CST Mathematics Update Spring 2018

College of Science and Technology

MATHEMATICS UPDATE SPRING 2018

CHAIR’S MESSAGE This past semester brought with it some major faculty changes. I am very excited to welcome Sam Taylor to our department— what an extraordinary hire! The end of the semester also marked the retirements of David Hill, Isaac Pesenson and Alu Srinivasan, all of whom had remarkable and impactful careers at Temple University. They have all helped shape the department in so many positive ways. One thing is certain, we have big shoes to fill!

This academic year, the department is buzzing with activities that have raised our visibility and reputation, both nationally and locally. The dedicated work of our faculty and staff has resulted in an outstanding Algebra Extravaganza in July, another successful edition of the Numerical Analysis Day in November, new grants, a new American Mathematical Society Fellow, a College of Science and Technology Research Award and two college distinguished teaching awards.

We also graduated six new PhD students, and our graduate and undergraduate students have been competitive in the job market. Without a doubt, some truly great things are happening in our corner of Wachman Hall, and I want to thank everyone involved, including our alumni, for contributing to the department’s success.

I hope you enjoy reading about all of this and more.

Irina Mitrea Professor and Chair

math.temple.edu

New professor Taylor focuses on geometric topology & geometric group theory Assistant Professor Samuel Taylor, a Philadelphia-area native from Voorhees Township, New Jersey, comes to Temple from the Yale University Department of Mathematics. At Yale, he held the title of Gibbs Assistant Professor and was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2014.

Taylor’s research interests include geometric topology and geometric group theory, with a focus on hyperbolic geometry and dynamics. In particular, he has studied the geometry of fiber bundles as well as various statistical properties of geometrically significant groups.

“My research,” says Taylor, “focuses on the intersections of several different subfields of math, from geometry and algebra to topology and dynamics.”

Taylor earned BAs in mathematics and economics in 2009 from The College of New Jersey, and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014.

He has also conducted research at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California.

A passionate educator, Taylor has a deep interest in helping students succeed.

He works to foster an interest in mathematics among younger students, and has participated in math groups open to the public during his time teaching at both Yale and UT-Austin.

“I really enjoy interacting with Temple students,” says Taylor. “They are extremely motivated and eager to learn the material and they are more than willing to work hard.”

Support Mathematics and CST You can contribute to the continued success of CST and the Department of Mathematics by supporting scholarships, undergraduate research, faculty endowment and innovative community programs. Make your gift at giving.temple.edu/givetocst .

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Palmer, who graduated in 2014 from Johns Hopkins University with BA degrees in mathematics and Russian, is a board member of the Temple student chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics. As such, for last spring’s Sonia Kovalesky Day activities, she helped middle-school girls make geometric shapes out of Play-Doh. She will soon select her doctoral research topic. “I’m leaning towards using algebraic tools and geometry to solve polynomials,” she says.

Shelby Stanhope: Postdoc applies math modeling to human immune system Shelby Stanhope, a postdoctoral fellow and research assistant professor, researches mathematical modeling in biology—specifically the immune system’s response to bacterial infections on the surface of implanted devices such as hip and knee replacements.

“I’m interested in using mathematical modeling to gain insight and make advancements that can profoundly impact humanity,” says the Ft. Collins, Colorado, native.

Stanhope, who earned her PhD two years ago from the University of Pittsburgh, serves as the faculty advisor for Temple’s Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics student chapter and helped train undergraduates for this February’s International Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

The winner of the Mathematics Department’s 2016-17 Excellence in Teaching Award has also helped offer workshops that have introduced faculty to new active learning methods—techniques she hopes to use when she pursues a college-level faculty position later this year.

Rebekah Palmer: Doctoral student loves teaching Rebekah Palmer, a doctoral student from Baltimore and a Future Faculty Fellowship recipient, is a terrific teacher.

“I really enjoy teaching college-aged students and adults,” says Palmer, who taught undergraduates elementary algebra last semester. “With adults, there are different life experiences that you can draw from the students and connect with them in a different way.”

“It was a great opportunity because most undergraduates don’t get the chance to collect their own data,” says Jones, a Temple Honors Program participant who continues to work on the research with her UC advisor.

After her May 2018 graduation, the Pennsylvania native will spend a year continuing that research and her ongoing evolutionary genetics research with Temple’s Rob Kulathinal, assistant professor of biology. She then hopes to pursue a graduate degree in either oceanography or planetary science.

Luca Pallucchini: From cancer research to insurance As part of a program at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, doctoral student Luca Palluchini (MS ’15, Math) worked last summer with the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research on mathematical models that predict dosing regimens needed to inhibit solid tumors.

This summer, he will participate in an actuarial internship at Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurer, in its New York State office. Pallucchini is a graduate of the University of Bologna in his native Italy.

For his thesis, he is working with Professor Cristian E. Gutiérrez on mathematical models for metalenses—lenses comprised of ultra-thin metamaterials that could revolutionize everything from microscopes to smartphone cameras.

“I’ve always been interested in both pure and applied mathematics, but I am considering a career in industry because there a lot of possibilities for mathematicians and scientists to explore,” says Pallucchini, who expects to earn his PhD during the next academic year.

Lexi Jones: Flying high with NASA Last summer, Lexi Jones participated in the eight-week NASA Student Airborne Research Program at the National Suborbital Research Center in southern California. She flew aboard a NASA aircraft to sample atmospheric chemicals, and also conducted an independent research project for the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Kudela Biological Oceanography Lab. It involved testing how coastal phytoplankton is responding to rising ocean temperatures.

Aidan Lorenz: Proving his mettle in Budapest Aidan Lorenz, now a junior majoring in both mathematics and physics, was awarded the department’s 2017 Most Promising Mathematics Major Award. He made good on that honor last summer with his outstanding performance (4.0 GPA) at the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics—a challenging two-month, eight-credit study abroad program.

“I was surrounded by students from other top-tier American universities and I discovered that I could hang with them,” says Lorenz. “It was a major confidence boost.”

Lorenz tutors Temple students in math and physics. Since May 2017, the CST Science Scholars Program participant has also been an undergraduate research assistant with Professor Vasily Dolgushev. To study conjugacy classes of finite index subgroups of pure braid groups, he has helped write software to find groups of GrothendieckTeichmüller shadows.

After graduating next year, Lorenz hopes to pursue a doctorate.

Awards and Honors Math Department faculty earned three of six honors at the 2017 CST Distinguished Faculty Awards: Charles Osborne, Assistant Professor (Instructional) The Italia-Eire Foundation Distinguished Teacher of the Year, funded by Dr. Joseph C. Allegra (BA ’70, Chem) Jessica Babcock, Instructor The Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award Shiferaw Berhanu, Professor The Dean’s Distinguished Award for Excellence in Research Professor Berhanu was also recently elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

Fulbright sends Rider to Mexico to teach random matrix theory Brian Rider, professor and associate chair of the Mathematics Department, is spending the spring semester on a Fulbright Program grant at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.

He is teaching a series of courses about his research focus, random matrix theory, to both UNAM faculty and graduate students.

“There’s all sorts of randomness that surrounds us,” says Rider, “but there are certain probability distributions that we understand to be special. Built upon basic questions in quantum mechanics and mathematical statistics, random matrix theory has grown to have implications for, or connections to, an enormous range of areas—including information theory, operator algebras, numerical analysis, statistical mechanics and integrable systems.”

Rider, who earned his PhD from New York University in 2000, has been a professor at Temple since 2012. Prior to his arrival, he was a postdoctoral fellow for three years at Duke University and then an assistant and associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder for eight years.

In 2008, Rider’s work on the so-called beta ensembles of random matrix theory was recognized by the shared Rollo Davidson Prize. He has continuously been funded by the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER Grant, since 2005.

NEWLY FUNDED RESEARCH Yury Grabovsky • Instabilities in Materials Science, NSF

Axel Kohlmeyer • Continuous Integration and GitHub Project Management for the LAMMPS Molecular Dynamics Software, Sandia National Laboratories

Brian Rider • Operator Limits of Random Matrices, NSF

Benjamin Seibold and Dong Zhou • Collaborative Research: Overcoming Order Reduction and Stability Restrictions in High-order Time-stepping, NSF

Matthew Stover • Discrete Groups and Character Varieties, Simons Foundation

Daniel Szyld • Asynchronous Iterative Solvers for Extreme-Scale Computing, US Department of Energy

Samuel Taylor • Negative Curvature in Fiber Bundles and Counting Problems, NSF

Frank Farris makes art with waves This past fall, the Mathematics Department’s main office turned into an art gallery thanks to a stunning exhibition of 30 mathematically manipulated, symmetric photographic images by Frank Farris, professor of mathematics and computer science, Santa Clara University. As part of the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture Series, Farris also spoke at Temple about his new waveform technique. Farris creates beautifully symmetric patterns that draw upon such mathematical topics as group theory, functional analysis and partial differential equations. Five of his works are permanently on display in the department’s offices, Wachman Hall, Room 638.

Chelsea Walton • Quantum Symmetry, NSF

NEW CONFERENCE GRANTS Vasily Dolgushev and Chelsea Walton • Algebra Extravaganza, NSF

David Futer and Matthew Stover • Graduate Student Conference in Algebra, Geometry, and Topology, NSF

Cristian E. Gutiérrez elected 2018 AMS Fellow Professor Cristian E. Gutiérrez has been elected to the 2018 Class of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The honor recognizes his research contributions to the areas of partial differential equations and harmonic analysis and his exemplary service to the community.

Along with professors Shiferaw Berhanu, Irina Mitrea, Igor Rivin and Daniel Szyld, Gutiérrez is the fifth Temple mathematics professor to become an AMS fellow in the past four years.

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EVENTS Cryptography for Kids During last June’s Alumni Weekend, the department offered a Cryptography for Kids program that drew 80 parents and children between the ages of 8 and 14.

Guided by faculty, undergraduates and graduate students, the children sharpened their problemsolving skills by learning how to make and break secret codes.

Algebra, Geometry and Topology Last June, the department staged its Third Annual Graduate Student Conference in Algebra, Geometry and Topology. Jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the department, the two-day conference attracted 114 graduate students. The conference also featured four keynote speakers: Ranato Bettiol, instructor, University of Pennsylvania; Spencer Dowdall, assistant professor, Vanderbilt University; Holly Krieger, lecturer, University of Cambridge; and Emily Peters, assistant professor, Loyola University, Chicago.

Numerical Analysis Day In early November, the department hosted the Mid-Atlantic Numerical Analysis Day, which attracted 37 graduate students and postdocs. Keynote speaker Ilse Ipsen, professor of mathematics at North Carolina State University, spoke on “Randomized Algorithms for Matrix Computations.”

Emil Grosswald Lectures: Berkeley’s Bernd Sturmfels Bernd Sturmfels, professor of mathematics and computer science, University of California at Berkeley, and director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Leipzig, Germany, delivered the annual Emil Grosswald Lectures in late February.

SUPPORT SONIA KOVALEVSKY DAY Temple OwlCrowd Campaign March 20 to May 5 The Department of Mathematics’ Sonia Kovalevsky Mathematics Day for Middle School Girls (SK Day) offers participants engaging math instruction and encourages young women to improve their math skills, consider math-related careers and develop a network of mentors and role models.

Support SK Day at giving.temple.edu/OwlCrowd