Faculty News Briefs

June 2013

During May 2013 Professor Tom Bradeninfo-icon attended the Southeastern Lie Theory Workshop on Noncommutative Algebraic Geometry and Representation Theory. Harvard postdoc Carl Mautner and I gave expository lectures titled "Working with Parity Sheaves."

Professor Emeritus Aroldo Kaplaninfo-icon has been made a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. On June 7, 2013 he gave his inaugural talk titled "The Seven Mathematical Problems of the Millennium." The announcement can be viewed at http://www.anc-argentina.org.ar/web/actividades/actividad645. Professor Kaplan received his Ph.D. in 1971 from Washington University in St. Louis, and he joined our department in 1974 after three years as a Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia University. He remained at UMass Amherst until his retirement in 2002. Since then he has been a researcher at CONICET, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, and at the University of Cordoba. Professor Kaplan is being recognized for his fundamental contributions to algebraic and differential geometry; in particular, his work on the Hodge theory of algebraic varieties with Eduardo Cattaniinfo-icon at UMass Amherst, Pierre Deligne at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Wilfried Schmid at Harvard University.

Professor Panos Kevrekidisinfo-icon had a very busy spring semester. He was invited as one of the principal visitors at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) for their program on Infinite Dimensional and Stochastic Dynamical Systems and their Applications. During the semester, Panos visited and delivered invited talks at the following venues:

1) Department of Mathematics at Imperial College in London in February

2) Princeton University's Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics Colloquium in February

3) Jack Hale 1st Memorial Conference at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta in March

4) IMACS Nonlinear Waves Meeting in Athens, Georgia in March

5) Dynamical Systems Seminar at IMA in April

6) Department of Mathematics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in April, where he visited Zoi Rapti and Nikos Tzirakis, UMass alumni and current faculty members there

7) SIAM Dynamical Systems Conference in Snowbird, Utah in May

At Snowbird, Panos was also awarded the SIAM Activity Group in Dynamical Systems J.D. Crawford Prize. According to its principal guideline, the prize "is awarded to one individual for recent outstanding work on a topic in nonlinear science, as evidenced by a publication in English in a peer-reviewed journal within the four calendar years preceding the SIAG/DS meeting at which the prize is awarded."

Between April 27 and May 6, 2013 Professor Rob Kusnerinfo-icon visited the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach in Germany to participate in both the Progress in Surface Theory and the Geometric Knots workshops there. Since May 29, 2013, he has been visiting the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in England and collaborating with colleagues at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Franz Peditinfo-icon was an organizer of the workshop Progress in Surface Theory, which took place at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach in Germany during the period April 28 - May 4, 2013.

During the period May 7 - August 6, 2013 Professor Hongkun Zhanginfo-icon received a three-month researcher position in France that is supported by CNRS. She is conducting her research at the Centre de Physique Theorique in Luminy. On May 21 she gave an invited talk titled "Diffusive Billiards" at the Ernest Seminar (Team Dynamics, Arithmetic, Combinatorics) of the IML at Luminy. On May 30 she gave an invited talk with the same title at the International Conference Beyond Uniform Hyperbolicity held in Bedlewo, Poland during the period May 26 - June 26. On June 5 she gave an invited talk titled "Optimal Bound for Decay Rates of Correlations for Nonuniformly Hyperbolic Maps" at the conference on Limit Theorems for Dynamical Systems held in Lausanne, Switzerland during the period June 2-8.

On April 29, 2013 the annual Statistics Seminar took place at which M.S. students in statistics in the Department presented their M.S. projects. On May 6 the annual Applied Math Seminar took place at which MS students in applied math presented their MS projects. The Department had its annual reception for graduating seniors on May 11.

May 2013

Professor George Avrunininfo-icon received the College Outstanding Service/Outreach Award, which honors faculty and staff members who have made important contributions to their discipline, department, college, and university.

Catherine Benincasainfo-icon, a Senior Lecturer in our department, has been awarded the prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award. The award is usually given each year to only four teachers on the entire Amherst campus. The department gathered to celebrate her award at the University Club on April 19, 2013.

Professor Panos Kevrekidisinfo-icon received the College Outstanding Teaching Award. The purpose of this award is to recognize excellence in teaching and to honor individual faculty members for their teaching accomplishments.

On April 17, 2013 Professor Michael Lavineinfo-icon presented at the joint UMass/UConn statistics symposium in Storrs, CT.

On April 27, 2013 Professor Anna Liuinfo-icon and Professor Daeyong Kim, along with biostatisticians Rongheng Lin, Jing Qian, and Ed Stanek, gave invited talks at the New England Statistics Symposium in a session organized by Professor Krista Gile.

On April 26, 2013 graduating senior Adam Maidman presented his honors thesis at the Undergraduate Research Conference.

Professor Andrea Nahmodinfo-icon delivered a one-hour invited lecture at the 16th Riviere-Fabes Symposium on Analysis and PDE, which was held at the University of Minnesota during the period April 19-21, 2013. Her talk was titled "Randomization in Nonlinear PDE and the Supercritical Periodic Quintic NLS in 3D." Professor Nahmod has been invited to return to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for their new Radcliffe Summer Program. She will spend the month of July 2013 conducting her research in residence there.

April 2013

Pierre Deligne of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton was awarded the Abel Prize for 2013. In the citation announcing the award, it was mentioned that Professor Deligne did seminal work with Professor Emeritus Eduardo Cattaniinfo-icon and Professor Emeritus Aroldo Kaplaninfo-icon on an algebraicity theorem that provides strong evidence for the Hodge conjecture. The citation is available here. The Abel Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 2003, recognizes contributions of extraordinary depth and influence in the mathematical sciences. It carries a cash award of $1,000,000.

During March 2013 Professor Richard S. Ellisinfo-icon gave two talks at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. The first talk, delivered in the College of Public Health on March 18, was titled "Healing the Stress of Academic Life." A recording of this talk is available here. The second talk, delivered at a Joint Mathematics-Statistics Seminar on March 19, 2013, was titled "From Large Deviations to Statistical Mechanics: What Is the Most Likely Way for an Unlikely Event To Happen?"

John Gambinoinfo-icon, a lecturer in our department, is a recipient of the Residential First-Year Experience Student Choice Award. John was nominated by a first-year student for his positive contributions to the student's experience at UMass Amherst. First-year students were given the opportunity to nominate a professor or instructor who had a profound influence on them during their first semester. Nominations were made for a variety of reasons, including inspiring students to learn, hosting interesting and motivating lectures, going above and beyond to support first-year students, helping students adjust to college, challenging students to reach their full potential, and much more. Along with the other recipients of a Student Choice Award, John was honored at the Academic Engagement Awards Banquet, held on April 21, 2013.

On March 8, 2013 Professor Michael Lavineinfo-icon attended an event, sponsored by the Computational Social Science Initiative, at which social scientists were introduced to quantitative scientists for the purpose of eventual collaboration. On March 20 he attended the Harvard Forest Research Symposium, an annual meeting showcasing the ecological research at Harvard Forest. Michael also reports that the following six undergraduate math majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa:BS-MATH: Emma Kate Dowling, Dong Won Han, Melanie Paige Muller, Jared Michael Post, Nicolas Zac Reyes, and Jennifer Kathleen Sidebottom.

Visiting Assistant Professor Pengfei Zhanginfo-icon gave a talk at the Spring Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS during the period March 1-3, 2013.The title of his talk was "A New Family of Convex Billiard Tables with Ergodicity." Additional information is available here.

March 2013

Professor Andrea Nahmodinfo-icon has been awarded a Simons Fellowship in Mathematics by the Simons Foundation. The award provides an opportunity for Professor Nahmod to spend her 2013-2014 sabbatical year as a Visiting Professor at MIT pursuing ongoing research with G. Staffilani on nonlinear partial differential equations. Information about the Simons Fellowship in Mathematics can be found at https://simonsfoundation.org/funding/funding-opportunities/mathematics-physical-sciences/simons-fellow-program/simons-fellows-in-mathematics-program-description/.

During January and February 2013 the Department conducted searches to fill a position in topology, a position in analysis, and a Five-College postdoctoral position in statistics.

February 2013

On January 17, 2013 Professor Rob Kusnerinfo-icon gave a talk at the Geometry-Topology Seminar at University of Pennsylvania. The title of the talk was "Chirality for Curves."

On January 20 and 11, 2013 Professor Michael Lavineinfo-icon hosted an undergraduate extern, Rachel Venaglia, from Lafayette College. The purpose of an externship is to show a student what it's like to work in a job such as ours.

On November 12 and 14, 2012 Professor Andrea Nahmodinfo-icon gave an advanced mini-course consisting of a survey talk and a research talk at the University of Texas at Austin at the 2012/13 Thematic Program on nonlinear Schrödinger equations and Bose gases from a multidisciplinary, integrative perspective. The program was organized by Thomas Chen and Natasa Pavlovic at UT Austin. The talks were titled "Almost Sure Well Posedness and Randomization in Nonlinear PDE, Parts I and II."

Professor Fernando Zalamea of Bogota, Columbia, a former Ph.D. student of Professor Emeritus Ernest Manesinfo-icon, published two books last year. He will also be a plenary speaker at the Peirce Centennial Congress at University of Massachusetts Lowell in July 2014.

On November 29, 2012 Professor Alexei Oblomkovinfo-icon gave a talk at the Geometry-Algebra-Singularities-Combinatorics Seminar at Northeastern University. During the period January 18-27, 2013 he attended the Winter School on Sheaves in Low Dimension and gave an invited talk.

During the period November 20-28, 2012 Professor Robin Younginfo-icon visited a colleague in Taiwan. He gave a talk at National Central University in Zhongli and a talk at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung. Both talks were titled "Some Exact Solutions of Hyperbolic Systems." During the winter break he also visited his long-time collaborator Blake Temple at University of California Davis.

On January 8, 2013 Visiting Assistant Professor Pengfei Zhanginfo-icon gave a talk at the Dynamical Systems Seminar at Northwestern University. The title of the talk was "Volume of the Set of Transitive Points of Partially Hyperbolic Diffeomorphisms."

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