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News from the Math Department

  • Math Major Forms are now online. New and current majors can use them to choose advisors and carry out other administrative tasks. (October, 2009)
  • ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SEVENTIETH ANNUAL WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM MATHEMATICAL COMPETITION

    Students who enjoy mathematics might like to participate in this year's Putnam competition. The national competitive examination will be given on Saturday 5 December, as usual in two parts: the first half (six problems) from 10 am to 1 pm, the second half (also six problems) from 3 pm to 6 pm. Here at UConn it will be administered in room 118 of the Mathematical Sciences Building.

    The Putnam exam consists of a dozen interesting and challenging problems. Typically, over 3,000 students from over 400 colleges and universities participate in the competition. Individual and team prizes are awarded nationally, and here at UConn we give prizes to our students who perform well on the Putnam.

    Some of the problems can be done with no post-secondary background whatsoever, but that doesn't make them easy, no matter how much math you've taken. At UConn most of us stay over the two-hour break between halves, chatting about the morning problems over pizza and soft drinks supplied by the Math Department. A good time is had by all; even those who eventually score few points enjoy coming to grips with some of the Putnam problems.

    All enrolled undergraduates who have not yet received a college degree and have not yet taken four Putnam exams are eligible. Interested students should sign up on a sign-up sheet that has been posted outside the Math Department receptionist's office (MSB 102) by Thursday 8 October 2008.

    There is much information available online about the competition and its history. In particular, many past exams and solutions can be found in the William Lowell Putnam Competition Archive. Also, late each year the results, problems and solutions of the previous December's competition are published in the American Mathematical Monthly, available in the Mathematics Department reading room.

    The following is quoted verbatim from this year's national Putnam announcement:

    Students who for religious reasons cannot take the examination at the scheduled hours may take the examination after sundown on December 5, upon request by the supervisor and approval of the Director. Such students must remain under the supervision of a faculty member, rabbi, or clergyman from the official starting time for that time zone on the day of the examination.

    Further information can be obtained from Professor S. J. Sidney, MSB 419b/c, 486-8380, sidney@math.uconn.edu. (September 2009)
  • Joseph Pomianowski, a Spring 2009 graduate with a double major in Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) and Mathematics, has been awarded the prestigious Kosciuszko Award to support his graduate studies at Harvard.
    Joseph has also received the Harriet Irsay Scholarship from the American Institute of Polish Culture.
    Joseph will be doing a Master's degree in the History of Science. He came to this subject because of his interest in Stefan Banach, on whom he has already done a great deal of research. (July 2009)
  • Rich Bass has been awarded an NSF grant from the Probability Program for his proposal "Stochastic differential equations: potential theory and uniqueness". (July 2009)
  • Fabiana Cardetti, Tom deFranco (who has a joint appointment with the NEAG School of Education), and Chuck Vinsonhaler are the recipients of a $900,000 NSF grant jointly with Mike Alfano from the NEAG School of Education and Juliet Lee from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB).

    The 5 year grant is the from the NSF Robert Noyce Scholarship Program. The purpose of the grant is to encourage math and science majors to go into teaching.
  • Upendra Prasad has accepted the position of a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of California in Davis. (July 2009)
  • Craig Miller has accepted the position of a Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut. (July 2009)
  • Oscar Levin has accepted the position of a Visting Assistant Professor in Mathematics at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. (July 2009)
  • Mathematics Department graduate students, APR's and Postdocs have obtained the following positions for the academic year beginning in the fall of 2009.
    • Matthew Cecil: Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
    • Yang Ho Choi: Tenure-track Assistant Professor at Kettering University in Michigan.
    • Lin Ge: Instructor at the Mississippi State University, Meridian Campus.
    • Matt Jura: Visiting Assistant Professor at Manhattan College, in the Bronx.
    • Tyler Markkanen: Tenure Track Assistant Professor at Saint Mary of the Wood College in Terre Haute, Indiana.
    • Russell Prime: Visiting Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
    • Kristen Sellke: Tenure-track Assistant Professor at St Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota.
    • Robert Wooster: Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
  • Milena Hering has been awarded the Oberwolfach Leibniz Fellowship to spend a total of 3 months, this summer and next, doing research at the Oberwolfach Mathematics Institute in Germany. (May 2009)
  • The Board of Trustees has awarded tenure to Keith Conrad and Xiaodong Yan and promoted both to Associate Professor as of the beginning of the next academic year. (April 2009)
  • Christine McMeekin is receiving an Oaklawn Scholarship for 2009-2010.  This award is based on academic excellence and leadership. Read more about it on the Honors Program's web site. (April 2009)
  • Eleven undergraduate math majors were elected on April 7, 2009 to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest honor society. The students are Yi-Jun Chen, Jason Michael Crowley, Ryan James Esplin, Eric John Forfa, Nicole Lynn Gottier, Caroline Truc Lam, Thomas D. Murawski, Russell G. Nash, Andrew Nelson Phillips, Joseph Alexander Pomianowski, and Linda Tran. They will be initiated into the Society on Sunday, May 3. (April 2009)
  • Graduate student and Teaching Assistant Elizabeth Glatt will be receiving a letter from the coach of the UConn Softball Team with the following message of thanks: "On behalf of the entire softball program, I thank you for your efforts in supporting our student-athletes achieve both academic and athletic success." Glatt teaches Math 1011Q, and was nominated for this honor by a student in her class. (April 2009)
  • Professor David Gross will be receiving the UConn Early College Experience Program's "Faculty Coordinator Award for Excellence in Curriculum & Adjunct Faculty Development." (April 2009)
  • Professor Alvaro Lozano-Robledo won the 2009 Provost's Competition for his proposal "Math 1132Q Calculus II." (April 2009)
  • Professors David Gross and Jeffrey Tollefson won the 2009 Provost's Competition for their proposal "Math 1131Q Calculus I." (April 2009)
  • Oscar Levin has won the Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL) Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award for 2009 in recognition of his deep commitment and wide range activities in the service of the Mathematics Department's teaching mission.
    The ITL Outstanding TA Award, established in 1999, is the highest teaching award conferred by the university on a graduate student. Oscar Levin is the third mathematics TA to receive this honor. The previous winners from our department were Regina Speicher in 2004, and Jason Molitierno in 2000. (April 2009)
  • Three UConn students do well in the Putnam. Read Report.
  • Professor Stuart J. Sidney has been appointed as a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (CAAS).
    The induction ceremony will be on Wednesday, April 22, 2009, at 4:00 pm., preceding the CAAS monthly meeting, with the location and program for the meeting yet to be announced. (March, 2009)
  • The Mathematics Department's Annual Awards Day was held Thursday, April 16. Opening remarks were made by Dean Jeremy Teitelbaum and the invited address was given by Jennifer Beineke, Western New England College, "Great Moments of the Riemann Zeta-Function."
    Click Here for the schedule and a list of awardees.
  • Professor Masha Gordina has been awarded the Ruth J. Michler Memorial Prize by the AWM - the Association for Women in Mathematics.
    This national prize, which awards its recipient a fellowship to spend a semester in the Mathematics Department in Cornell without teaching obligations, is a recognition of Masha's excellence in research and professional activities.
    On February 6, 2009, the AWM released this announcement.
    More details about the prize can be found at <www.awm-math.org/michlerprize.html> and an article published in the UConn Advance. (February 2009)
  • Professor Sarah Glaz will perform a poetry reading at the UConn Co-op Thursday, February 12 at 4:00 p.m. Professor Glaz will be reading from the poetry anthology Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, which she co-edited with JoAnne Growney. (January 2009)
  • Eugene Boman has won the MAA's Allendoerfer Award for the expository paper "Mom! There's an Asteroid in My Closet!" which appeared in the Mathematics Magazine April 2007 issue (Vol. 80, no. 2, pp. 104-111). The paper was written jointly with Richard Brazier and Derek Seiple.
    Eugene graduated from UConn in 1993 and was one of Izzi Koltracht's first Ph.D. students.
    He is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg. (January 2009)
  • Help the Mathematics Department meet the challenges posed by Connecticut's budget deficit. Click here to contribute to one of the funds supporting the activities of the Department.
  • Professor Emeritus Charles Vinsonhaler has been appointed Associate Director of the Teachers for a New Era (TNE) initiative. (November 2008)
  • Professor Tom Defranco has been appointed Dean of the Neag School of Education. His appointment will start on July 1, 2009.
  • High Level Courses for mathematics majors for the Spring 2009 semester.
  • The sixty-ninth annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition will be held Saturday, December 6 in MSB 118. For more information, click here or contact Professor Stuart Sidney.
  • Hailin Sang (Ph.D. 2008) has been appointed to a two-year position as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. (August 2008)
  • Wolodymyr Madych is the recipient of the UConn Alumni Association 2008 Faculty Excellence Award in Research (Sciences). (August 2008)
  • Emiliano Valdez was notified that a proposal, in which he is one of seven Principal Investigators, will be funded by the Australian Research Council.
  • Joseph Pomianowski, an undergraduate student, has received an award from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute to travel to Poland to research - under supervision of Stuart Sidney - the life of Stefan Banach.
  • Dmitriy Leykekhman will receive NSF funding for his research proposal "Discontinuous galerkin methods for optimal control problems governed by Advection-Diffusion Equations" for a period of three years. (July 2008)
  • Lisa Termine has been appointed to the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at Trinity College in Hartford. (April 2008)
  • Results are in for the Spring 2008 Calculus Competition.
  • Tom Bella, currently completing his Ph.D. under Vadim Olshevsky, has been appointed as Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. (March 2008)
  • Thomas DeFranco is the recipient of the 2008 AAUP Excellence Award in Teaching Innovation. (March 2008)
  • Alexander Teplyaev has been awarded a three year grant for research on "Random, Stochastic, and Self-similar Equations." The grant will be funded jointly by the Probability and Analysis Programs in the Division of Mathematical Sciences. (March 2008)
  • Adam Bowers, former PhD student and currently Assistant Professor in Residence, will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mathematics Department of the University of Missouri at Columbia. (March 2008)
  • Richard Nickl, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow, has accepted a Tenured Lecturer Position in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics of Cambridge University in England. (March 2008)
  • New Course Numbering System ordered by either OLD or NEW course numbers.
  • Israel Koltracht, 1949-2008: Our friend and colleague Professor Israel Koltracht, a member of the department for more than 20 years, passed away. (February, 2008)
  • Postdoctoral Fellow Matthew Cecil was honored by the UConn Alpha Lambda Delta chapter as Instructor of the Year for 2007/08.
    The Alpha Lambda Delta is an honor society for first year students. (February 2008)
  • Evarist Gine has been chosen to receive one of the Provost's Research Excellence Awards this year. (February 2008)
  • Richard Bass has been designated a University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. (January 2008)
  • Vadim Olshevsky has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal of Linear and Multilinear Algbera for a period of five years. Olshevsky is also on the editorial board of four other publications: Linear Algebra and its Applications, Integral Equations and Operator Theory, ETNA - Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis, and the Birkhauser book series on Operator Theory: Advances and Applications. (December 2007)
  • Richard Bass has been appointed to be the next editor for the fields of Probability and Statistics of the prestigious journal Transactions and Memoirs of the AMS. His tenure as editor begins on February of 2008. (September 2007)
  • Alexander Teplyaev has been awarded in the prestigious Humboldt Foundation Fellowship to work on "Stochastic and self-similar equations" with Professor M. Rockner of the University of Bielefeld. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly qualified, early-stageresearchers from abroad, who hold doctorates, to carry out research projectsof their own choice in Germany. (July 2007)
  • Sarah Glaz has been chosen by the Institute of Teaching and Learning as 2007-2008 University Teaching Fellow. (April 2007)
  • Louis Lombardi, Director of the Actuarial Science Program, has been chosen as the Honors Council Faculty Member of the Year for 2007. (April 2007)
  • Changfeng Gui is the recipient of the 2007 Provost Research Excellence Award. (April 2007)
  • Two juniors and nine seniors from the Mathematics Department were invited to join Phi Beta Kappa. (April 2007)
  • Masha Gordina, Ralph Kaufmann, and Reed Solomon earned tenure and have been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. (April 2007)
  • Bill Abikoff received a grant from the Algebra, Number Theory, and Combinatorics Program at the NSF to support the Lars Ahlfors Centennial Celebration in Helsinki, Finland, on August 20-24, 2007. (March 2007)
  • Masha Gordina has been awarded a three year grant by the Probability Program, within the Division of Mathematical Sciences of NSF to work on her proposal "Infinite-dimensional stochastic analysis."(March 2007)
  • Miki Neumann, professor and head of the mathematics department, was named Distinguished Professor by the Board of Trustees on January 30, 2007.
  • The Mathematics Department will host the Abelian Groups and Modules over Commutative Rings Conference June 11-15, 2007. Sarah Glaz, Chuck Vinsonhaler and Bill Wickless were awarded a grant from the Mathematical Sciences Division of the NSA, for the organization of the conference.
  • Joe Miller has received a 3 year NSF grant from the Algebra, Number Theory,Combinatorics and Foundations Programs within the Division of Mathematical Sciences. Joe's proposed research is on "Randomness and Computability." (July 2006)
  • Keith Conrad and Reed Solomon have been awarded the 2005/06 Teaching Promise AAUP Excellence Award. (July 2006)
  • Richard Bass has been awarded a 3 year grant from the Probability and Statistics Program, within the Division of Mathematical Sciences in the NSF, to work on his proposal "Analysis of multidimensional processes." (July 2006)
  • Tara Holm has been awarded a three year grant by the Geometric Analysis Program, within the Division of Mathematical Sciences of NSF to work on her proposal "The Geometry, Topology, and Combinatorics of Hamiltonian Lie Group Actions." (July 2006)
  • Miki Neumann has been awarded a two year grant, beginning in 2007, by the Mathematical Sciences Program at the NSA for his proposal "Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, Applications, and the Inverse Eigenvalue Problem for Nonnegative Matrices." (June 2006)
  • The Department's Annual Awards Day Ceremony was held on Wednesday, April 18 and many outstanding students were honored.
  • The Mathematics Department presented its first Distinguished Alumni Award to Professor Richard A. Brualdi on Thursday, March 29, 2007. The festivities included a special colloquium presented by Professor Brualdi, followed by a reception in the Math Lounge and dinner at the Alumni Center.
  • Annual Calculus Competition — UConn's annual Calculus Competition was held the evening of Monday, March 26, 2007. Twenty-two students participated and the competition was both fierce and at a high level.
  • Slate.com: "The place in America where one has the smallest chance of being killed by nature is Storrs." Slate Article — Journal Inquirer Summary