Fifteen PhDs Awarded in 2000

Fifteen graduate students in the Department of Mathematics were awarded PhDs in the year 2000. With their thesis advisor, thesis title, and current address, they are:

BEHN, Antonio F. (Advisor, D. Passman)

``Group rings whose principal ideals are projective and groups with bounded representation degree'', Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843-3368.

BERGER, Kurt M. (Advisor, P. Milewski)

``Asymptotic and numerical analysis of free surface flows; lump solitons and wave turbulence'', Zassenhaus Assistant Professor, Mathematics Department, Ohio State U., 231 W.  18th Ave, Columbus OH 43210.

CHOI, Jongho (Advisor, P. Milewski)

``Long nonlinear water waves over a periodic bottom topography'', Lecturer, UW-Madison.

EGGE, Eric S. (Advisor, P. Terwilliger)

``A generalization of the Terwilliger algebra'', Assistant Professor, Gettysburg College, 300 N.  Washington St, Gettysburg PA 17325.

EGHBALNIA, Hamid (Advisor, A. Assadi)

``A complex valued over complete representation of information for visual search: A learning theoretic approach based on multiscale symmetry'', Department of Biochemistry, NMRFAN, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

FELCYN, Pawel (Advisor, J. Robbin)

``Classifying spaces of moduli spaces of Morse shale flows'', Faculty Assistant, UW-Madison.

FRANKLIN, Bradbury (Advisor, T. Kurtz)

``The limit of the normalized error in SDEs and SPDEs'', Lecturer, Mathematics Department, U. Nebraska-Lincoln, 933 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln NE 68504.

HILDEBRAND, Jeffrey D. (Advisor, G. Benkart)

``Some results on down-up algebras over fields of prime characteristic'', Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Allegheny College, 520 N.  Main St, Meadville PA 16335.

HOLTZ, Olga V. (Advisor, H. Schneider)

``Theorems and counterexamples on structured matrices'', Associate Researcher, Computer Science Department, UW-Madison, 1210 W. Dayton St, Madison WI 53706-1685.

JEON, Woo (Advisor, J. M. Osborn)

``Generalized Cartan type algebras and their deprivations'', Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Minnesota-Duluth, 10 University Dr, Duluth MN 55812-2496.

KUNG, David T-S. (Advisor, A. Seeger)

``Local smoothing phenomena for operators failing the cinematic curvature condition'', Assistant Professor, Mathematics Department, St. Mary's College of Maryland, St. Mary's City, MD 20686.

MAC NAIR, Simon G. (Advisor, T. Zariphopoulou)

``Valuation problems in incomplete markets'', Post-Doc Fellow, University of British Columbia, #121-1984 Mathematics Rd, Vancouver BC, Canada V6T 1Z2.

MC KINZIE, Mark B. (Advisor, M. Bleicher)

``The Halley-Euler method Instructor'', Department of Mathematics, Monroe Comm. College, 1000 E. Henrietta Rd, Rochester NY 14623.

WANG, Dejia (Advisor, S. Lempp)

``Saturation properties in the computably enumerable degrees'', Faculty Assistant, UW-Madison Mathematics Dept.

ZIEBARTH, Jennifer (Advisor, A. Adem)

``On the mod p cohomology of the symplectic group Sp⁴(IF^p) and the general linear group GL³(IF^p)'', Assistant Professor, Mathematics Department, Earlham College, Richmond IN 47374-4095.

New Graduate Students in Fall 2000

Thirty-two new students began graduate studies in the Mathematics Department in the fall of 2000. Their names and undergraduate institution are listed below.

BENESH, Bret J.	University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
BOYLAN, Matthew G.	UW-Madison/Penn State University
CHAKRABARTI, Debraj	Indian Institute of Technology/Carnegie Mellon
CHARALAMBIDES, Marios	University of Cyprus
CHATTERJEE, Rohit	University of Texas at Austin
DWYER, Christopher	Notre Dame/University of Chicago
EL-GUINDY, Ahmad	Cairo University
ELLINGTON, Duane	Wake Forest University
ELY, Robert E.	University Northern Colorado
EVANS, Michael D.	Penn State University at Erie
GANESAN, Ashwin	Marquette University
GOOD, Clark E.	University of Texas at Austin
KIESERMAN, Noah M.	Dartmouth College
LADLEY, Michael S.	Eastern Michigan University
LEETE, Jennifer A.	College of Wooster
LI, Xiantao	Peking University/Georgia Tech
LU, Tianshi	New York University
MNEIMNEH, Ola A.	American University Beirut
MOFFITT, Derek	Washington University
MORTENSON, Eric T.	UW-Madison/University of Texas
NEUBAUER, Darren R.	University of Michigan-Dearborn
NEWTON, Benjamin W.	Carleton College
NGUYEN, Xuan Hien	University Libre de Bruxelles
ORES, Kathleen S.	University of Montana
OWEN, Robert H.	Princeton University
RAICHEV, Alexander	Cornell University
REIRIS, Martin	U. de la Republica, Uruguay
SHALLUE, Andrew R.	Gustavus Adolphus College
SUTTON, Taliesin	University of Michigan
SWISHER, Holly M.	University of Oregon
VASQUEZ, Elisa	University de los Andes
WIESNER, Emilie B.	Washington & Lee University

Graduate News

Derek Moffit received a two-year Prize Fellowship from the Graduate School. Xuan Hien Nguyen received a one-year Belgian American Educational Fellowship. Named VIGRE Fellows were: Matthew Boylan, Rohit Chatterjee, Michael Evans, Clark Good, Noah Kieserman, Derek Moffit, and Emilie Wiesner. Four continuing graduate students were given VIGRE fellowships for the calendar year 2001. They are Matthew Bloss, Aaron Miller, Andy Raich, and Paul Taylor. They were selected as second year students making rapid progress towards the PhD.

Department Awards to Graduate Students

From left: M. Jenkins, J. Cotrina, A. Raich, T. Boester

Our Annual Student Awards Ceremony was held in May of 2000. At this ceremony the following graduate students were given Excellence in Teaching Awards which recognize at least three semesters of excellent teaching: Timothy Boester, Joaquin Cotrina, M. Adrian Jenkins, and Andy Raich. Receiving the Sustained Excellence in Teaching & Service, given for excellence in teaching over a longer period of time, and substantial and noteworthy departmental contributions was David Kung. This year's Distinguished Service Award went to Jennifer Ziebarth. Both David and Jennifer have been very active contributors to department committees and, in particular, worked on compiling a very valuable Mathematics Graduate Student Handbook. Each of these students was presented with an award certificate and a $75 gift certificate at the University Bookstore.

From left: O. Holtz, B. Chen

The Department has established a new Excellence in Mathematical Research Award. This award, to be given annually to graduate student(s) who have made significant and substantial contributions to research in pure or applied mathematics, as part of their thesis work towards a PhD at the UW-Madison Mathematics Department. This year's winners are Bohui Chen and Olga Holtz. The award of $1500, presented at the end-of-semester party on December 15, 2000, was divided equally between the two winners.

Olga Holtz wrote a thesis on matrix theory in 2000 under the direction of Professor Emeritus Hans Schneider. Her paper ``Not all GKK t-matrices are stable'' (Linear Algebra and its Applications, 1999), based on work from her thesis, was one of two selected by the SIAM Group on Linear Algebra to receive their award for an outstanding paper in applicable linear algebra published during 1997-1999. The award, consisting of a calligraphed certificate and a plaque, was presented to Olga at the Seventh SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra in Raleigh, North Carolina, October 23-26, 2000. In addition, Olga was invited to present a plenary lecture giving an overview of the prize paper.

Bohui Chen is working with Professor Yongbin Ruan and is expected to receive the PhD this year. According to Professor Ruan, Bohui has made a major advance to an outstanding conjecture (the Witten conjecture) in gauge theory.

Mark MacLean named L&S Teaching Fellow

Mark MacLean was chosen to be an L&S Teaching Fellow for 2000. This award, worth $700, recognizes the high quality of Mark's performance as a teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematics and his many other contributions to the Department. Indirectly, this award to Mark is a compliment on the quality of teaching by our TAs. During Welcome Week at the beginning of the fall semester, Mark led a workshop for incoming TAs in all L&S departments. Mark is currently finishing up a thesis on algebraic combinatorics with Professor Paul Terwilliger.

Hirschfelder Fund Scholarships to

Inwon Kim, Shantala Mukherjee, and Meta Voelker

From left: M. Voelker, I. Kim, S. Mukherjee

Graduate Students Inwon C. Kim, Shantal Mukherjee, and Meta Voelker were chose to be this year's mathematical recipients of the Hirschfelder Fund Scholarships. These important scholarships, worth $2,100 this year to each recipient, are made possible by the generous contribution of Betty Sokolhikoff Hirschfelder (Ph.D. 1930, M. Ingraham). Inwon Kim is working with Professor Souganidis on a thesis on partial differential equations. Shantala Mukherjee's thesis work is on Lie Algebras and is being directed by Professor Georgia Benkart. Meta Voelker is a MaCE student of Professor William Ferris in the Computer Science Department working on optimization problems.

Excellence in Teaching Award to Eric Egge

Eric Egge was selected this past year for a Graduate School Excellence in Teaching Award in recognition of his outstanding teaching. This campus-wide award is given to five to eight TAs each year. The award, for $1000, was presented at a ceremony at the Pyle Center on May 1, 2000 which was followed by a luncheon. This is the eighth consecutive year that a Mathematics Department TA has won one of these awards. Eric's selection is more evidence of the excellent teaching of Mathematics TAs, and the campus's recognition of them. Eric is now an Assistant Professor at Gettysburg College.

French-Felten Award to Scott Trigg

From left: S. Trigg, Dean Certain, Alejandro Adem

A second-year math graduate student, Scott Trigg, was chosen as one of recipients of the 2000 French-Felten Awards for Inspirational Teaching as a TA in the College of Letters and Sciences. The purpose of this award is to recognize and reward exceptional teachers at an early stage in their careers. Five or six awards are given each year to TAs who have completed their first year of teaching. Scott inspired his students to develop strategies that they would need, not only on exams, but in solving mathematical problems that they might see in future classes and scientific work. Scott received his award, a certificate and a check for $400, at a ceremonial dinner on October 19, 2000 at the University Club, Scott was accompanied by Professor Alejandro Adem.

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