Department of Mathematics - NC State University

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