Eleven PhDs Awarded in 2001

Eleven graduate students, a smaller number than usual, earned PhDs in mathematics in 2001. They are listed below with their thesis advisor, thesis title, and current address.

BORGES, Maria J. (Advisor, P. Rabinowitz)
``Homoclinic and heteroclinic solutions for
a Hamiltonian system in the plane'',
Auxiliary Professor,
Dep. Matematica, Inst. 
Superior Tecnico,
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1096
Lisboa Codex Portugal.

CHEN, Bohui (Advisor, Y. Ruan)
``A smooth compactification of moduli of
instanton and its application'',
C.L.E. Moore Instructor, Dept. of Math.,
MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307.

LANG, Michael S. (Advisor, P. Terwilliger)
``Some results on bipartite distance-
regular graphs'',
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Math.,
UW-LaCrosse, LaCrosse, WI.

MACLEAN, Mark (Advisor, P. Terwilliger)
``Bipartite distance-regular graphs and
their primitive idempotents'',
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Math., Univ. of
North Carolina-Asheville, CPO #2350, One
University Hgts., Asheville, NC 28804-8511.

ZHANG, Wanchuan (Advisor, Y. Ruan)
``A vanishing theorem in local mirror
symmetry'',
Software Engineer, Informix Software,
Portland, Oregon 97201.

BAKER, Joni E. (Advisor, K. Kunen)
``Some topological results on ultrafilters'',
Senior Analyst, Daniel H. Wagner Assoc. 
Home address: 724 Westover Ave #2, Norfolk,
VA 23508.

CHRISTLEIB, Andrew J. (Advisor, W. Hitchon)
``Computational methods for long mean free path environments'',
Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Aerospace
Engineering, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2140.

HSIEH, Liang-Yu (Advisor, R. Brualdi)
``On minimum rank matrices having prescribed graph'',
2021 Lakeview Ave, Middleton, WI 53562.

PODDAR, Mainak (Advisor, Y. Ruan)
``Orbifold Hodge numbers for Calabi-Yau
hypersurfaces'',
Instructor, Dept. of Math., Michigan State U., Wells Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824.

VOVKIVSKY, Taras (Advisor, A. Adem)
``Groups acting on trees and algebraic
K-theory'',
Software Developer, Epic Systems Corp., 909 S. Whitney Way #5, Madison, WI 53711.

WILES, Peter S. (Advisor, J. Harvey)
``Coordinating mathematical and pedagogical content in preservice teacher education'',
Assistant Professor, University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ 85721.

There will be a number of graduate students finishing up PhDs this May or August. It is too early to know what kind of appointments all our graduates will accept. But Matt Boylan (PhD 2002, K. Ono) has already accepted a three-year NSF VIGRE Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Matt, who was supported by a VIGRE fellowship in Madison, took only three years to get a PhD! Other graduate students finishing their PhDs and the positions they have accepted are: Gautam Bharali (PhD 2002, A. Nagel) to the University of Michigan; Xiantao Li (PhD 2002, S. Jin) to Princeton University; Bernardo Uribe (PhD 2002, A. Adem) to the Max Planck Institute and the University of Michigan; ChanWoo Yang (PhD 2002, A. Seeger) to the Johns Hopkins University.

This academic year we have twenty-eight new graduate students. Their names and undergraduate institutions are listed below.

ALFELD, Christopher P.	University of Utah-Salt Lake City
ANDERSON, Jaclyn Ann	University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ANDREJKO, Erik Andrejko	Arizona State University-Tempe
CHEN, Liang	Peking Unuversity (China)
DEMETRIOU, Stella D.	University of Cyprus
DENG, Geng	Tsinghua University (China)
EAPEN, Jacob	University of Wisconsin-Madison
FRATARCANGELI, Sergio	Purdue University
GREENBLATT, Aaron P.	Duke University
GRIFFETH, Stephen P.	Carleton College
ISSA, Leila N.	American University of Beirut (Lebanon)
JONAITIS, Graham D.,	Case Western Reserve University
KACH, Asher M.	University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign
KIM, Ahyoung	Yonsei University (Korea)
LALONDE, Trent L.	Clarkson University
LEIDA, Johann K.	University of St. Thomas
LIAO, Xiaomei	Tsinghua University (China)
MAHLBURG, Karl E.	Harvey Mudd College
MIRANDA-MENDOZA, Fernando	University of Michoacan (Mexico)
PETROSYAN, Nansen	University of Utah-Salt Lake City
PINA, Jaime	DePaul University
RAGHAVAN, Dilip	College of Wooster
SENKOWICZ, Rebecca B.	University of Pittsburgh
TSAI, Eugene Y.	University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign
WANG, Jue	Peking University (China)
YEUNG, Chi Yung	University of Hong Kong
ZHAO, Xin	Nankai University (China)
ZHOU, Ling	University of Science and Technology (China)

Many of our new graduate students have received prestigious fellowships. Jaclyn Anderson has a Lucent Technology Fellowship, and Johann Leida has a National Science Foundation Fellowship. Jamie Pina was selected for a Graduate School Fellowship. Awarded VIGRE fellowships were Stephen Griffeth, Asher Kach, Trent Lalonde, and Karl Mahlburg. It has just been announced that Karl Mahlburg has received a 3-year NSF Fellowship to continue his graduate studies.

Several continuing graduate students were given 6-month or 1-year VIGRE fellowships for 2002. They are:

4th Year Students, 6 months: Michael Lau, Joshua Davis and Jeffrey Kline

3rd Year Students, 1 year: James Bisgard, Matthew Ondrus, Peter Spaeth and Nat Thiem

2nd Year Students, 1 year: Christopher Dwyer and Robert Owen

Department Awards to Graduate Students

Our annual Awards Ceremony was held on April 30, 2001 with many awards given to our graduate students for research, teaching, and service.

Matthew Bloss

Berit Givens, Andy Raich, Prabu Ravindran

Matthew Bloss and Andy Raich were chosen to be L&S Teaching Fellows for 2001. These awards recognize the high quality in teaching performance and other contributions of teaching assistants in the College of Letters and Science. Both Matt and Andy organized workshops for incoming TAs in the College during Welcome Week last fall. Matt is working on a thesis on Lie algebras with Georgia Benkart. Andy is working with Alex Nagel on harmonic analysis.

Chan-Woo Yang and Bernardo Uribe

Chan-Woo Yang is a student of Andreas Seeger. His research is concerned with the precise regularity properties of the generalized Radon transform in the plane. One of his papers has been accepted for publication in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. Chan-Woo will take up a position at Johns Hopkins next academic year.

Bernardo Uribe is a student of Alejandro Adem working in the areas of topology & geometry. One part of his thesis research concerns a proof of a conjecture of Yongbin Ruan about the orbifold cohomology of symmetric products of a complex surface. Bernardo has also written two papers with Van Vleck Assistant Professor Ernesto Lupercio on orbifolds, gerbes, and groupoids. Bernardo wil be going to the Max Planck Institute next year and then the University of Michigan.

Both Chan-Woo and Bernardo received a $250 check and a $100 University Bookstore certificate.

Narfi Stefansson, Carl de Boor, Xiantao Li

The first John Nohel Prizes for a thesis in Applied Mathematics were given to graduate students Xiantao Li and Narfi Stefansson. Each was presented with a check for $250 and a $100 University Bookstore certificate at a ceremony on the 9th floor of Van Vleck Hall. Carl de Boor recalled that the prize is meant to honor the memory of John Nohel who died suddenly in 1999. Paul Rabinowitz recalled John's long association with UW-Madison. John served as Chair of the Department, as Director of MRC, and as the first Director of CMS. He was born in the (now) Czech Republic and later served in the US Navy (thereby acquiring his US citizenship). He received a PhD from MIT under Norman Levinson, and was very proud to have been co-editor of Levinson's collected works, a project completed shortly before his death. John was very good with young people and this fact lead to a prize in his name for graduate students.

Xiantao Li is a student of Shi Jin who transferred from Georgia Tech when Shi Jin joined our department. His thesis studies the semiclassical limit of the Schrödinger equation and related problems. According to Shi Jin, Li's work has generated a lot of interest among researchers in integrable systems and dispersive waves, and it is expected to have a significant impact. He also describes Li as an independent researcher who is strong in both applied analysis and numerical computation, a combination that is very important for a modern applied mathematician. Xiantao has accepted a position at Princeton University.

Narfi Stefansson is a student of Amos Ron who calls Narfi än epitome of a graduate student in interdisciplinary mathematics." His primary research is in scientific computation, specifically he has developed efficient algorithms in using wavelet frames in image compression. Narfi has also studied possible encoding strategies for his algorithm. In addiiton, he has worked as an Research Assistant in a molecular biology lab, where he developed an image compression module based on wavelet techniques.

For the fourth year in a row, a mathematics teaching assistant has been awarded the French-Felten Award for Inspirational Teaching by the College of Letters & Science. The purpose of the award is to recognize and reward exceptional teachers at an early stage in their careers. Josh Davis, a student of E. Ionel working in symplectic geometry, is a 4th-year graduate student who had a WARF fellowship in his first year. His first experience as a TA was in Math 222 in the fall semester of the 2000-01 academic year. He was a TA for Math 234 in the spring semester of that academic year.

In recognizing Josh, his many qualities as a TA were highlighted; among them were enthusiasm that ignites students, organization and planning that inspire students, and caring attitude. In his first two semesters of teaching, 100% of his students gave him the highest possible score for an overall evaluation of his teaching and the course. Josh received his award, including a check for $400, from Dean Phillip R. Certain at a ceremony on October 18, 2001 at the Pyle Center. He was accompanied by Professor Alejandro Adem.

Graduate students Christine Carracino, Youngmi Hur, and Kathryn Temple were chosen to be this year's recipients in the Mathematics Department for the Elizabeth Hirschfelder Award for women graduate students. These scholarships are made possible by a generous contribution of Elizabeth Sokolnikoff Hirschfelder (PhD 1930, M. Ingraham). Mrs. Hirschfelder turns 100 on April 15, 2002.

Christine, a 1998 graduate in mathematics from the University of Virginia, is working in complex analysis - estimates for the Szego kernel on a non-pseudoconvex domain - with Alex Nagel.

Youngmi is studying statistical aspects of redundant wavelet representations with Amos Ron.

Kathy, a 1999 graduate of the University of Washington with a double-major in Economics and Pure Mathematics, is working with Tom Kurtz in probability.