News from CST

CST BY THE NUMBERS

DEAN’S MESSAGE

Discovery and innovation are at the heart of the College of Science and Technology. In the lab, in the classroom and at research locations around the world, CST’s extraordinary faculty and students are exploring our world and reaching further into the unknown.

CST was formed by Temple University in 1998, and this issue of Outlook chronicles some of the remarkable changes within our college over the past 20 years. You can see some of our impressive metrics on this and the following page—rising research expenditures, growing undergraduate and graduate enrollments and expanding academic programs. For more details on how each of the college’s departments has evolved over the years and where they are going next, you can turn to the magazine’s feature article on page 16.

Across disciplines, top CST scientists—National Academy members and authors of some of the most-cited scientific publications in history—are advancing research on materials, energy, genomics, molecular science, the environment, biodiversity and more. They powered Temple University’s rise to Carnegie R1 status and inclusion among the top research institutions measured by Google Scholar citations.

Data can tell much of the story, but can’t express the pride we feel here at the college for our growing success. I want to thank today’s faculty and staff for their efforts at ensuring our researchers and students have the support and resources to excel. I also want to acknowledge the many achievements of my predecessors in the Dean’s Office and the continuing commitment of the university toward a strong CST. Our alumni have also strengthened the college in significant ways through their philanthropic support, the time they commit to mentoring undergraduates and their career success that inspires our students.

Today’s CST, with six departments, a dozen research centers, growing technology transfer to the marketplace and powerful research partnerships across Philadelphia and around the world, remains a potent engine for discoveries that dramatically enhance all of our lives. Going forward, CST will continue to invest in recruiting top researchers and talented students, to fully supporting their work and education and to engaging alumni in the life of the college.

In science—as in our lives—much has changed in two decades. CST’s commitment to advancing science and teaching—and to creating, exploring and innovating—remains steadfast.

FY09FY10FY11FY12FY13FY14FY15FY16FY17FY18

$ 189,407,240

TOTAL RESEARCH GRANT EXPENDITURES, FY09-FY18

RESEARCH EXPENDITURES

10,560,751

14,296,997

16,708,898

15,547,526

15,125,059

15,944,253

20,407,431

23,263,772

28,144,808

29,407,745

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Sincerely,

Michael L. Klein, FRS Dean and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science 1,458

BIOLOGY UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS, CST’S LARGEST, 2017

2 College of Science and Technology

419%

INCREASE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS, 2008-2017

65

BACHELOR’S, MASTER’S, DOCTORAL AND CERTIFICATE ACADEMIC PROGRAMS, 2017

550

CST UNDERGRADUATES IN THE TEMPLE HONORS PROGRAM, LARGEST OF ANY TU SCHOOL OR COLLEGE, 2017

3rd

LARGEST TEMPLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL/COLLEGE BASED ON UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE ENROLLMENT, 2017-2018

Top 25

RESEARCH INSTITUTION BASED ON GOOGLE SCHOLAR CITATIONS

87

TENURED AND TENURE-TRACK FACULTY HIRED SINCE 2007

600

GRADUATE ENROLLMENT

524

5,000UNDERGRADUATE ENROLLMENT

500

400

300

200

228

260

291 290

320

362 380 412

447

4,0003,000

2,000

3,988 4,055

3,253 3,417 3,583 3,698 3,647 3,685 3,743 3,807

100

1,0000

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 20170

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

OUTLOOK / Fall 20183

Photos this page: Kelly & Massa

5

New research hub

8 11

Advancing autism therapyAntarctic field campaign

N E W S

Sherry Gillespie (PhD ’75, Physics) (top left) spoke to more than 400 graduates earning bachelor’s, master’s, professional science master’s and doctoral degrees at the CST 2018 spring graduation ceremony at Temple University’s McGonigle Hall.

SPRING GRADUATION SHOWCASES EXCELLENCE

CST honored more than 400 graduates earning bachelor’s, master’s, professional science master’s and doctoral degrees at its 2018 spring graduation ceremony at Temple University’s McGonigle Hall.

Dean Michael L. Klein, FRS welcomed the graduates and their families to the ceremony and commended their determination. Keynote speaker Sherry Gillespie (PhD ’75, Phys) a leader in the semiconductor industry and a former Congressional Fellow to the U.S. Senate on science and public policy, shared her impressions of an evolving CST. “It feels great knowing that today’s graduates have academic resources for both research and education that I could only have dreamed about,” said Gillespie.

The ceremony’s student speaker was Samuel Cook, a magna cum laude mathematics and computer science graduate. He served as ambassador for the Temple Honors Program and president of the Temple German Society. Cook accepted a position in Germany as a big-data engineer for SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software.

Finally, then-president of the CST Alumni Board, Sina Adibi (BS ’84, CIS, FOX ’86), was the first to welcome the Class of 2018 into the Temple University Alumni Association. “Temple is now an integral part of you,” Adibi said.

—Hannah Amadio, CLA ’18

4 College of Science and Technology

Hannah Amadio

FAR-REACHING DELAWARE RIVER WATERSHED COLLABORATION

NEW HUB FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

CST’s new Center for Computational Mathematics and Modeling (C2M2) aims to provide a home base for cross-disciplinary research between mathematics, engineering and other sciences, as well as to give students from across Temple opportunities to turn theoretical ideas into hands-on, practical learning.

Associate Professor Benjamin Seibold, the center’s director, said, “sometimes studies in mathematics fall short of reality because of the lack of a connection to experimental or engineering practices. The center will provide hands-on resources, and a place where teams come together to solve real-world problems in a practical lab experience with a foundation in computational mathematics.”

For example, students in C2M2, under the supervision of Associate Professor Gillian Queisser, are using virtual reality to immerse themselves in a visual world of neuroscience geometry, data and computation. Several students are using a combination of models, simulations and robotic experiments to understand how self-driving cars impact traffic flow.

In addition to their own research, students can interact with peers and faculty from across disciplines. “One student builds a robot and controller,” Seibold explained, “and another student looks at real traffic data and develops a traffic model that can be incorporated on the robots. Collaboratively, they build a platform that can provide new insights into real traffic flow.”

The Department of Earth & Environmental Science is part of a wide-ranging effort to protect and restore clean water in the Delaware River watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people. Funded by the William Penn Foundation and known as the Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI), the $40m effort will support the work of 65 non-governmental organizations and researchers, including Professor Laura Toran through $1.1m in research funding for her lab.

“The focus of our work is to provide monitoring of suburban Philadelphia stormwater improvement efforts,” says Toran, who noted that the foundation has been funding Temple’s watershed research efforts for nearly a decade. “Currently there are numerous regulations in place, but not enough understanding on what is truly effective.”

In the 13,500-square-mile Delaware River watershed, population growth and sprawl are driving significant impacts to the watershed by shrinking and fragmenting forests that are critical to protecting clean water. Runoff from paved surfaces and agricultural fields carry pesticides, chemicals and other toxins into our streams and rivers. These growing problems will threaten drinking water for millions of people if left unaddressed.

“Urban hydrology is a challenge and one way we tackle it is with collaborations like DRWI, that provide dedicated funding and talented researchers,” said Toran. “This project is attracting top-notch young researchers to Temple, the next generation of scientists who will move this important work forward.”

—Greg Fornia, KLN ’92

—Hannah Amadio, CLA ’18

OUTLOOK / Fall 20185

Temple University

N E W S

Marcus Forst

PHYSICS MAJOR MARCUS FORST WINS TEMPLE’S FIRST GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIP

After years of hard work and adversity that included a serious illness, Marcus Forst has been selected as a 2018 Barry Goldwater Scholar, the first Temple student to ever win this honor.

The Goldwater Scholarship is the most prestigious STEM award for undergraduates, and the competition is fierce—the average GPA of recipients stands at 3.95. Granting awardees up to $7,500 per year, this scholarship has been called “the Rhodes Scholarship of STEM.”

“It feels good to have accomplished this at Temple, especially since I am the first one ever,” Forst said. “I am definitely honored.”

In 2015, Forst was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma often found in children and teens. Forst’s illness forced him to miss nearly a year of classes.

Forst used one of his first physics research projects in his Goldwater application. He proposed a new way to study non-Joulian magnets using a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM) by coating them in a super-conductor to allow STM to gain magnetic resolution.

By fall of sophomore year, Forst enrolled in CST’s Undergraduate Research Program (URP) and began working with Professor Maria Iavarone. “URP allowed me to learn the lab, learn theory and learn physics hands on,” Forst said. “It also prepared me for my independent research project—creating films of molybdenum disulfide, a material that acts like silicon which I hope will eventually be used to make atomically thin electronic devices.

“The scholarship…will also help me stand out when I apply to graduate schools,” Forst said. “I am going to get a PhD in physics, and having a Goldwater will give me a little bit of a leg up in the application process.”

—Hannah Amadio, CLA ’18

6College of Science and Technology

Photos this page: Kelly & Massa

More than 160 people attended the Awards, Scholarships and Student Recognition Luncheon, where more than 90 honors were presented.

STUDENTS AND ALUMNI GATHER FOR RECOGNITION LUNCHEON

CST alumni and friends returned to campus for the Scholarships, Awards and Student Recognition Luncheon, where more than 90 honors were presented.

Held in the Science Education and Research Center lobby, the ceremony honored students from the departments of Biology; Chemistry; Computer & Information Sciences; Earth & Environmental Science; Mathematics; and Physics, as well as from TUTeach and the Undergraduate Research Program. This year, two new awards were announced: the Jay Novik Endowed Graduate Fellowship and the Joseph and Patricia Curcillo Undergraduate Research Program Scholars Fund.

The luncheon drew a crowd of close to 160 people including awardees and CST alumni and friends who have made significant contributions to awards or scholarships. Attendees included Albert Brown (BA ’64, Chem) and Marie Koals, EDU ’63, Albert B. Brown Chemistry Scholarship; Professor Emeritus Theodore Burkhardt, Stanislav Kotsev (CST ’99) Memorial Award; Henry Harrison, James A. Harrison Memorial Award; Gerald Kean (BA ’65, Bio) and Marlene Chachkin, Chachkin-Kean Fund for Undergraduate Research; Professor Mia Luehrmann, Natan Luehrmann- Cowen Memorial Award; Steven Petchon, FOX ’80, Petchon Family CIS Endowed Scholarship; Rosemary Poole, J.A. Poole Award for Exceptional Department Service by an Undergraduate; David Tepper (BA ’64, Math; CLA ’66, ’69), David Tepper and Elaine Kowalewski Scholarship in Mathematics; and Seda Tarzian (BA ’48, Bio), Seda Tarzian Endowed Scholarship.

OUTLOOK / Fall 20187

N E W S

Temple University

OWL’S NEST 2 TAKES FLIGHT

Backed by more than $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement Program (CURE), U.S. Army Research Laboratory and CST, Professor Axel Kohlmeyer and Assistant Professor Richard Berger unveiled an improved Linux cluster for scientific computing: Owl’s Nest 2.

Representing a monumental step forward in computational research capability, Owl’s Nest 2 enables Temple to compete with the world’s leading research institutions. The system has more than three times the computing power and more than 10 times the data-storage capacity of the original Owl’s Nest high-performance computing, or HPC, system, built more than six years ago. The new cluster features improved hardware that can process more information faster and run more advanced computations as it provides the combined computing power of about 1,500 typical desktop computers.

“One of the most important initiatives of Dean Michael L. Klein here at Temple is boosting computational science,” said Kohlmeyer. “It is crucial that Temple has suitable high-performance computing resources for advanced research.”

Any Temple University researcher with compatible HPC needs can apply for access. “Instead of having to rent computers elsewhere or writing a proposal and waiting to get a time slot at one of the national supercomputing centers, Temple faculty and students will now have 24/7, free access to the cluster,” Berger said.

—Hannah Amadio, CLA ’18

Professor Emeritus John Nosek developed GAINS to advance early-intervention autism therapy.

GAINS SOFTWARE ADVANCES AUTISM THERAPY

A 10-year quest by John Nosek, professor emeritus of computer and information sciences, has resulted in new software that advances early-intervention autism therapy.

Nosek’s solution: GAINS, the Guidance Assessment and Information System. GAINS incorporates knowledge of the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) process, instructor and student to provide real-time process and decision support for instructors. ABA treatment must be delivered early in life, and that process must be consistent and build on previous successes. This has been difficult to achieve, because ABA has been paper-based and solely human dependent, and ABA therapists have high turnover rates.

GAINS acts as a virtual assistant for ABA therapists. Instead of having to look back through voluminous binders to determine a child’s progress or try to pick up on where another therapist left off, GAINS tells the therapist what skill to work on next and makes decisions in real time about the best therapy session sequence. Years of testing included user-experience research at a local autism treatment center that showed a 50 percent increase in performance with GAINS.

GAINS launched last year by Guiding Technologies, a Temple spinoff company commercializing the technology. NSF funding for GAINS now stands at $1.4 million. Ben Franklin Partners, Independence Blue Cross and Safeguard Scientifics have together invested an additional $500,000.

—Bruce E. Beans

Assistant Professor (Research) Richard Berger

8 College of Science and Technology

Associate Professor Erik Cordes (far right) and his team defined—for the first time—the habitat zones of an underwater seamount.

HIDDEN DEEP-SEA CORAL REEF DISCOVERED OFF SOUTH CAROLINA COAST

Associate Professor of Biology Erik Cordes, as chief scientist, lead the expedition Deep Search 2018 and its discovery of a giant deep-sea coral reef system 160 miles off the South Carolina coast. The 15-day voyage aboard the research vessel Atlantis included scientists from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and US Geological Survey.

Dives in the Alvin submersible confirmed the existence of the reef, and based on observations, researchers estimate it is at least 85 miles long. “This is a huge feature,” says Cordes, noting the ecosystem is unlike anything he has seen, with “mountains” of corals. “It’s incredible that it stayed hidden off the U.S. East Coast for so long.”

Cordes was also part of an expedition to the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in the Pacific where his team defined—for the first time in history—habitat zones of a seamount from the deep-sea all the way to the surface. Once thought only to be marine hazards, undersea mountains are now understood to sustain a variety of marine life, including deep-sea coral gardens to shallow-water reefs. Cordes’s team also discovered at least two new species of coral and crab.

The expedition, supported by NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, was aboard the R/V Falkor, owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. Using SuBastian, a remotely operated underwater vehicle, Cordes captured one of the deepest sightings of mantis shrimp, and filmed deep coral reefs, dumbo octopuses and six-gill sharks.

N E W S

NEI NAMED JOHN SCOTT AWARD WINNER

THREE CST FACULTY MEMBERS AND ONE BOV MEMBER HAVE EARNED THE JOHN SCOTT AWARD.

Masatoshi Nei, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Biology, has won the prestigious John Scott Award for contributing to the “comfort, welfare and happiness” of humankind. Past winners include Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk and Nikola Tesla.

Nei has been a major contributor to population and evolutionary genetics theory throughout his distinguished career. He is one of a select few to have a statistic named for him, and “Nei’s genetic distance” is a cornerstone of population genetic analyses. His many awards include the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, in 2013, and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, Genetics Society of America.

Nei, the third CST faculty member to win the Scott Award, joins John Perdew, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics and Chemistry, and Franklin A. Davis, professor emeritus of chemistry. Madeleine Joullie, professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania who currently serves on CST’s Board of Visitors, was also honored in 2015 for her research on the synthesis of natural products, which has led to the creation of antiviral and antibacterial compounds.

EVOLUTIONARY TIME EXPLAINS WHY SOME AREAS HAVE MORE SPECIES

Scientists have long debated why some regions of the Earth, such as the tropics, have more species than other regions. A CST-led international team has, for the first time, tested all of the major hypotheses simultaneously and come up with an answer—time. Groups of organisms that have occupied areas longer have more species because they have had more time to produce them. This conclusion goes against the prevailing thought in the fields of ecology and evolution that ecological factors—such as the interactions of species and their environment—primarily determine the diversity and distribution of species around the globe.

“Previous studies usually focused on one or two explanations,” said Julie Marin, assistant professor (research) at CST’s Center for Biodiversity and lead author of the work published online in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B. “We found that the simplest explanation—time—was the winner when we evaluated the relative contribution of all of the previous suggested explanations, using data from 27,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates such as mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.”

Although time is a simple concept, it is difficult information to obtain because the vast majority of species have no fossil record. Instead, these researchers used ’timetrees,’ evolutionary trees scaled to geologic time, built from DNA sequence data. “Timetrees are accelerating research in many areas including this one,” said Laura H. Carnell Professor Blair Hedges, director of the Center for Biodiversity. “With these important data we could directly test the time hypothesis against the others.”

10 College of Science and Technology

GLOBAL HACKATHON BRINGS PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE STUDENTS TOGETHER AT TEMPLE

Assistant Professor Atsuhiro Muto

More than 150 students gathered in the Howard Gittis Student Center to participate in CST’s annual Local Hack Day hackathon.

The event brought together Temple University and Philadelphia area college students and allowed them free access to networking with representatives from SEI, CapTech, Elsevier, Guru, Vangaurd and Unisys all of which sponsored the event. Students also participated in a 12-hour day building relationships with other hackers in their community, troubleshooting and discussing new technology.

“The employer representatives who came to Temple spent the day working alongside the students and were almost all Department of Computer & Information Sciences alumni,” said Rose McGinnis, director of CST’s Office of Student Professional Development.

“These developers, designers and creators helped guide the hackathon participants in coding activities as well as offering advice on bringing students’ own innovative ideas to life. Without the support and dedication of these alumni, this hackathon would not have been such a success.”

CST JOINS LARGEST EVER US-UK ANTARCTIC SCIENTIFIC FIELD CAMPAIGN

Assistant Professor Atsuhiro Muto is part of the largest ever United States-United Kingdom collaborative scientific field campaign to investigate the forces that could eventually collapse the massive Thwaites Glacier in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Thwaites already accounts for four percent of global sea-level rise, so scientists seek to understand how the glacier could potentially disappear in the next several decades or centuries.

Muto is co-principal investigator on two of the eight projects in the initiative, bringing in more than $500,000 in research funding to the Department of Earth & Environmental Science. His work will help scientists understand the factors that could be causing ice at Thwaites to slide into the ocean more easily and, once it meets warm waters, melt and break away more quickly.

Muto, a glaciologist, will conduct seismic and gravity measurements to determine two critically needed data points: the bathymetry, or ocean depth, beneath the Thwaites ice shelf, the portion that floats on the water, and the consistency of the ground beneath the ice sheet, the portion that sits on the land.

“Both of these data points determine how quickly ice will move off of the land and how susceptible floating ice is to melting and thinning caused by warm oceans,” Muto said. “At Thwaites, we just don’t know the depth of the ocean beneath the shelf or if the land beneath the ice sheet is made of soft sediment or hard bedrock.”

—Greg Fornia, KLN ’92

OUTLOOK / Fall 201811

N E W S

INVESTIGATING QCD DYNAMICS

Greg Fornia

Assistant Professor Martha Constantinou recently received her first National Science Foundation grant to research hadrons. More than 99 percent of the mass of the visible world resides in hadrons which are bound states of quarks and gluons, the fundamental constituents of Quantum Chromodynamics. QCD, which is the theory governing the strong force, successfully describes a wide range of complex processes from the sub-nuclear interactions, to macroscopic phenomena, such as the state of matter at the birth of the universe.

The three-year, $240,000 grant enables Constantinou to investigate questions surrounding QCD dynamics that remain nearly a half century after QCDs were first explored. She will be using powerful computers to make ab initio calculations in Lattice QCD in order to study the protons that are at the heart of hadronic matter.

“A better understanding of the proton structure will be valuable for the interpretation and guidance of experiments,” said Constantinou, “and might shed light on long-standing puzzles, such as the proton spin.”

Chemistry faculty (clockwise from l to r): Professor Ann Valentine; Associate Professor Kallie Willets; Assistant Professor Carol Manhart; Assistant Professor Sarah Wengryniuk; Professor Stephanie Wunder; and Professor Spiridoula Matsika

CHEMISTRY NATIONAL LEADER IN GENDER DIVERSITY

With the arrival of Assistant Professor Carol Manhart in 2018, seven of the Chemistry Department’s 24 tenure-track faculty, or 29 percent, are women. That’s a significant increase from just 11 percent in 2003—and one of the highest, if not the highest, female percentage at any Research 1 university in the country. The national average is 19 percent. The department now has female faculty at every stage of their careers and in every area: organic, inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry and biochemistry. “It totally normalizes the business of being a woman in chemistry, which is all you want,” said Professor Ann Valentine, who is also department vice chair. “It’s unremarkable, which is remarkable.”

Two of the original seven members of the department—F. Elizabeth Rumrill (hired in 1927) and Hazel Tomlinson (1928)—were women. The next women hired, however, were Professor Stephanie Wunder (1985) and Professor Sue Jansen-Varnum (1987), currently the longest serving chemistry professors.

With 51 percent of undergraduate majors and a third of PhD students now female, the faculty’s gender diversity is having a positive influence on students, both male and female.

12 College of Science and Technology

CST’s New tenure-track faculty

Mihaela Ignatova

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

Mihaela Ignatova, a former Instructor at Princeton University, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and assistant professor at UC Riverside, earned her PhD in mathematics in 2011 from the University of Southern California.

Ignatova brings nearly 15 years of teaching experience to her new role in the Mathematics Department. Her work has been published in the Nonlinearity Journal as well as the Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, and she has been invited to lecture at more than 40 universities, including Princeton, UCLA, UC Riverside and Stanford University.

A passionate educator, Ignatova has taught mathematics courses ranging from basic math to upper-level, multi-variable calculus courses. The Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Merit Award winner is tri-lingual, and her research interests include partial differential equations, mathematical fluid dynamics and harmonic analysis.

Carol Manhart

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

Biochemist Carol Manhart joins the department faculty as an assistant professor after serving since 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University. Funded by a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship award, her research at Cornell focused on DNA mismatch repair and genetic recombination in S. cerevisiae, or baker’s yeast.

Manhart earned her BS degree from the University of Arizona and her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. While in Boulder, she won the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry’s Graduate Teaching Excellence Award three different years. “Teaching is a passion of mine,” says Manhart, who will be teaching both undergraduate and graduate students.

Furthering her postdoctoral research, at Temple Manhart plans to “investigate how the proteins involved in the repair of DNA mismatches or mutations are activated in order to fix errors in the genetic code.”

Anna R. Moore

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

Anna Moore earned her PhD in biomedical sciences with an emphasis on neuroscience from the University of Connecticut Health Center after earning her BS in biology from James Madison University. She comes to Temple after seven years as a postdoctoral fellow in Brandeis University’s Department of Biology. While there, an NIH Institutional Training Grant for Neuroscience laid the foundation for a three-year NIMH K01 Fellowship.

While pursuing her doctoral degree, the ability to monitor neuronal activity in real time sparked Moore’s interest in her current area of research. At Temple, her laboratory will continue to explore the molecular mechanisms by which neuronal activity instructs circuit formation and function in the mammalian brain. A major goal of this research is to uncover how the interplay between genes and activity works to shape the pathways of the nervous system. The Moore lab addresses these questions using mouse models and a variety of approaches including electrophysiology, molecular biology and genetics.

Atilla Yilmaz

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

After graduating summa cum laude from Bogazici University, Turkey, with a BS in mathematics and a BS in electrical and electronics engineering, Atilla Yilmaz earned his MS and PhD in mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.

Bringing more than 15 years of teaching experience to CST, Yilmaz was a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and then a Morrey Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley.

He spent four years rising through the ranks at Bogazici University, served as an associate professor at Koc University, Turkey, and most recently was a visiting associate professor at the Courant Institute.

The Istanbul native has authored 15 publications in mathematics, has been invited to speak at more than 30 universities, including Temple and has recently been awarded the Young Scientist Award by the Science Academy of Turkey. At Temple, Yilmaz will pursue his research interests in probability theory and stochastic processes, statistical mechanics, partial differential equations, stochastic optimal control and population dynamics.

OUTLOOK / Fall 201813