Mathematics department from 2006 to 2009
The Helminck Years
During the academic year 2005-2006 Loek Helminckserved as interim department head. On July 1, 2006 Dean Solomon appointed Helminck as department head. Hien Tran was picked to be associate department head. After several years of interim heads and associate heads, the faculty was hopeful that these appointments of long-time members of the department would last for many years.
Helminck obtained support for an Institute for Mathematics at NC State (IM@State) spon- sored by NSF and NSA1 . IM@State administers several programs to provide research experience for undergraduate and graduate students from around the nation. IM@State also has pro- grams to assist and encourage research participation of underrepresented groups of students. This is a continuation of a long-standing departmental policy of recruiting and graduating women and minority students.Aloysius "Loek" G. Helminck was born and raised in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics and physics in 1975 and 1980, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1985. All three degrees were earned at the University of Utrecht in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Helminck held visiting positions at the University of Michigan and Brandeis University, and research fellowships at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, and the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Helminck joined the mathematics faculty at NC State in 1987 and was promoted to full professor in 2000.
Aloysius G. Helminck Helminck's research focuses on symmetric spaces, their representations and applications. Symmetric spaces play an important role in many areas of mathematics, including geometry, singularity theory and, most importantly, representation theory. He has written over 40 papers, supervised 6 Ph.D. students and currently has 6 Ph.D. students. He has 2 books in preparation. His research has been supported in part by NSF, NSA, and a Dutch Corporation.
Helminck chaired the departmental computing committee for many years. He was interim associate department head in 2004-2005 under interim department head J. P. Fouque.
The Department of Mathematics was selected as the winner of the 2006 Departmental Award for Teaching and Learning Excellence (DATLE). As part of its award, the department received a check for $5,000 and a recurring addition of $15,000 to its annual base funding. The awards will be used to support teaching and learning excellence in the department.
n October 2007 the Center for Quantitative Sciences in Biomedicine (CQSB) was established. It is a multidisciplinary research center at NC State whose mission is to catalyze and fa- cilitate research projects in the biomedical sciences which require integrated collaborations among scientists in the quantitative and biomedical disciplines. The program is directed by Lloyd Marie Davidian in the statistics department with Tom Banks as co-director. Four other members of the math department are associated with the project: S. Lubkin, M. Olufsen, H. Tran and M. Haider.
Tim Kelley, together with NC State physicists Dr. Jerry Bernholc and Dr. Wenchang Lu, is leading a research team that includes scientists from the University of Tennessee, in a project to create software for the world's most powerful supercomputers. The research is being funded by a five-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
A Mathematics Department Research Training Group led by Ralph Smith, Pierre Gremaud, Mansoor Haider, Negash Medhin and Michael Shearer is developing activities for undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs with a $1.9 million five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. The effort focuses on five areas that are fundamental to emerging technologies: orthopedic biomaterials; multifunctional materials; polymers and composites, including carbon nanotubes; dynamics of thin material layers; and laser welding. The objective of the program is to train students and postdocs for academic and nonacademic careers that bridge applied mathematics, materials science, engineering, physics, and advanced technology.
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| Goodnight, Sall, Murphy, Helminck, Pantula, Oblinger | at the groundbreaking for the new building |
On October 13, 2006, during the PAMS Alumni and Friends Weekend, the groundbreaking for the new mathematics and statistics building took place. The official announcement of the SAS contribution toward the new building was made at this time. SAS President Jim Goodnight and SAS Executive Vice President John Sall were instrumental in providing the gift and participated in the ceremony. Both attended NC State and remain staunch supporters of PAMS and the university. Goodnight served on the faculty of the Department of Statistics and Sall served on the College's foundation board and is currently on the university's Board of Trustees. Chancellor Oblinger, NCSU Board of Trustees Chairman Wendell Murphy, Dean Solomon, math department head Helminck, and statistics department head Pantula also participated in the groundbreaking in front of a crowd of faculty, friends and alumni.
There were a number of awards and honors given to the faculty during the 2006-2009 years:
The North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCCTM) presented its 2006 Rankin Award to William Waters for his outstanding contributions to NCCTM and to mathematics education in North Carolina. This is NCCTM's highest award.Two graduates of the mathematics programs at State received honors:
Michael Singer, with co-authors Ziming Li, Min Wu, and Dabin Zheng, was awarded a Distinguished Paper Award by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation for the paper "A Recursive Method for Determining the One-Dimensional Submodules of Laurent-Ore Modules,'' presented at the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation in Genoa, Italy, on July 10, 2006.
Michael Shearer received the 2006 Elva and LeRoy Martin Teaching Effectiveness Awards. He was also named an NC State Outstanding Teacher for 2005 - 2006, and became a member of the Academy of Outstanding Teachers.The NC State Alumni Association named Moody Chu as an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor for 2006.
Bojko Bakalov was awarded the Hermann Weyl Prize (at the 26th International Colloquium on Group-Theoretical Methods in Physics, organized by J. Birman and S. Catto in New York June 26-30, 2006.)
On July 11, 2006, Kazufumi Ito won a SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize for the paper "The Primal-Dual Active Set Strategy as Semi-Smooth Newton Method,'' SIAM J. Optimization 13 (2002), 865-888, coauthored with M. Hintermuller and K. Kunisch.
Min Kang was awarded the 2007 Alumni Outstanding Teacher Award and was also awarded an NC State Outstanding Teacher for 2006–2007.
Carl Meyer was selected for the 2007 Mathematics Department Alumni Award at Colorado State University. In November, during Math Day at the University, Dr. Meyer gave the mathematics department colloquium lecture and was presented with the award.
Jack Silverstein was elected to Fellowship in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He was presented with a plaque on Monday, July 30 at the 2007 IMS Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. The citation reads: "For seminal contributions to the theory and application of random matrices."
Sandra Paur received the 2007 NCSU Faculty Adviser Award. The award recognized Paur's commitment to guiding students in career and academic paths.
Demetrio Labate was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty. He is the third member of the department to receive this honor. Labate's project was concerned with a new multiscale representation method for multidimensional data.
The NC State Alumni Association named Bob Martin an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor for 2008-2010.
Marilyn McCollum was named an NC State Outstanding Teacher for 2007–2008.
On February 22-23, 2008. a conference "The Geometry and Analysis of Dynamical Systems", was held at NC State in honor of the 60-th birthdays of Xiao-Biao Lin and Steve Schecter.
The NCSU Alumni Association named H. Thomas Banks as one of the 2008 recipients of the Association's Outstanding Research Award. Professor Banks also won the award in 1996. The NC State Alumni Association named Robert Martin, Jr. an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor for 2008-2010. Marilyn McCollum was named an NC State Outstanding Teacher for 2007--2008.
Amy Langville, a 2002 NC State PhD in Operations Research and a postdoctorate with Carl Meyer, received an NSF CAREER award for her project "Updating Problems in Information Retrieval and a Mathematical Dissection Lab". Dr. Langville is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the College of Charleston.
NCSU alumnus Robert Bryant (Mathematics, 1974) was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Bryant was also named the new Director of MSRI (MathematicalSciences Research Institute) at Berkeley.
Some Students, both undergraduate and graduate, received awards and scholarships:
Mathematics graduate student Brandy Benedict is one of two students nationwide to be named Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows for summer 2007 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The program sends advanced science, mathematics, and engineering students to work in major news organizations.Every ten years or so the mathematics department is evaluated by an external review committee. In 1983 the reviewing group stated:
Undergraduate math majors Adam Attarian, Cameron Swofford, Roberto Rodriguez and Cheryl Zapata won awards for their research posters at the AMS/MAA Joint Meetings in New Orleans in January, 2007.
Nicole Kroeger, a sophomore math major, won a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2008-2009.
Ryan Going, a senior in applied mathematics and electrical and computer engineering, was awarded a Gates Scholarship for study at Cambridge University in 2009.
Angelean Hendrix, a first year graduate student in applied mathematics, has been awarded a prestigious three year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to work with Prof. Selgrade. Hers was one of 62 awards in all of mathematics, applied mathematics, and biostatistics.
"The review committee feels that the Mathematics Department is essentially in good shape and serves the University well. It is in a state of transition with many new opportunities that will require some adjustment on the part of its faculty."In the review of 1997 a more upbeat conclusion:
"The NC State Mathematics Department has improved greatly in research quality and external recognition in recent years."In the spring of 2008, the review committee consisted of a team of prominent mathematicians: Richard Brualdi, University of Wisconsin, Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Arizona State University, David Gottlieb, Brown University, Arthur Krener, University of California, Davis and Margaret Wright (Chair), New York University. The committee concluded that
the Mathematics Department is a nationally and internationally visible jewel that should be highly valued by the college."
Clearly the mathematics department had arrived! In fact, the university administration stated that they had never received such a favorable review for any department. Following is a listing of the main findings of the group:
- The committee is deeply and favorably impressed by the engagement, energy, and enthusiasm of the Department
- For the past several years, the mathematics faculty had been asked to do more with less. This situation has led to understandable stress and frustration among the faculty.
- The applied mathematics faculty members of the Department are outstanding by any measure and the Department also contains important strength in several areas of core mathematics, specifically algebra and symbolic computation.
- The Department has a shared vision of excellence in both applied and core mathematics–a highly unusual feature in a mathematics department.
- Faculty members in the Department display notable collegiality and mutual respect at all levels.
- Loek Helminck, the Department head provides unifying and effective leadership that is greatly valued by his colleagues.
- The governance structure of the Department—the Faculty Advisory Committee—appears to be working well by providing and inclusive mechanism that allows efficient functioning.
- The Department has obtained external research funding at levels that are untypically high among mathematics departments, and has made effective use of that funding to perform highly regarded research and to develop new programs and activities.
- The Department displays a clear and determined commitment to education and support of students at all levels.
- The Ph.D. programs is excellent in several dimensions. Students appreciate the Department's deep commitment to a high–quality educational program that respects individual needs and career choices. The committee takes a very positive view of the Department's focus on attracting domestic Ph.D. students. We commend the Department for the obvious care and attention dedicated to recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minority Ph.D. students. In particular, the Department's achievement in graduating African–American Ph.D.'s sets a high standard for a mathematics department at a research university that is not minority–serving.
- The committee expresses admiration for the high value placed by the Department on undergraduate education, including responsive service teaching, and for the size and quality of the undergraduate honors program.
- Faculty members in applied mathematics have created research and educational paradigms, such as the Center of Research in Scientific Computing (CRSC), started in 1992, and associated Industrial Mathematical and Statistical Modeling workshop for graduate students, started in 1995.
- The Department has been a leader at NC State and nationally in developing creative and effective approaches to interdisciplinary that do not require major organizational changes within the University. The Center for Research in Scientific Computation, the faculty's participation in SAMSI (Statistical and Applied Mathematics Sciences Institute), and the new and entrepreneurial Center for Quantitative Sciences in Biomedicine illustrate the Department's commitment to interdisciplinary research and outreach to other fields.
The committee suggested to PAMS that the department needed to have more faculty, that stipends for graduate assistants needed to be upgraded and that funding should be provided for a healthy postdoc program across all areas of the department. It recommended to the department that, because of the current senior profile of the department, a faculty renewal plan covering the next decade or so should be adopted. It recommended that the interdisciplinary programs in Biomathematics and Financial mathematics should be strengthened. The Committee also recommended that the department should supply more information and guidance in selecting Ph.D. advisors.
The reviewers encouraged the department to continue to develop interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate programs. The interdisciplinary Ph.D. program is now a concentration, and should soon be a full degree program. An interdisciplinary BS and a new general BA in math are both in the planning stages.
One new faculty member joined the department in 2006:
Nathan Reading received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota in 2002 and held a postdoctorate at the University of Michigan before coming to State in 2006. Reading's research is in algebraic and geometric combinatorics, particularly the combinatorics of Coxeter groups. He has published 17 papers.
Four new faculty members were hired 2008:
Patricia Hersh was on the faculty at Indiana University before joining the NC State faculty. She earned her doctorate from MIT in 1999. Her specialty is algebraic and topological combinatorics. Hersh has published 20 papers. She has research support from NSF.
Seth Sullivant obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His research is in algebraic statistics and algebraic biology, He spent three years as a Junior Fellow at Harvard before joining State. Sullivant's research interest is algebraic topology. He has written two books and 27 research papers.
Alina Duca joined the department as a Teaching Assistant Professor, a new type of position for the department. Their charge is to focus on innovation in the department's teaching. Alina Duca was a visiting faculty member at Vassar College,
Molly Fenn also joined the department as Teaching Assistant Professor. Fenn obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts in 2008.
Two new faculty joined the department in 2009:
Mark Hoefer obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006. He held a postdoctorate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, 2006-2008. He received an NSF fellowship to spend 2008-2009 academic year at Columbia University and will join State in the Fall of 2009. Hoefer is an applied mathematician and has published 8 papers.John Harlim obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute from 2006 to 2009. Harlim is an applied mathematician interested in Applied dynamical systems, numerical weather forecasting, filtering turbulent complex systems, atmospheric predictability, and digital halftoning. He has one book in preparation and has published 12 papers.
The Department hosted its first Alumni Reception at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, San Diego, California in January 2008. All alumni, and friends of the department were invited for hors d'oeuvres, conversation, and information about recent events in the department. Alumni-and-friends receptions were also held at the SIAM national meeting in San Diego in July 2008 and at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington in January 2009. Helminck plans to make these receptions annual events at the national meetings.
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| Shearer talks at the Alumni brunch |
Mathematics was featured at the 2008 PAMS Alumni and Friends Weekend. Donald Saari, a mathematician at the University of California at Irvine, gave a fascinating keynote address on the mathematics of voting. A brunch for Mathematics Department alumni was well attended. A poster display presented six student research projects. There were short talks by Ralph Smith on the Department's achievements, and by Michael Shearer on plans for the future.
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| Solomon presenting |
| award to L. Martin |
In recognition of Dr. Martin's contributions to mathematics at NC State, Jim Goodnight from SAS has endowed the "LeRoy Martin Distinguished Professorship." This is the first privately endowed distinguished professorship for the mathematics department. Goodnight's reasons for making this particular gift go all the way back to his freshman year when he took a course under Dr. Martin. "LeRoy was a great teacher, and he inspired me to continue in applied math," Goodnight said. "After 47 years of knowing and working with him, I felt it was time to recognize his academic achievements and his years of service to this great university by naming a distinguished professorship for him."
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| Meeting Poster |
The mathematics faculty played a big part in the program as organizers or co-organizers of special sessions or speakers: B. Bakalov, A. Chertock, A. Duca, M. Fenn, J. Franke, R. Fulp, P. Gremaud, M. Haider, A. Helminck, P. Hersh, H. Hong, M. Kang, I. Kogan, N. Jing, E. Kaltofen, T. Lada, Z. Li, K. Misra, N. Reading, C. Savage, J. Selgrade, M. Singer, S. Sullivant, A. Szanto, D. Zenkov. Ph. D. students J. Collins, D. Long, M. Nehring, K. Thompson, G. Yuhasz also participated.
The construction of the new mathematics and statistics building was completed in the spring of 2009. The $32 million building was made possible by the Higher Education Bond Referendum of 2000, as well as by gifts from private donors, including a substantial contribution from SAS.
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| SAS Hall |
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| The Dedication Plaque for SAS Hall |
| (Photo by Richard Chandler) |
The dedication for the building occurred on May 1. At the dedication ceremony NC State Chancellor James L. Oblinger announced that the building would be named SAS Hall, in honor of the founders of the Cary, North Carolina-based software company. Over 300 faculty, students, alumni and friends attended the dedication. Besides Chancellor Oblinger, remarks were made by Dean Don Solomon, SAS Executive Vice President John Sall, Mathematics Department Head Loek Helminck and Statistics Department Head Sastry Pantula. Sall stated:
"At SAS, we believe that it is vital for students in the mathematical and statistical sciences to learn in an environment that provides state-of-the-art facilities and instructional technologies," Sall said. "It's also critical that they participate in the kind of collaborative initiatives they'll experience in the work place. That type of environment produces the type of employee and person we want at SAS, and it's the type we want to produce at NC State. That's why we decided to make a significant contribution toward ensuring that this building would become a reality."
SAS Hall contains about 19,000 square feet. There are 10 classrooms, a 250-seat lecture hall and almost 200 offices for faculty, staff and graduate students. In addition there are large commons areas for students and faculty, seminar rooms, meeting rooms, computer labs, a tutorial center and a library.
The classrooms and the lecture hall have state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment supplied by Cisco and the NWN corporation. Overhead projectors and computers and DVD players are available for audio-visual presentations. In addition, course materials can be captured for later viewing or streamed to remote locations for viewing and interaction.
An interesting feature of SAS Hall is the "golden spiral" that starts outside the north entrance of the building moves past Park Hall, across Stintson Drive into the West wing of SAS, then back out into the courtyard, finally spiraling into its center as shown below. (A golden spiral is associated with a golden rectangle. It is a logarithmic spiral having the property that a change of the polar angle of 90 degrees changes the radius by a factor of the golden mean.)
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| The SAS Hall Spiral |
 The Mobile |
Just inside the main entrance to SAS Hall is
a dramatic four-story atrium. A large colorful mobile hanging from the fourth floor ceiling graces the atrium as shown in the picture below. This mobile was designed and constructed by a group of students in the College of Design at NCSU. The design of the mobile incorporates golden mean proportions and arcs of spirals.
The summer of 2009 was a busy one at SAS Hall. There were 40 under- graduate students from around the country participating in the REU program--- by far the largest math REU in the nation. An additional 30 graduate students were involved in the REG program. The REU program introduces bright undergraduates to research, but they are also introduced to NC State. Since the program began in 2005, several students have decided to do their graduate work here. On top of that, the Industrial Mathematical & Statistical Modeling Workshop (IMSM) brought 40 graduate students to campus for a week. This program, sponsored by CRSC, SAMSI and NC State and funded by NSF, introduces students to challenging and exciting real-world problems arising inindustrial and government laboratory research. |
Ethelbert Chukwu retired in 2006. Robert Hartwig and Chuck Siewert completed their phased retirement in 2008. Ron Fulp started his phased retirement in 2008. Marilyn McCollum retired in January 2009.
Congratulations to Denise Seabrooks for 30 years of service and Carolyn Gunton for 20 years of service to the Mathematics Department.
Personnel In the fall of 2009:
Department administration:
A. G. Helminck, Department Head; H. T. Tran, Associate Head; J. S. Scroggs, Director of Undergraduate Program; S. L. Campbell, Director of Graduate Program; E. L. Stitzinger, Administrator of Graduate Program; J. R. Griggs, Coordinator of Classroom Instruction;
H. J. Charlton, Scheduling Officer and Director of Summer School.
The faculty: (Clicking on an underlined name will bring up the persons math genealogy. Use the back button to return to this page.)
Professors: H.T. Banks, S.L. Campbell, M. T. Chu, J. D. Cohen, A. Fauntleroy, J. E. Franke, R. O. Fulp, P. A. Gremaud, A. G. Helminck, H. Hong, I. Ipsen, K. Ito, N. Jing, E. L. Kaltofen, C. T. Kelley, A. Kheyfets, T. Lada, Z. Li, X. B. Lin, S. Lubkin, R. H. Martin, N. Medhin,The staff:
C.D. Meyer, K. C. Misra, M. S. Putcha, S. Schecter, J. F. Selgrade, F.H.M. Semazzi,
M. Shearer, J. W. Silverstein, M. Singer, R. Smith, E. L. Stitzinger, H. T. Tran, R. E. White.
Adjunct Professors: E. M. Peck, P. Schlosser.
Associate Professors: A. Chertock, M. A. Haider, P. Hersh, M. Kang, A. Lloyd, L. K. Norris, M. S. Olufsen, T. Pang, S. O. Paur, J. Rodriguez, J. S. Scroggs, A. Szanto, S. Tsynkov
D. Zenkov.
Assistant Professors: B. Bakalov, H. J. Charlton, A. Duca, M. Fenn, J. R. Griggs, M. Hoeffner,
I. Kogan, N. Reading;, S. Sullivant.
Lecturers: B. Burns-Williams, E. Dempster, R. Kenney, L. Kurtz, S. Whitt.
Emeritus Faculty: J.W. Bishir, E. E. Burniston, R. E. Chandler, E. N. Chukwu, L. O. Chung,
H. Davison, J. Danby, J. C. Dunn, G. D. Faulkner, D. E. Garoutte, T. Gordon, D. J. Hansen, R. E. Hartwig, J. Luh, J. Marlin, P. Nickel, L. B. Page, C. V. Pao, E. L. Peterson,
R. T. Ramsay, N. J. Rose, R. Savage, R. Silber, C.E. Siewert, H. Speece, R. Struble,
D. Ullrich, W. M. Waters, Jr., O. Wesler; J. Wilson.
S. Bennett-Shabbir, Webmaster and Teaching Technician; D. Bucklad, Undergraduate and Financial Math Secretary; J. G. Burt, Teaching Technician; J. Cason, Computing Support;This History now comes to a close. The author has had the pleasure of being associated with the mathematics department for over 40 years. He has seen it grow and mature into one of the best departments in the nation. The department, with a new building, excellent leadership, a superb faculty and a competent and experienced staff, is poised for even greater accomplishments in the years to come.
N. N. Dahlke, Administrative Support Specialist; L. Denning, CRSC Administrative Assistant; J. Gaddy, Accounting Technician II, C. Gunton, Assistant Scheduling Officer; D. Leistikow, SAMSI Program Assistant; B. Priser, Contract/Grant Specialist; D. Seabrooks, Graduate Secretary; F. Stephenson, Executive Assistant; C. Wallace, Administrative Support Associate.
(Do well what you do)