Volume 5 Issue 2

P R O F E S S O R S I M O N T A V E N E R B E G I N S P O S T A S A S S O C I A T E D E A N O F

A C A D E M I C S F O R N A T U R A L S C I E N C E S

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Celebrating CSU Milestones

A special All-University gathering will be held in May to honor faculty and staff retirements and to recognize those who have reached 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 years of service and d e d i c a t i o n t o C S U . Congratulations to the following individuals being recognized from the CNS and Dept of Mathematics:

James Sites 40 years of service

Rick Miranda 30 years of service

Georgeann Venis 25 years of service

Simone Clasen 10 years of service

Christie Franklin 10 years of service

S P E C I A L R E C O G N I T I O N

In May 2011, the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University promoted mathematics professor and former department chair Simon Tavener to Associate Dean of Academics. Following a leave from campus in the fall of 2011, he returned to resume his new assignment beginning January 3, 2012. Professor Tavener was replaced by Professor Gerhard Dangelmayr, who assumed his new department chair responsibilities June 1, 2012. "Both Dr. Tavener and Dr. Dangelmayr are exceptional scholars and experienced leaders in the college. I am pleased they have accepted these new responsibilities,” said Jan Nerger, dean of the college. “Each of them brings experience and vision that will help advance the Department of Mathematics and the College of Natural Sciences.” Tavener joined Colorado State’s Department of Mathematics

in 2000 and was named chair in 2003. Tavener grew up in New Zealand and moved to the US after receiving his D. Phil from the University of Oxford. After one year of postdoctoral work at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota, he spent 13 years as first a postdoctoral researcher, and then as an assistant and associate professor at Penn State. Tavener’s current research focuses on numerical techniques for the accurate computation of multiphysics problems. With a background in engineering and physics as well as mathematics, Tavener has said he seeks ways to apply mathematics to “something tangible.” One of Tavener’s specialties has been interdisciplinary collaboration. Since 2007 (with Mike Antolin from the Department of Biology) he has led a $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create an undergraduate research program to prepare a new generation of biologists and mathematicians capable of interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2009, he was part of a Colorado State team awarded a $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant to study transmission of chronic wasting disease. He is co-principal investigator on a $500,000 award from the National Science Foundation to fund undergraduate scholarships in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics or STEM disciplines. With Don Estep, he recently received two new awards from the Idaho National Laboratory, totaling $1.25 million to study multi-scale modeling of nuclear fuels performance in the presence of uncertainty. Tavener spent five months in each of 2010 and 2011 as a visiting fellow at the Oxford Center for Collaborative Applied Mathematics. Tavener was recently elected Secretary of SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics) and started his term of office on January 1, 2012.

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Professor Simon Tavener shares about his Spring 2011 visit to Oxford University

I spent from August to December in Oxford on a fellowship from OCCAM, the Oxford Center for Collaborative Applied Mathematics. During this time I mainly collaborated with faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in the Computer Science department which includes a large group working in Computational Biology. Many of my collaborations have extended over several years and it is nice to see some of them finally coming to fruition. In particular, I hope that one of the graduate students I have been working with will complete her D.Phil this semester and begin a postdoctoral appointment at University College, London. I also took the opportunity to visit several other British universities and to participate in the ENUMATH meeting in Leicester and a week-long workshop on the "Numerical Analysis of Multiscale Problems and Stochastic Analysis" at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM) in Linz, Austria. I plan to host a number of reciprocal visits from Oxford colleagues during the next year. The demands of such a stimulating mathematical and scientific environment as Oxford were relieved by frequent visits to the Holywell Music Room, leisurely weekend walks in rural Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds and racing for the Headington Road Runners in the Oxfordshire Mail and Chiltern Cross Country Leagues.

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DEPARTMENT GRANT AWARDS

September 11, 2011– January 12, 2012 PRIMARY-PI CO-PI SPONSOR TITLE AMOUNT

TOTAL: $2,023,149

Donald Estep Simon Tavener Idaho National Laboratory

Uncertainty Analysis for Multiscale Models of Nuclear Fuel Performance

$170, 823 (Add’l funds)

Donald Estep Simon Tavener Idaho National Laboratory

Uncertainty Analysis for Multiscale Models of Nuclear Fuel Performance

$874,264 (New Award)

Simon J. Tavener Donald Estep NSF—National Science Foundation

Collaborative Research: A Posteriori Error Analysis and Adaptivity for Discontinuous Interface Problems

$15,995 (New Award)

Bruce Draper

Chris Peterson Michael Kirby

J Ross Beveridge

DOD-ARPA Advanced Research Project Agency

Visual intelligence Through Latent Geometry and Selective Geometry

$237,452 (Add’l funds)

Bruce Draper Chris Peterson Michael Kirby

J Ross Beveridge

DOD-ARPA Advanced Research Project Agency

Visual intelligence Through Latent Geometry and Selective Geometry

$35,000 (Add’l funds)

Daniel Bates

None

NSF—National Science Foundation

Preconditioning Analysis, and Applications of Numerical Algebraic Geometry Methods

$306.969 (New Award)

Michael Kirby None University of Yale Predictive Modeling and Controls of Sepis

$85,019 (New Award)

Michael Kirby

Chris Peterson NSF—National Science Foundation

ATD: Geometric and Statistical Data Analysis on Special Manifolds for Threat Detection

$126,978 (New Award)

Renzo Cavalieri None NSF—National Science Foundation

Western Algebraic Geometry Seminar Five Year Plan

$57,260 (Add’l funds)

Renzo Cavalieri None NSF—National Science Foundation

Tautological Intersection Theory On Moduli Spaces

$10,834.00 (New Award)

Renzo Cavalieri None NSF—National Science Foundation

Tautological Intersection Theory On Moduli Spaces

$102,555 (New Award)

The conference Algebraic Combinatorics: In Memory of Bob Liebler was held November 4 - 6, 2011. Department hosts for the conference were Alexander Hulpke and Timothy Penttila. The following summary of the events was submitted by Dr. Penttila. Robert Allen Liebler joined the Mathematics Department at Colorado State University in 1972. He remained an active faculty member until his untimely death in July 2009 at the age of 64, ending a 37 year career at Colorado State University. Since the mid-1970's, he co-organized a multi-university algebraic combinatorics seminar that still runs today as the Rocky Mountain Algebraic Combinatorics seminar. This is a joint conference with Denver University, UC Boulder, UC Denver, University of Wyoming and Colorado State University. At the November conference, there were international attendees from as far afield as

Ireland and Belgium, with two invited speakers from Canadian universities, one from an American university and one from NSA and included a number of Bob's collaborators. As well as the invited talks in the afternoons, there were contributed talks in the three morning sessions. The topics covered ranged broadly within combinatorics: from finite geometry, difference sets, applications to communications engineering, connections with physics, and algebraici nvariants of geometries to loop theory. Two non-mathematical highlights were the remembrances of Bob exchanged at the conference dinner on the Friday night held at the Fort Collins Hilton, and the informal supper hosted in Bob's former home on Peterson Street by his widow, Linda Hamilton, on Saturday evening. Some mathematical highlights grew out of the discussions over meals and in the coffee breaks that are expected to lead to new papers in the near fu-ture on algebraic combinatorics as new collaborations were forged, an outcome of which I am sure Bob would have been proud. The conference finished very aptly with a talk by Bob's former student, Ken Smith, on ap-plying rational idempotents to obtain results on difference sets, which used a number of Bob's ideas, both pub-lished and unpublished. We would like to thank the CSU department of mathematics for its financial support.

ALGEBRA COMBINATORICS CONFERENCE IN MEMORY OF ROBERT A. LIEBLER

HELD IN NOVEMBER WELL ATTENDED

CSU Dept of Mathematics Graduates for SP2011 & FA2011

SPRING 2011 FALL 2011

GRADUATE PhD . . . 3 GRADUATE PhD . . . 3

GRADUATE MS . . . 0 GRADUATE MS . . . 0

UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS . . . 23 UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS . . . 23

UNDERGRADUATE MINORS . . . 48 UNDERGRADUATE MINORS . . . 48

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Faculty updates . . . .news items to share!

Dan Bates spent most of January-March 2011 visiting Institut Mittag-Leffler near Stockholm, Sweden to participate in their semester-long program on Algebraic Geometry with a View toward Applications. This gave Dan the opportunity to interact extensively with several collaborators. The Institut is situated in a villa set on a hill near the Baltic Sea (very near the island home of Bjorn Ulvaeus, of ABBA fame), making it one of the more attractive research institutes that Dan has visited, despite the ubiquitous snow and ice. In addition to working with collaborators, Dan gave several talks to various audiences, including a colloquium in the Lyon ENS Computer Science department, a seminar for the Linkoping Automatic Control group, and a few talks in front of the resident IML crowd, including many grad students and postdocs. Dan's family was able to accompany him on this trip and managed to avoid freezing while enjoying the culture and sights in Stockholm, Oslo, and Lyon.

Don Estep continues to organize the SAMSI yearlong program in uncertainty quantification with the support of SAMSI. Traveling to SAMSI every couple of weeks, the group is organizing four workshops on nuclear fuel models, stochastic to deterministic models, models with random domains, and the final closet conference to be held in the spring of 2012. In addition, Professor Estep is the co-chair of the first bi-annual ASA, SIAM, USACM Conference on Uncertainty Quantification slated for April 2012 in Raleigh, NC. Thus far, the conference has had such an overwhelming response, the conference has been extended an additional day. Lastly, Professor

Estep has been appointed (founding) editor in chief of the SIAM/ASA Journal of Uncertainty Quantification, which is the first ASA/SIAM journal.

Oleg Emanouilov spent the fall 2011 semester on sabbatical leave at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Tokyo conducting the collaborative research on inverse problems with Prof. M. Yamamoto.

James Liu spent the fall 2011 semester on sabbatical leave at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge conducting collaborative research with Dr. Sue Brenner and Dr. Li-yeng Sung on novel finite element methods for Maxwell eigenvalue problems.

Jennifer Mueller is currently serving as Program Director of the SIAM Activity Group on Imaging Science. The Activity Group brings together SIAM members and other scientists and engineers with an interest in the mathematical and computational aspects of imaging and organizes the biennial SIAM Conference on Imaging Science. The SIAM Conference on Imaging Science will be held May 20-22, 2012 in Philadelphia. More information about the conference can be found at www.siam.org/meetings/is12.

Iuliana Oprea attended the 4th International Conference on “Bifurcations in Fluid Dynamics” in Barcelona, Spain in July 2011. The symposium brought together researchers with mutual interest in computational, experimental, and theoretical methods for the analysis of bifurcation and instability phenomena in fluid dynamics. Hydrodynamic stability is of fundamental importance in fluid dynamics and is a well-established subject of scientific investigation that continues to attract great interest in the fluid mechanics community. Dr. Oprea also recently received funding from CIMS along with 4 co-PIs: 1) Gerhard Dangelmayr in Mathematics at CSU;

2) Steven Fassnacht, Ecosystem Sciences and Sustainability (Watershed Science) and NREL at CSU; 3) Bill Bauerle, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at CSU; 4) Patrick Burns, Mechanical Engineering, VP of IT, and Dean of Libraries at CSU. The title of their submission was “Snow Surface Dynamics and Environmental Changes.”

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COLLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATIC

2011 GRADUATES

Name Degree Advisor Thesis/Dissertation Title After Graduation

Fall 2011

Hilary Smallwood MS Jeff Achter

Endomorphisms of Abelian Varieties over Finite Fields and Characteristic Polynomials of Frobenius

PhD, Colorado State University

Summer 2011

Nathaniel Burch PhD Don Estep

Probabilistic Foundation of Nonlocal Dif-fusion and Formulation and Analysis for Elliptic Problems on Uncertain Domains

SAMSI Postdoc, North Carolina State University

Steve Ihde MS Dan Bates

Preconditioning Polynomial Systems for Homotopy Continuation Methods

PhD, Colorado State University

William Newton PhD Don Estep

A Posteriori Error Estimates for the Poisson Problem on Closed, Two-Dimensional Surfaces

PostDoc, Colorado State University

Spring 2011

Steven Benoit PhD

Vakhtang Putkaradze

Analysis and modeling of cells, cell behavior, and helical biological molecules

PostDoc, Colorado State University

Byungsoo Kim PhD

Vakhtang Putkaradze

Constrained Dynamics of rolling balls and moving atoms

unknown

Elisabeth Malmskog PhD

Rachel Pries

Automorphisms of a Family of Maximal Curves

PostDoc, Wesleyan

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DEPARTMENT MATH CLUB ATTENDS BOSTON JOINT MEETING

In January during winter break, The Math Club attended the AMS/MAA/SIAM Joint Meetings in Boston, presenting their poster summarizing an optimization project for a high school calculus class. The project looked at the arm length of a trebuchet and optimizing the distance an object could be launched. The model was built at Steve Benoit's house with his tools and materials. The 12 inch trebuchet is shaped like a CSU Ram and launches small wooden discs about 7 feet. There are future plans to build a 4-foot larger version for a siege engine contest! Math Club Attendees: John Bloemker, Nick Kaufhold, Kyle Strand, Daniel Skeen, Joshua Stone, Jason Jaekel, and Alison Serafin, with Hilary Freeman as acting sponsor. Although unable to attend, Patrick Shipman is the Math Club faculty advisor.

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BLAST FROM THE PAST ALUMNI UPDATE

The Department Math Club Members, along with Hilary Freeman, recognized a number of familiar faces while attending the AMS, MAA, SIAM Joint meeting in Boston. Thursday, January 5th became CSU Grad Student Reunion at Woody’s Pizza. Attendees: Roger Thelwell, Melissa Erdmann, Brigitte Lahme, Diane Davis, Trent Kull, Mary Pilgrim, Eric Nelson, Shawn Farnell, Elin Smith, Sarah Hamilton, Megan Buzby, Jenna Tague, Cayla McBee, Ellen Ziliak, Justin Marks, Cassie Williams, Travis Olson, Hilary Freeman, Sheldon Lee, and Beth Malmskog. Also present were Amy Ksir and James Wilson. Thanks to Cassie Williams for organizing this fun alumni event!

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2011 MATH DAY RESULTS The 35th annual Math Day Competition was held November 3rd, 2011. This year’s faculty coordinator was Anton Betten. Staff coordinator was Christie Franklin. Approximately 343 students participated in the PROBE competition, resulting in four students receiving 100% plus, based on work shown. Below is a summary of the 2011 results for both the PROBE and TEAM competitions.

2011 TEAM Results: LARGE SCHOOL WINNER SMALL SCHOOL WINNER Fairview High School - A Liberty Common High School - B Boulder, Colorado Fort Collins, Colorado

Alex Black Alex Iverson Nicolas Ledru Matthew Iverson Jesse Zhang Will Werst

LARGE SCHOOL RUNNERS-UP SMALL SCHOOL RUNNERS-UP Fairview High School - B The Colorado Springs School Boulder, Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Cissy Chen Kevin Araje Will Conway Ryan Dick Albert Soh Alex Kim

2011 - PROBE Exam: Top Ten Scores Name School Score Scholarship Jesse Zhang Fairview High School 100/4 $6,500 Alex Black Fairview High School 100/3 $4,000 Cissy Chen Fairview High School 100/2 $4,000 Nicolas Ledru Fairview High School 96/3/2 $4,000 Riley Xu Fairview High School 96/1 $4,000 William Conway Fairview High School 96/1/2 $4,000 Zach Prevedel Ridgeview Classical 96/0 $3,000 Henry Zhang Fairview High School 92/3 $3,000 Larry Zhang Fairview High School 92/3/2 $3,000 Artem Bolshakov Ridgeview Classical 92/1/2 $3,000

Honorable Mention: Name School Score Scholarship Albert Soh Fairview High School 91/3 na Danny Kim Regis Jesuit High School 88/0 na Yichen “Astron” Liu Lakewood High School 84/1/2 na CJ Guttormsson Arvada High School 84/0 na Alex Kim Colorado Springs School 84/0 na

HP Laptop Winner: Jesse Zhang, Fairview High School, Boulder (top score on the PROBE) Will Werst, Liberty Common High School, Fort Collins (random drawer of team finalists) Kyle Christensen, Fairview High School, Boulder (Lottery of PROBE participants)

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As a land-grant institution, we are dedicated to providing access to higher education for Colorado's citizens. As a world-class research University, we are committed to recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest faculty and providing them the best tools to perform cutting-edge research to solve some of the world's most devastating problems. As a rapidly growing University, we are improving learning resources and opportunities, renovating historic buildings, and constructing state-of-the-art facilities to meet the needs of our growing, high-tech campus community. The $500 million Campaign for Colorado State University is giving us the means to provide access to all of Colorado's students, maintain our standing as a top research university, and prepare our students for lifetimes of service.