Mathematics Department from 2002 to 2006
The "Interim" Years
After a three year search, Bernard Mair was appointed head of the mathematics department. He assumed his duties on July 1, 2002.
The newly organized Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) was one of the factors that attracted Mair to NC State. He felt it offered new opportunities for faculty research. SAMSI is a national institute whose purpose is to forge a new synthesis of the statistical sciences and the applied mathematical sciences to confront the hardest and most important data-driven and model-driven scientific challenges. SAMSI is a partnership of Duke, NC State, UNC- Chapel Hill, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, the NSF and the Kenan Institute. SAMSI is located in the Research Triangle Park. Tom Banks served as one of the Founding Directors (2000-2002) during the planning and development of the Institute, and subsequently (2002-2005) served as an Associate Director. Ralph Smith took over as Associate Director in 2005 and Pierre Gremaud followed him in 2009.Bernard Mair was born and raised in Jamaica and received his undergraduate degree there. He travelled to Canada to get his Ph.D. at McGill University in 1983. After three year stints at Texas Tech and Penn State, Mair was appointed to the faculty at the University of Florida. There, besides being a professor of mathematics, he became Co-Director of the Center for Applied Mathematics. Mair's research interests are in medical imaging, inverse problems and potential theory. He has written over 50 papers and had one Ph.D. student. His research has been supported by NSF.
Bernard Mair Mair was attracted to State by the active research program, especially in applied mathematics, and the opportunities for collaborative research with other departments and the institutions in the Research Triangle Area.
The department not only got a new department head, but a new departmental secretary, Charlene Wallace. Charlene replaced Dianne (Joyner) Hartgrove, who had been the departmental secretary since 1974. Dianne survived through five different department heads: Rose, Ortega, Harrington, Burniston (two terms) and Martin.
Mair had hardly gotten his feet wet as department head when, in January 2003, he had to take a leave of absence to take care of pressing family matters. Dean Solomon, Dean of PAMS, selected Jean-Pierre Fouque as interim head of the department and John Franke as interim associate head. This was the first of three interim heads of the department in the period 2002-2006 which came to be known as the "interim years".
Jean-Pierre Fouque Jean-Pierre Fouque is a well-known probabilist. He received his PhD (1979) from the Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris, France and was a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University. He has held positions in the French National Center for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.), at the Ecole Polytechnique, and several visiting positions at UC Irvine. After a sabbatical at Stanford University, he joined in 1998 the Department of Mathematics at North Carolina State University where he started and directed the Financial Mathematics Program. He also served twice as interim department head (Spring 2003 and 2004-2005)
Dr. Fouque's primary research interests are financial mathematics, stochastic processes, stochastic partial differential equations, and waves in random media. He has authored over 60 publications, including the well-known Cambridge University Press book Derivatives in Financial Markets with Stochastic Volatility (joint with G. Papanicolaou and R. Sircar).
In the fall of 2003 five new faculty were hired:
Bojko N. Bakalov was born in Bulgaria and studied at Sofia University before getting his Ph.D. at MIT in 2000. Bakalov's research interests are vertex algebras, infinite-dimensional Lie algebras, integrable systems and conformal field theory. He has written one book and 21 research papers and has mentored one Ph.D. student.
Helge Kristian Jenssen is a 1998 Ph.D. graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, where he received an award for the best Ph.D. thesis in fundamental research from Esso. He works in non-linear partial differential equations and systems of conservation laws. Jenssen has written 15 papers. In January, 2005 Jenssen received an NSF Career Award for his proposal entitled "Large and MultiDimensional Solutions of Conservation Laws". Jenssen left for a position at Penn State in July, 2005.
Irina Kogan works in the geometric study of differential equations and variational problems. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000. Kogan has published 17 papers and has supervised one Ph.D. student. She has obtained research support from NSF. With the help of a grant from the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning Kogan has introduced computer laboratory projects in the course Foundations of Euclidean Geometry.
Demetrio Labate is a native of Italy where he received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino. He then obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics from Georgia Tech in 2000. Labate specializes in harmonic analysis, with emphasis on time-frequency analysis and wavelets with applications to signal and image processing. Labate has published 35 papers. In July, 2008 Labate received an NSF Career award to "develop, implement, and apply a new multiscale representation method for multidimensional data".
Alun L. Lloyd comes from the United Kingdom. He studied math at Cambridge and received his D.Phil. in Biology from Oxford in 1996. Before coming to State, he was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton from 1999 to 2003. Lloyd's research is in mathematical biology, with a particular interest in epidemiology and in spatial and stochastic models in biology. He has written 51 research papers and supervised one Ph.D. student. Lloyd is the Director of NC State's Biomathematics Graduate Program. He is on the editorial board of Biology Letters, a journal published by the Royal Society.
Fouque's daughter was taking a calculus course at State. Fouque was concerned that the large lecture format did not allow enough time for graded homework. Web-Assign, a system for automatic grading of student homework, was introduced for Physics students and was being used successfully in some introductory mathematics courses. Fouque asked a committee consisting of Page, Norris, Scroggs, Franke and Griggs to study the feasibility of using Web-Assign in the main calculus sequence. In the fall of 2003, Web-Assign made its debut in the main calculus sequence. Web-Assign is now a standard part of the calculus courses.
Fouque and Franke had the departmental web page, www.math.ncsu.edu, redesigned. Among the new features added were seminar announcements and videos of colloquium talks.
When Fouque heard about the Meyer-Shearer report arguing for a new mathematics building he decided to push it along. He set up a new committee consisting of Meyer, Franke, Shearer and Olufsen to update the Meyer-Shearer report. This committee, with the help of Dean Ray Fornes, came up with a report and presented their arguments to the administration.
In the spring of 2003, Fouque, together with Meyer, Franke, Shearer and Olufsen, went directly to Chancellor Mary Anne Fox to present their arguments for a new building. The chancellor was very supportive of the project. However, she pointed out that it would be necessary to get approval from the Board of Trustees, the Board of Governors and the State Legislature before the renovation money could be used for a new building.
The move for a new math building got a boost when, In August of 2003, Lisa Johnson, associate university architect, submitted a report stating in part:
"As this study has indicated, the renovation of Harrelson Hall will cause a loss of usable space and classroom seating capacity, and still not achieve the goals of correcting accessibility deficiencies, and improving classroom capacity and quality standards. NC State University recommends removal and replacement of Harrelson Hall with a new, 100% code-compliant general classroom building that meets the current instructional needs of NC State's faculty, and students and is designed to be flexible to better meet the needs of the classroom of the future. A new classroom building, with an equivalent amount of assignable square footage as post-renovated Harrelson, can be built for an approximately equivalent cost as that of renovating Harrelson Hall. Since a new facility will remedy many of the problems that the renovation cannot and this option will have a longer life, it is recommended that this approach be pursued rather that continuing efforts to renovate Harrelson."
By early 2004, the university had obtained approval to build a new building instead of renovating Harrelson Hall. In June of 2004, Chancellor Fox appointed an "Ad-Hoc Building Committee for the Classroom and Office Building to replace Harrelson Hall" to act as a Users Group in the development of the design of the new building. Dean Solomon was chairman of the committee. Michael Shearer and Carl Meyer were the math department representatives. The site assigned for the new building was the old Riddick Stadium and parking lot.
The new "Classroom and Office Building to replace Harrelson Hall" was originally to hold only classrooms and offices for the mathematics department. Dean Solomon had long dreamed of a "mathematical sciences building" to house both the mathematics and statistics department. While the initial planning for the replacement for Harrelson was going on, Dean Solomon, with the help of Anita Stallings, PAMS Executive Director of Development, searched for funding to make the dream a reality. In the fall of 2004 they were successful in obtaining a commitment for a substantial gift from corporate partner SAS. The gift was to be used to enable the construction of a larger building that would house both the mathematics and statistics departments. The Users Group was expanded to include members of the statistics department. Planning for the new building continued from the fall of 2004 through 2005 and 2006.
Fouque relinquished his duties as head of the department when Mair returned on July 1, 2003. John Franke stayed on as associate department head. During the six months Mair was on leave the financial situation in the State of North Carolina had turned into a severe budget crisis, and the university budget reflected this crisis. Mair was forced to cut back severely on all fronts. No money was available to start any new initiatives or to hire any new faculty.
By almost every measure the faculty continued to be very productive in research. During the calendar year 2003 there were 89 faculty publications and 145 talks given at professional meetings. The new research grants for 2002-2003 academic year totalled $2.9 million [From data supplied by Ray Fornes] and the total research expenditures was $4.05 million for the same period. Although the number of Ph.D. graduates nationwide is rather flat the mathematics department Ph.D. output is growing. There were 10 Ph.D. graduates in calendar year 2002 and 16 in calendar year 2003.
In March of 2004, Lavon Page was appointed by the Provost to head the implementation of LITRE (Learning in a Technology Rich Environment). This program aims at enhancing the extensive learning with technology opportunities available to students at NC State. Page is well versed in the use of technology in instruction. In 1997 he headed the university's "Project 25", which sought to get 25 courses on-line by the fall of 1997. He developed three such courses himself. From 1994 until 2003 he was Director of the Multimedia Center in the Mathematics Department which managed the undergraduate computer resources of the department. Page helped in the implementation of the symbolic computation program MAPLE into the undergraduate curriculum and use of Web-Assign, a web-based homework delivery, collection, grading and recording system.
The mathematics faculty were surprised to receive the following e-mail from Dr. Mair dated May 28, 2004:
Dean Solomon consulted with the faculty and staff and announced his decision on June 24 with the following e-mail:"As the (fiscal) year draws to a close, I would like to congratulate you on doing a fine job throughout the past year. Despite the many challenges, many of you have demonstrated outstanding service and commitment to the faculty, staff and students who depend heavily on the services you provide. There is no doubt in my mind that this department has a great future and will continue its rise in national prominence and stature, especially with the new building that is being planned. However, for family and personal reasons I have decided to resign from my present position, effective June 30, 2004. I will be rejoining the faculty at University of Florida.
"Thank you for the opportunity to serve the department for the past year, and I wish you the best for the future. The dean will be sending a message shortly concerning the future of the departmental leadership."
"I am delighted to announce that Jean-Pierre Fouque has agreed to serve as Interim Department Head affective July 1, 2004. Jean Pierre's experience and his strong reputation in the international mathematics community will serve the department well. The Department has made great strides in recent years and is on the verge of moving to the top tier nationally. The College pledges its support in pursuit of that goal."On July 1, Dr. Fouque sent his first message to the faculty as Interim Head:
"I officially become the interim head of the department today for the year to come and I want to take this opportunity to let you know that I intend to put all my energy in this position. It is also a good time to ask you to join me in thanking Bernard Mair for his tenure and wishing him the best in the future."One of my priorities will be a significant improvement of the well deserved visibility of our department at all levels. Initiatives in that direction, such as the new committee "Awards and Publicity" chaired by Michael Singer, will find my full support.
"I also intend to work closely with the Faculty Advisory Committee to which I am appointing Michael Shearer who is leading our efforts in getting the best new building for the department. Larry Norris will organize the election of a FAC member to replace me.
"It is a pleasure to announce that Loek Helminck has accepted to become interim associate head and extend his responsibilities as chair of the computer committee to other departmental administrative responsibilities. I count on Loek to lead and implement some of the changes and improvements needed in order to be recognized as a top department.
"I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Franke for the great service he has provided to the department in the position of associate head during these past months. I am sure that John will continue to play an important role in our efforts to improve the department.
"I wish you all an excellent Summer and a great year 2004-05, and I am looking forward to working with all of you."
In 2005 Loek Helminck obtained support for REU (Research experience for undergraduates) which brings undergraduates to the campus during the summer to participate in research activities supervised by faculty members. This program has continued each year since. In 2008 it was the largest such program in the country. Helminck obtained support for two additional summer programs: REG, a research experience for early graduate student and S-STEM, a university wide program for needy undergraduate and graduate students, in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Even during this period of revolving leadership in the department, the faculty continued to produce and many received honors and awards:
On Sept. 16, 2002 Tom Banks received the Turkish Governors' Medal of Honor Award for his "outstanding research contributions" at the International Conference on Inverse Problems: Modeling and Simulation in Fethiye, Turkey, June 7-12, 2004. Banks also received the prestigious W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics, presented an- nually by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).Two alumni were honored:
Carla Savage, Professor of Computer Science and associate member of the Mathematics Department, and two collaborators, including Charles "Chip" Killian, an undergraduate in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, solved a 30-year-old problem about drawing Venn diagrams. (Science, January 31, 2003)
On May 15, 2003 the students, friends and collaborators of Carl Meyer celebrated his 60th birthday with a conference Matrix Analysis and Applied Linear Algebra in his honor. Talks were given by many prominent linear algebraists including Gene Golub, Hans Schneider, Mickey Neumann, Ilse Ipsen and Robert Plemmons. The conference was attended by about 50 people.
Agnes Szanto received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (Career) Award. This is the first Career award for the Department. The five-year grant was awarded to Szanto for her proposal entitled "Solving Over-Constrained Systems of Non-Linear Equations by Symbolic-Numeric Methods." The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.
Erich Kaltofen and co-author Pascal Koiran received the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation ISSAC 2005 Distinguished Paper Award for their paper "On the complexity of factoring bivariate supersparse (lacunary) polynomials.'' The paper was presented at the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (ISSAC) in Beijing on July 25, 2005.
Michael Singer was elected to the Council of the American Mathematical Society in 2006.
John Griggs and Mansoor Haider were named NC State Outstanding Teachers for 2004-2005.
Ernest Stitzinger was the recipient of the Board of Governors' Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2005-2006 for the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
Marilyn McCollum received a 2005 Award for Outstanding Service in Support for Teaching and Learning from the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at NC State.
Naihuan Jing was named a Fulbright Scholar for 2003 - 2004, and was a member of the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Mathematik in Bonn, Germany, from December 2003 to June 2004. He was also awarded a Humbolt Fellowship for 2004 - 2005, with which he will visit Bielefeld University from December 2005 to August 2005.
The Richard Skalak Award for best paper in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering for the year 2003 was awarded to Mansoor Haider and his coauthors for the article "Alterations in the mechanical properties of the human chondrocyte pericellular matrix with osteoarthritis," (L.G. Alexopoulos, M.A. Haider, T.P. Vail and F. Guilak) Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, Vol. 125, pp. 323-333.
Joel Brawley was named the South Carolina Governor's Professor of the Year in 2002. He obtained his doctorate from NC State under Jack Levine in 1964. Brawley also received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from State. He has been in the mathematics department at Clemson since 1965. In 2006 Brawley wrote a tribute to his Ph.D. advisor In Memory of Jack Levine (1907-2005) in Cryptologia (vol. 30, pp.83-87).Robert Bryant (BS in Mathematics, 1974) received the 2005 College of Physical and Mathematics Distinguished Alumnus Award. Professor Bryant is the J.M. Kreps Professor of Mathematics at Duke University. He is currently Director of MSRI, the NSF funded Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley,
Some graduate students won awards:
Graduate student John May won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2004 International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation in Santander, Spain.
Graduate Student Rachel Levy won the Best Student Talk award at the 2004 British Applied Mathematics Colloquium. She also won won a student paper prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2005.
Graduate student Matthew Lasater , won student paper awards at the Advanced Workshop on Frontiers in Electronics in Aruba in December, 2004, and the SIAM-SEAS meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, in March, 2005.
On June 31, 2005 Dr. Fouque left NC State to join the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California at Santa Barbara where he would head an interdisciplinary Center for Research in Financial Mathematics and Statistics (CRFMS). Dean Solomon appointed Loek Helminck as interim department head.
In 2005-2006 the faculty consisted of :
Full Professors: H. T. Banks, S. L. Campbell,
M. T. Chu, E. N. Chukwu, L. O. Chung, J. D. Cohen, A. Fauntleroy, J. P. Fouque, J. E. Franke, R. O. Fulp, P. Gremaud,
R. E. Hartwig, A. Helminck, H. Hong, I. Ipsen, K. Ito, N. Jing,
E. L. Kaltofen, C. T. Kelley, A. Keyfets,
X. B. Lin, R. H. Martin, N. Medhin, C. D. Meyer,
K. Misra, E. L. Peterson, M. Putcha,
S. Schecter, J. F. Selgrade, F. M. Semazzi, M. Shearer, C. E. Siewert, J. W. Silverstein, M. F. Singer, R. Smith,
E. L. Stitzinger, H. T. Tran, R. E. White.
Adjunct Professors: E. M. Peck, P. Schlosser.
Associate Professors:
G. D. Faulkner,
T. J. Lada, Z. Li, A. Lloyd, S. Lubkin, L. K, Norris, L. B. Page, S. O. Paur, R. T. Ramsay,
J. Rodriguez, J. S. Scroggs, S. Tsynkov, W. M. Waters.
Assistant Professors: B. Bakalov, R. Buche, H. J. Charlton,
A. Chertock, M. A. Haider, H. Jenssen, M. Kang, I. Kogan, D. Labate,
M. S. Olufsen, T. Pang, A. Szanto, D. Zenkov;
Lecturers: B. Burns-Williams, J. R. Griggs,
R. Kenney, M. S. McCollum, A. McRae.
Emeritus Faculty: J. W. Bishir, E. E, Burniston
R. E. Chandler, J. Danby, H. Davison, J. Dunn, D. E. Garoutte, T. Gordon, D. J. Hansen, J. Marlin, L. B. Martin, P. Nickel, K. Koh, J. Kolb,
C. V. Pao, E. Peterson, R. T. Ramsay, N. J. Rose, R. Silber, H. Speece, R. Struble, D. Ullrich, O. Wesler, J. Wilson.