Mathematics Department from 1999 to 2002
The Burniston Years (II}
Bob Martin wanted to step down from the headship in 1999. Burniston agreed to take on a second term as department head while a search for a new head proceeded. It was thought the search would take a year or so; it actually took three years.
On November 9th and 10th, 2002 a Mid Atlantic Algebra Conference was held in honor of the retirement of Kwangil Koh and Jiang Luh. Professor Barbara Osofsky of Rutgers University gave the principal address. The conference was attended by about 50 people. A nice honor for two people who were the mainstay of the algebra group at State for many years.
In 2002 an interdisciplinary Financial Mathematics Masters Degree Program was approved by the University. The program was a brainchild of J. P. Fouque and involved the departments of Mathematics Statistics, Agriculture and Resource Economics, Economics, and Industrial Engineering. The program lasts for four semesters and consists of six core courses, four elective courses, and a six-credit research project or internship. The core courses provide students with a strong mathematical background, statistical and computational tools, and a comprehensive description of financial markets.
Fouque was the director of the program until he left the university in 2005. Jeff Scroggs bcame interim-director in 2005 and was appointed director in 2008. The program started with 7 students in 2002 and has grown to an enrollment of 40 in 2008. A total of 35 students have graduated from the program.
In November, 2000 the people of North Carolina approved a bond referendum to meet the construction needs of the State University System for the next 10 years. Included was $13.4 million for the renovation of Harrelson Hall. Later that year Burniston attended a meeting on the bond issue given by the university architect Mike Harwood. While talking to Harwood after the meeting Burniston said that he thought that spending $13.4 million on Harrelson would be a waste of money and asked what the cost of a new building would be. Harwood agreed and said that a new building would cost about $18.4 million, but that it would be difficult to find the money and to get approval to use the bond money for a new building.
Early in 2001 Ray Fornes, Associate Dean for Research in PAMS, came to Burniston's office to discuss some other issues. Burniston mentioned that instead of renovating Harrelson, a new building could be constructed for an additional $5 million. Fornes became a supporter of the project but realized that it might be difficult to get it done. In order to get a formal proposal in front of the administration Burniston asked Carl Meyer and Michael Shearer to make a detailed study of the arguments for a new building. In the fall of 2001, Meyer and Shearer produced a report: "The Case for a Mathematical Sciences Building." The department was searching for a new head during this time and one of the applicants reportedly told the administration that we had one of the best mathematics departments in the country housed in the worst mathematics building in the country. The Meyer-Shearer report was presented to the administration but not much happened at the time. However, this was the first step in a long process that led to the construction of SAS Hall, a new building housing both the mathematics and statistics departments, that was completed in 2009.
Research funding in the department continued to grow. In the fiscal year 2001 NC State ranked fifth (up from sixth in 1999) nationally in the NSF ranking of total R&D expenditures in the mathematical sciences (including statistics) at U.S. colleges and universities [See "http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf03316/sectb.htm", table B-56]
During the three years of his second term as head, Burniston made several additions to the faculty:
Robert T. Buche received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 2000. He was a Research Associate at Brown before joining NCSU in 2002. His research is in the stochastic modelling of communications systems, and he has funding from the Army Research office. Buche has published 5 papers in research journals and 10 in conference proceedings and has supervised one Ph.D. student.Alina Chertock obtained her Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University in 1999 and joined the department in 2002. While at Tel-Aviv she received awards for excellence in applied mathematics and teaching excellence. Chertock's research is in numerical analysis for partial differential equations. She has published 25 research papers and has received support from NSF for her research..
Min Kang received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1998. She taught at Northwestern and was on the Faculty Honor Roll for excellence in teaching. She arrived at State in 2002. Kang's research is probability and interactive particle systems. She has written 10 papers. Kang was honored with both the NC State Outstanding Teacher Award, and the NC State Alumni Outstanding Teacher Award for 2006-2007.
Medhin, Negash G. got his doctorate from Purdue University in 1980. He was on the faculty at Clark Atlanta University before coming to State in 2002. Medhin is interested in applied mathematics, control theory, and molecular based models for hysteresis in polymers. He has published two books and over 50 papers. He is on the editorial board of Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Dynamic Systems and Applications, Communications in Applied Mathematics and Neural Parallel Scientific Computation. Medhin is co-director of the Operations Research Program.
Mette S. Olufsen is a native of Denmark and received her Ph.D. from Roskilde University in 1998. She came to the department in 2001 and is interested in mathematical biology and physiology. Olufsen has published one book, one book chapter and 26 papers. Her research has been supported by NIH. In 2003 she was invited as one of only two outstanding early career speakers at the symposium Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Biological Systems. Olufsen has surpervised one Ph.D. student.
Tao Pang arrived at NC State in 2002 after getting his Ph.D from Brown University. He is interested in stochastic control and financial mathematics. Pang has published 12 papers and has had 3 Ph.D. students.
Agnes Szanto is a 1999 Ph.D. graduate from Cornell University. She joined the math faculty in 2002. Szanto works in symbolic computation and solving polynomial systems of equations. She has published 20 papers. Szanto has received research support from the NSF including one of the Faculty Early Career Development Awards-- this is NSF's most prestigious award for young university faculty. Szanto has mentored one Ph.D. student.
Semyon V. Tsynkov received his Ph.D. from from Keldysh Institute for Applied Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia) in 1992 and a Doctor of Science degree from [Habilitation] from the Russian Academy in 2004. He was a postdoctoral fellow and later a senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. He also was a research associate at NASA Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He joined the NC State faculty in 2000. Tsynkov's research is in numerical analysis of PDE's with applications to optimization and control. He has published one book and 72 research articles and has received research support from the NSF and the US Air Force Office for Scientific Research. He is on the editorial board of Applied Numerical Mathematics (an Elsevier Journal). Tsynkov has had one Ph.D. student.
Dimitry Zenkov obtained a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1998. He had an H. Rackham Faculty Fellowship at the University of Michigan before coming to NC State in 2001. He works in geometric mechanics, geometric non-linear control theory and integrable systems. He has published 28 papers and has supervised one Ph.D. student. Zenkov has received research support from NSF.