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Department News, Fall 2007
Faculty and Student Awards
Kendra
Letchworth, a senior physics and mathematics major at the College of William
and Mary, has been named the recipient of the college’s 2007 Thomas
Jefferson Prize in Natural Philosophy.
The prize is awarded each year to a William and Mary student for
academic achievement in the sciences and for leadership.
Kendra
Letchworth ('07). By Stephen Salpukas
From
left to right: Blair S. Ashley, Kendra L.
Letchworth and Evan A. Saltzman
Two mathematics majors Kendra L. Letchworth (’06) and Evan A.
Saltzman (’08) have been named Goldwater Scholars according to a press
release from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education
Foundation, along with another William and Mary student Blair S. Ashley (’08). Letchworth,
who is majoring in mathematics and physics, has a goal of earning a
doctorate in theoretical physics. She hopes to conduct research and teach
physics at the university level and specialize in theoretical particle
physics or astrophysics. Saltzman is majoring in mathematics and public
policy in order to earn a doctorate in mathematics and to pursue a career
in applied mathematics.
The scholarships awarded to the three William and Mary students were among
323 given for the 2006-07 school year by the Goldwater Foundation to
undergraduate sophomores and juniors throughout the United States. The
scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,081
mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the
faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. One hundred eighty-two
of the scholars are men, 141 are women and virtually all intend to obtain a
doctorate as their degree objective. Thirty-two scholars are mathematics
majors, 234 are science majors, 47 are majoring in engineering and 10 are
computer-science-related majors. Many of the scholars have dual majors in a
variety of mathematics, science, engineering and computer disciplines. The
one- and two-year scholarships will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books,
and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by
Public Law 99-661 on Nov. 14, 1986. The scholarship program honoring
Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding
students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural
sciences and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier
undergraduate award of its type in those fields.
New article on W&M
News Goldwater Scholarship
Recipients in W&M
- Christina Casares, a
mathematics major aiming for teaching in elementary school, received a
scholarship from the Virginia Space Grant Consortium for the 2006-07
academic year.
Faculty
News
New Faculty members
   
(from left to right: David Phillips; Kendall Giles; Dan Volok; Zhifu Xie)
- David Phillips (Assistant
Professor). David joins William and Mary from Columbia University,
from which he received a PhD degree in 2006. His research area is
operations research and optimization, and in Fall 2006, he is teaching
Math 323 Operations Research I - Deterministic Models; and
CSCI 628 Linear Programming.
- Sarah Day (Assistant
Professor). Sarah will join William and Mary in January 2007. In Fall
2006, she is a postdoc fellow at MSRI
in the Computational
Applications of Algebraic Topology program. Sarah received a PhD
degree in 2003 from Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research area
is dynamical systems.
- Kendall Giles (Visiting
Assistant Professor). Kendall joins William and Mary from Johns
Hopkins University, from which he received a PhD degree in 2006. His
research area is fast high dimensional search and knowledge discovery,
network data analysis, and random disambiguation paths. In Fall 2006,
he is teaching Math 106 Elementary Probability and Statistics; and
Math 351 Applied Statistics.
- Dan Volok (Visiting
Assistant Professor). Dan joins William and Mary from Weizmann
Institute of Sciene of Israel, from which he received a PhD degree in
2002. His research area is operator theory. In Fall 2006, he is
teaching Math 111 Calculus I; and Math 211 Linear Algebra.
- Zhifu Xie (Visiting Assistant
Professor). Zhifu joins William and Mary from Brigham Young
University, from which he received a PhD degree in 2006. His research
area is celestrial mechanics, and nonlinear partial differential
equations. In Fall 2006, he is teaching Math 112 Calculus II; and Math
413 Numerical Analysis I.
Other Faculty News
- In the academic year
of 2006-07, Professors David
Lutzer (Fall 2006), Rex K.
Kincaid (Fall 2006), Larry M.
Leemis (Spring 2007), Michael
Lewis (full year), Junping
Shi (Spring 2007) will be on Faculty Semester Research
Assignments.
- Professor Michael Trosset has
taken the new position of Professor of Statistics and Director of the
Indiana Statistical Consulting Center at Indiana University in Bloomington,
IN since August 2006. We wish him the best
in his new post.
- Professor Eva Czabarka
has taken the new position of Assistant Professor at University of
South Carolina in Columbia, SC since August 2006. We wish her the best
in her new post.
Faculty
Grants
  
- Professor Chi-Kwong Li has received a
research grant of $111,868 from the National Science Foundation.
The project name is Problems in Matrix and Operator Theory and
the duration is fromJuly 1, 2006 to June 30, 2009. In this project, he
will work with collaborators and students to study problems in matrix
and operator theory arising in different branches of science. The
emphasis will be on establishing connections and stimulating
interactions among researchers in different areas. (Full
project summary at NSF)
- Professor Sebastian Schreiber has
received a research grant of $25,379 from the National Science
Foundation. The project name is COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH:
Biocomplexity and Environmental Change in a Vegetated Estuarine
Ecosystem, and the duration is from January 1,
2007 to December 31, 2009. This research builds on a decade of
research in a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass (Zostera marina) ecosystem to
address this goal. The proposed research brings together an
experimental ecologist and a biomathematician, employing a
complementary suite of experiments, analyses of continuing longterm
monitoring data across three trophic levels (eight years of monthly
sampling to date), and simulation modeling, to construct and
parameterize a dynamic food web model of a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass
community. (Full
project summary at NSF)
- Professors Chi-Kwong Li and Leiba Rodman are the US
participants of Slovenian Research Agency project: Non-linear
preservers. The co-ordinator of the project is Tatjana Petek,
University of Maribor, Slovenia. The amount of the grant is
1.152.000 SIT (=5890 USD) in 2006 and the same amount in 2007 for the
Slovenian part (travel expenses for Slovenian researchers together
with accommodation and daily costs for US researchers). The project
will enhance the scientific collaboration between William and Mary and
Slovenian universities. Three Slovenian mathematicians visited William
and Mary in Septmeber 2006 for 10 days
- Professor Junping
Shi is one of two co-PIs of a National Natural Science Foundation
of China grant: Applications of singularity theory, generalized
inverse in bifurcation problems and nonlinear analysis. The PI of
the project is Yuwen Wang of Harbin Normal University, China. The
duration is 2007-2009, with an ammount of 267,000 Chinese Yuan (about
33,000 USD). The project will enhance the scientific collaboration
between US and Chinese universities. Professor Wang visited William
and Mary in December 2005; Professor Shi has co-supervised five M.S.
students in Harbin Normal University during 2004-2006.
Faculty
Research Highlight
- Professor Leiba Rodman's book
(coauthored with Israel Gohberg, Peter Lancaster) Invariant
Subspaces of Matrices with Applicationsis
has been reprinted by SIAM as one of the Classics in Applied
Mathematics in March 2006. The original book was
published in 1986 by John Wiley & Sons. Mathematical
Reviews for this book says: "This is a superb advanced linear
algebra text and reference for analysts and engineers. The choice of
topics and emphasis is original, and the book accomplishes its goal of
clearly exposing the central role of invariant subspaces in linear
algebra."
Student
Activities
   
- Many William &
Mary undergraduate students have participated in the annual William Lowell Putnam Competition (a
nationnal college mathematical competition), and Virginia
Tech Mathematical Competition (a regional college mathematical
competition) in 2005 and 2006. In Dec. 2005, 15 W&M students
entered Putnam competiton; and 10 students will enter the 2006 Putnam
competiton. Katie Field (Math 2007) received a score of 23 in 2005
Putnam, which is ranked 367 nationally among 3545 contestants, and a
perfect score is 120; Tina Little, Derek LaMontagne, Shelley
Devereaux, Lei Gao, David Rose, and Erin Catlett also received at
least 9 points. Carolyn Offutt (Math/Acoounting 2007) received scores
of 38 (ranked 17/370) in 2005 and 37 (ranked 22/347) in the 2006
Virginia Tech Competition respectively. Seminars of problem solving
have been organized by William & Mary Math faculty in every fall
semester, most recently by Prof. Nahum
Zobin (1999-2003) and Junping
Shi (2004-2006).
Result of VT Competition:
http://www.math.vt.edu/events/competitions/Vtregional/Results/index.html
Problem solving seminar 2006: http://www.math.wm.edu/~shij/math410-problem-solving/index.html
- MOSt is a William and Mary math
club, and its members are mainly undergraduate students with a math
major. Evan Saltzmann (Math/Econ, 2008) is the current president,
Katie Field (Math, 2007) and Katie Benedetto (Math, 2007) are vice
president and webmaster respectively. It has a new website: http://www.wm.edu/so/most/ , and
the fall schedule includes several pizza problem solving sessions, a
sesssion of introduction to math grad schools, and a student lecture
on an REU project. A petitioning for a chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, a national mathematical
honors society, at William & Mary is also in process in Fall
2006, mainly by Katie Benedetto. Prof. Nick
Loehr and Junping Shi
are the current advisers of MOSt and PME chapter.
Created by Junping Shi,
November 2006
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