Mathematics Department from 1989 to 1999
The Martin Years
Burniston retired as department head in 1989. After a nationwide search, the search committee and the Dean of PAMS, Jerry Witten, decided that the best candidate was already a member of the department, Robert H. Martin, Jr., who became the new head in the fall of 1989.
Robert H. Martin, Jr. Robert H. Martin, Jr. was born in Columbia, South Carolina and was raised there and in Greenville, S.C. His undergraduate education was at the University of South Carolina. While he was an undergraduate he worked for three years as a Page in the South Carolina House of Representatives. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1970 and joined the faculty at NC State the same year. Martin divides his career into three parts. For the first twenty years he concentrated on research in non-linear differential equations and functional analysis. He published 2 books, over 50 research papers and supervised 6 Ph.D. students. The next 10 years, 1989-1999, while he was head of the department, his efforts were mainly on administration. Since 1999, Martin has put his major emphasis on teaching, and has taken on a larger teaching load. He received an outstanding Teacher Award in 1989.
Martin was concerned about the high teaching loads for graduate assistants. He felt that these teaching loads detracted students from their studies and, in addition, made State less competitive in recruiting new students. Martin arranged it so that graduate assistants did not teach the first year unless they had a Masters Degree or previous experience. Furthermore they would teach no more than one course a semester after that. He encouraged faculty to get Research Assistants on their research grants so that more students could concentrate on their studies and research. Martin also instituted the use of departmental funds together with scholarship funds so that more graduate assistants could work on their dissertation full time.
When Bob Plemmons, the director of the Center for Research in Scientific Computing, left for a named professorship at Wake Forest, the CRSC was left without a leader. Martin had met Tom Banks at a meeting in Austria in 1989 and thought he would be the ideal person to head the center. Besides an impressive academic record, Banks was an alumnus of NC State. Martin joined forces with Dean Jerry Whitten to try to convince Banks to come to NC State. Their joint efforts met with success in 1992 when Banks joined State as University Professor and Director of the CRSC.
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| H. T. Banks | Jerry Whitten |
Whitten, working closely with Martin and Banks, put considerable resources into the Center and the Mathematics Department. First, at Banks' suggestion, Dr. Kazufumi Ito, a colleague of Banks at Brown and USC, was hired as a tenured Associate Professor of Mathematics; this was rarely done (normally only full Professors are hired with tenure). Second, he allotted considerable space on the third floor of Harrelson for the use of Post Docs for the center. This was the cause of some temporary resentment by the faculty and graduate students who were displaced and had to move to new space that was obtained on the first floor of Harrelson Hall and in Withers Hall. Third, he assigned four new faculty positions to the Mathematics Department.
The Center grew rapidly in activity and prestige. Most of the credit for its success was due to the leadership of Banks. However the excellent working relationships among Banks, Whitten and Martin helped pave the way for this success. In 2003 the Center had over 50 Associated Faculty and Postdoctoral Researchers and 18 graduate assistants and fellows. Associates of the Center produced 49 Technical Reports. In 1994 the CRSC started the Industrial Applied Mathematics Program (IAMP), which is now co-sponsored by the Mathematics Department. The main goal of the program is to provide substantive non-academic research-related experiences for graduate students, postdoctoral and faculty participants while contributing to the research efforts of industrial participants. The IAMP is open to graduate students, postdocs and faculty who commit to appropriate projects. The projects may or may not be related to a student's Ph.D. thesis. Student participants normally are enrolled in one of the mathematics Ph.D. programs or are associated with faculty members of the CRSC. In the 2000-2001 academic year the program involved approximately 23 projects, 14 faculty, 4 postdocs, 20-25 graduate students. Its governmental and industrial collaborators include: The Lord Corporation, US Air Force Research Laboratory, US Army Waterways Experiment Station, NASA Langley Research Center, Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology, Aerospace Corporation, Environmental Protection Agency, ETREMA Products Inc, The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, MedAcoustics and Jenike & Johanson Inc.
In 1999 the Lord Corporation of Cary contributed $200,000 to endow the Lord Corporation/Center for Research in Scientific Computation Fellowship Fund at North Carolina State University. The fellowship provides awards for graduate and post-doctoral students in applied mathematics and scientific computation at NC State. The recipients are known as Lord Corporation Fellows.
Franke stepped down as Graduate Administrator in 1993. Many faculty were reluctant to take on the job of Graduate Administrator because it would take too much time away from their research. It was decided to have Co-Graduate Administrators so that one person would not have to carry the full load. Jo-Ann Cohen and Michael Shearer agreed to take on the job for two years. Cohen and Shearer increased the options in the Graduate Program so that the requirements for a Ph.D. were flexible and reasonable to accommodate the interests of both pure and applied students. Steve Schecter and Ernest Stitzinger served as Graduate Administrators from 1995 to 1997; Steve Campbell and Ernest Stitzinger served from 1997 to 1999. Having Stitzinger stay on as on a graduate administrator provided a needed continuity to the administration of the graduate program. To help in recruiting new graduate students, Banks suggested having a recruiting weekend where prospective graduate students could visit the campus and talk to faculty and graduate students. This program was very well received and is now standard procedure. The efforts of Martin, Banks, the various graduate administrators, and the entire graduate faculty, resulted in an increase in the number of graduate students from 86 in 1992 to 117 in 1999. The number of Ph.D.'s increased from 29 in the 1980-89 period to 78 in the 1990-1999 period.
Since 1969 the Mathematics Department had only one undergraduate degree---a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. Interested students could take an option in applied mathematics. In 1995 Martin and Ramsay, the Director of the Undergraduate Program, obtained approval for a separate Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Mathematics. Ramsay also introduced several courses in actuarial science. This allowed students an opportunity to pass the beginning Actuarial Exam and get a head start on a career in this field. In 1999 Ramsay returned to full time teaching and Jeff Scroggs was appointed to be Associate Head of the Department and Director of the Undergraduate Program.
The Mathematics Department had two sequences of Calculus courses, one for the students in the "hard" sciences (engineering, mathematics and the physical sciences) and one for those in the "soft" sciences (economics, biology, agriculture). Although most students had sufficient background in algebra and trigonometry in high school to tackle these courses, there were a significant number who did not. For years the department had offered a no-nonsense algebra and trig course, MA 111, for students to get ready for the calculus sequences. However, the wide variety of backgrounds of students made it difficult to keep up reasonable standards in MA 111. Martin decided to siphon off students in the "soft" sciences and have them take a new pre -calculus course, MA 107. This enabled the level of MA 111 to be kept high for students in the "hard" sciences. In addition, for students in MA 141, the first calculus course for students in engineering, mathematics and the physical sciences, Martin introduced a supplementary course to insure students had the proper background material.
Garoutte stepped down as Associate Department Head in 1996. Garoutte's main duty was to oversee undergraduate instruction---assigning instructors and course coordinators, handling student complaints, etc. It had been customary to pick someone on the professorial faculty to handle these duties. However Martin appointed John R. Griggs, an Instructor, to take Garoutte's duties with the title of Coordinator of Undergraduate Instruction. Griggs had a somewhat different background. He had been a high school math teacher and coach of football and basketball teams at Apex High School before coming to State in 1990 as an Instructor. He was originally hired to help Burniston in the Turbo-Calculus Program. This program, modeled after a program at Berkeley, was a supplement to the beginning calculus courses specifically designed to give a boost to students from small towns or from impoverished backgrounds. Griggs also taught other pre-calculus and calculus courses. Martin felt that Griggs's background in teaching and coaching and his rapport with students made him an excellent person for this position. In 2000 Griggs earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics Education.
In the 1980's the mathematics department experimented with the use of symbolic computation programs in undergraduate calculus courses. A lot of time in undergraduate courses is spent in having students become proficient at differentiation and anti-differentiation, evaluation of definite integrals, solving differential equations and similar tasks. Symbolic computation programs such as MAPLE and MATHEMATICA perform these operations much faster and more accurately than students (or faculty) can. The challenge was to incorporate the use of such a program into the undergraduate curriculum. There was mixed feeling in the faculty about the use of such a program. Some were enthusiastic and others felt that students would rely too heavily on the computer and would lessen their understanding of the fundamentals of calculus. This debate was similar to that concerning the use of calculators in the classroom that raged a decade or so earlier.
In 1990 the department decided the time had arrived to start using MAPLE in the calculus sequence. MAPLE was chosen over MATHEMATICA because the site licenses for the program were more reasonable. Martin put Joe Marlin in overall charge of the project. There was much to be done. Computer Labs for the students had to be set up or modernized. The faculty had to have high speed access to the NCSU network; this involved a lot of wiring to be done in Harrelson Hall. Marlin arranged to give introductions to MAPLE for both faculty and students. Course materials were developed using MAPLE. In the beginning the MAPLE exercises were separate from the course work and run like a laboratory. Marlin was able to get an NSF grant to help in this project. Many faculty helped in this effort particularly Burniston and Evans. Gradually MAPLE started to be integrated into the course work. As of 2004, MAPLE is a standard part of the undergraduate calculus and differential equation sequence. In addition it has significantly improved many advanced courses such as Fourier series and boundary value problems and the study of the integral theorems of Gauss, Green and Stokes. MAPLE has excellent graphing capabilities, including the ability to make animations; these often helped put new life into course content.
Many important additions to the faculty were made during the Martin administration. He built on the traditional strengths of the departemtn: Numerical Analysis, algebra including symbolic algebra and applied mathematics. Following is some information about those who remained at State for a significant time: Many important additions to the faculty were made during the Martin administration. He built on the traditional strengths of the department: numerical analysis, applied mathematics and biomathematics. In addition symbolic computation was becoming an important new area of research and Martin added faculty in this area. Following is some information about those faculty who remained at State for a significant time:
H. T. Banks (Ph.D., Purdue University, 1967) was appointed University Professor and Director of the Center for Research in Scientific Computing in 1992. Banks's research interests are control and parameter estimation in partial differential equations, computational methods, biological modeling, flexible structures and structural acoustics. Banks has published 4 books, over 300 papers and supervised 30 Ph.D. students and more than 30 postdocs. He has served as Editor for the Journal of Mathematical Biology and Managing Editor of the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization. Banks served two terms (1982-1985) as SIAM Vice President-Publications and two terms (1997-2002) on the SIAM Board of Trustees, and four years as Chair of that Board. From 1980 to 2002, he served as Scientific Consultant to the Institute of Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) and, in 1985 was named Associate Member. During the past 20 years, he has received funding from ARO, AFOSR and NSF. Banks is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and was the recipient of the IEEE Control Systems Technology Award in 1996 and the W. T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics in 2002.In 1999, the last year of the Martin administration, there were 37 Full Professors: H. T. Banks, J. W. Bishir, E.E. Burniston, S. L. Campbell, R. E. Chandler, M. T. Chu, E. N. Chukwu, L. O. Chung, J. D. Cohen, J. C. Dunn, A. Fauntleroy, J. E. Franke, R. O. Fulp, R. E. Hartwig, I. Ipsen, K. Ito, E. L. Kaltofen, C. T. Kelley, K. Koh, J. R. Kolb, X. B. Lin, J. Luh, J. A. Marlin, R. H. Martin, C. D. Meyer, K. Misra, C. V. Pao, E. L. Peterson, M. Putcha, S. Schecter, J. F. Selgrade, M. Shearer, C. E. Siewert, J. W. Silverstein, M. F. Singer, E. L. Stitzinger, R. E. White; one Adjunct Professor: R. J. Plemmons; 19 Associate Professors: G. D. Faulkner, J. P. Fouque, D. E. Garoutte, A. Helminck, P. Hitczenko, H. Hong, J. Jing, A. Keyfets, T. J. Lada, D. M. Latch, L. K Norris, L. B. Page, R. T. Ramsay, J. Rodriguez, J. S. Scroggs, F. H. H. Semazzi, R. Silber, H. T. Tran, W. M. Waters; 5 Assistant Professors: D. Brown, H. J. Charlton, R. Haas, P. Gremaud, S. O. Paur; 2 Lecturers: M. McCollum, J. Griggs; 3 Professors Emeriti: J. M. A. Danby, L. B. Martin, N. J. Rose; one Associate Professors Emeritus: R. G. Savage; and one Assistant Professor Emeritus: D. J. Hansen.Jean-Pierre Fouque came to the department from France in 1998. He earned his Ph.D. from the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris in 1979. His research interests are in probability, stochastic processes, waves in random media and financial mathematics. Fouque has written one book, over 50 research publications. and has supervised 6 Ph.D. students (2 at NCSU). His research has been supported by NSF, ONR and DARPA since 1999.In 2002 Fouque was a major factor in getting approval for a new graduate program in financial mathematics and serves the program's director. In the spring of 2003 when Bernard Mair took a leave of absence, Fouque was appointed Interim Department Head. Upon Mair's resignation in 2004, Fouque was again appointed Interim Department Head.
Pierre A. Gremaud obtained his Ph.D. from the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1991. He had a postdoctorate fellowship at the University of Minnesota before coming to State in 1994. His research is in numerical methods for partial differential equations with applications to solid mechanics and hyperbolic problems. Gremaud has published 30 papers and has supervised four M.S. students and one Ph.D. student.
John W. Griggs has taught at State since 1990 and received his Ph.D. from NC State in 2000. His specialty is Mathematics Education. Since 1996 he has been Coordinator of Instruction in the mathematics department. Griggs heads the statistical team that provides statistics for the home football and basketball games at NC State and serves on the Athletic Council. He is currently developing on-line courses for the main calculus sequence.
Ben Fitzpatrick received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1988. He was a member of the department from 1992 until 1997. Fitzpatrick works in applied mathematics and had two Ph.D. students during his stay at State.
Hoon Hong obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1990. He spent 7 years at the Research Institute for Symbolic Logic in Austria before joining the NCSU faculty in 1997. Hong does research in symbolic computation and has published over 50 papers. He has had 7 Ph.D. students (6 in Austria and 1 in NCSU). He is editor in chief of the Journal of Symbolic Computation (whose editorial board also includes Singer and Kaltofen). Hong has had research support from the NSF and also from the Department of Commerce, the latter being joint work with a member of the Textile's school. He received an Outstanding Teaching Award in 2004.
Ilse Ipsen got her doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in 1983 and came to the department in 1993. Ipsen works in numerical linear algebra, matrix theory and scientific computing. She has written 67 papers and has had 2 Ph.D. students. She has had research support from NSF, ARO, DARPA, Army and ONR. She is on the editorial board of SIAM Review and SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications. Ipsen is the SIAM Vice-President for Programs and Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra. She is on the Scientific Program Committee for the 6th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics Zurich, Switzerland in 2007 and on the Organizing Committee for the 2007 Meeting of the International Linear Algebra Society in Shanghai.
Kazufumi Ito earned his Ph.D. at Washington University in 1982 and joined State in 1992. He works in applied mathematics, control theory and partial differential equations. He has published one book, over 120 research papers and has supervised 4 Ph.D. students. Ito's research has been sponsored by NSF and the Air Force, Navy and Army research offices.
Naihuan Jing has a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1989. He started in the Mathematics Department in 1994. Jing works in symmetry and representation theory of lie algebras and quantum groups. He has published 50 papers and has had 3 Ph.D. students. His research has been supported by NSF and NSA. Jing was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship for 2004, working out of the Max Planck Institute. He also has a Humboldt Fellowship for 2005.
Erich Kaltofen is the recipient of a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1982. He joined NCSU in 1996. His current interests are in computational algebra and number theory, design and analysis of sequential and parallel algorithms, and symbolic computation systems and languages. He has edited 4 books, including the new Computer Algebra Handbook, published over 120 research articles, and has contributed to the Waterloo Maple system and developed symbolic computation software in Lisp and C$++$. His research has been supported since 1983 mainly by NSF. He is on the editorial boards of two journals. Kaltofen was the Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Symbolic & Algebraic Manipulation (1993-95), and is currently on its Advisory Committee. From 1985-1987 he held an IBM Faculty Development Award and in 1990-91 he was an ACM National Lecturer.
Zhilin Li got a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1994 and started at State in 1997. He received a Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from the Oak Ridge Associate Universities in 1996. Li is interested in applied mathematics, numerical analysis and scientific computing, numerical methods for PDE'S, free boundary/moving interface problems and mathematical biology. He has written 47 papers and has gotten research support from NSF and ARO. Li has had 7 M.S. students and 2 Ph.D. students. He is working on a book.
Sharon R. Lubkin is a Ph.D. graduate in Applied Math from Cornell University in 1992. She joined the department in 1997 and holds a joint appointment with the Statistics Department. Her research interests are in mechanistic models of physical forces and transport phenomena interacting with cellular behavior in dynamic tissue remodeling and growth. Lubkin has written 30 papers and has supervised one Ph.D. student. She has received sponsorship for her research from NSF and NIH. She served on the Board of Trustees for the Society for Mathematical Biology for two years.
Jeffry S. Scroggs got a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1988 and worked at NASA (Langley) before coming to State in 1991. He is interested in numerical analysis for partial differential equations. He has written 32 papers and his research has been funded by NSF for 10 years. Scroggs has been Associate Department Head and Director of the Undergraduate Program since 1999. He has obtained funding for undergraduate research and scholarships from the NSF.
Frederick H. Semazzi earned a Ph.D. at the University of Nairobi in 1983. He started in the Mathematics Department in 1994 and holds a joint appointment with Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences. He works in numerical models in climate modeling, numerical weather prediction, computational schemes and algorithms.
Ralph C. Smith has a Ph.D. from Montana State University in 1990 and joined the department in 1995. His research is in model development and control design of smart material systems. Smith has published 1 book, edited another, written over 110 papers and supervised 2 Ph.D. students. He has obtained support for his research from NSF, AFOSR, DARPA and NASA. Smith is on the editorial board of the Journal of Intelligent Systems and Structures and the SIAM Frontier book series. He has been Associate Director of the Center for Scientific Computation since 1998 and served as Co-Director of the Operation Research Program (2002-2004).
Mansoor A. Haider got his doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1996. After a postdoctorate at Duke, he came to State in 1999. Haider works in modeling in soft tissue biomechanics and partial differential equations. He has written 13 papers. His research has been sponsored by NSR, NIH and the Whittaker Foundation.
Semyon Tysnkov is a native of Russia and received his PhD from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1991. Tysnkov was on the faculty at Tel-Aviv University before coming to NCSU in 2000. He supervised 2 Ph.D. students at Tel-Aviv. He works in numerical analysis of partial differential equations with applications to continuum mechanics, electromagnetics, optics and control problems. He has written 50 papers and has obtained research support from NSF, DOA and NASA. Tysnkov was awarded a National Research Council Associateship (USA), an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (Germany) and an Alon Fellowship (Israel).
The faculty contained 2 African-Americans and 4 women.
Research continued to grow during the Martin administration. In the
1989-99 decade, new grant research awards averaged
$1.79 million per annum. [data supplied by Ray Fornes, Associate Dean of Research for
CPAMS] In 1998-99 the faculty produced 96 research publications research
expenditures from all sources came to $3.08 million.
In the fiscal year 1999 NC State ranked sixth nationally in
the NSF ranking of total and federally financed R & D expenditures in the mathematical sciences (including
statistics) at United States colleges and universities. [See By the end of the Martin administration, the mathematics department had reached a
high level of excellence in research and teaching. This is attested to by the following excerpt from
a report by an external review committee in 1997. Our first finding
is that the NC State Mathematics Department has improved greatly in research quality and external
recognition in recent years. The basis for this assessment is in part the significant
improvement in NRC ratings for this department over a ten year period. In addition, the Committee
feels that the department has improved measurably since data was collected for the most recent
report, so that if rankings were redone today, additional improvement would be noted. The strong
success of Professor Banks is a case in point. The strong record of the Department in external
funding is another. In addition the Committee observed many other indications of success, such as
the strong placement record in non-academic positions for the doctoral students. Additional details
will be described below. Our second finding is that the mathematics education at NC State
is overall of a high quality. The Committee was impressed with the dedication of the department to
the educational component of its mission. The fruits of this attention were apparent to the
Committee. Some of the indications include:
Our conclusion is that further
improvement is possible, if careful management is exercised over current and future resources. This
conclusion is based on several structural factors which favor the department:
In brief, the mathematics department at NC State has reached a position which many mathematics
departments are trying to achieve. With a strong program in applications, computational mathematics
and industrial outreach. NC State is participating actively in regional and national programs which
support interdisciplinary research. A program in pure mathematics, with several areas of strength,
preserves the value of curiosity-driven research and provides a basis for possible development of
new application thrusts in the future. Our first recommendation is for the careful and
wise deployment of all available resources. Hiring which plays into strategic opportunities is a
prime example. Vigorous pursuit of available resources from a variety of sources, and especially
the focusing of resources from various sources, while not abundant, are sufficient to allow a
significant further increase in the rankings and fundamental research quality of this department.
Our second recommendation concerns Calculus reform: to preserve the value of many of
the recent changes, such as the innovation in use of technology, while considering changes to
restore some elements of conceptual understanding which are missing in the Calculus text presently
in use.
For the North Carolina State
University Department of Mathematics
(February 10-12, 1997)
and
Dr. Samuel Winograd)
-
The Deans' uniform expression of satisfaction with the mathematics education which the Department
provides to their students, - The Student's appreciation fro
the accessibility of the mathematics faculty, and their sensitivity to the students' needs,
- The placement of undergraduates in leading graduate schools,
- The training of TA's which can be a model to many other
departments. - The recruiting efforts by the department,
- The partially automated placement system for assigning students to
Calculus classes, which allows students a private assessment of their own abilities and placement
options.
The strong technology and science departments a NC State, A
strong high tech industrial complex at RTP, The adjacent technology park
coupled to academia at Centennial Campus, National trends toward
interdisciplinary science and technology, with good participation by the NC State mathematics
department,
Increased importance of computational science and of mathematical tools and models within science
and technology, Strong departmental leadership, A
supportive administration, The willingness of the Department to take
advantage of the above opportunities.