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The article, "A Valuable Diversion,"
is available at http://www.ams.org/notices/200802.
Dynamical Systems at NC State is the subject of an article by Steve Schecter in the January 2008 issue of Dynamical Systems Magazine. (link)

News from 2007 and Previous Years