MATHEMATICS NEWSLETTER

Growth & Excellence

Contents

Letter from the Chair 3 AMS Society Fellows 2-3 New Academic Staff 4-7 Colloquium: Schwarz 10 In Memorium: Edelson 11 Focus: Lecturers at Math 12-13 Graduate News 8-9 Undergraduate News 15 Department Awards 16-17 Life After Davis 8-9, 14, 18 Staff News 19 Fellows of Math: Recognition from the American Mathematical Society

additional necessary conditions for optimality. This work has stimulated strong interest over the years, and been generalized and extended by many authors. With colleagues Krener gave conditions for the existence and construction of decou- pling and non-interacting control laws for nonlinear systems. This paper won the Best Paper of the Year Award of the IEEE Transac- Art Krener tions on Automatic Control. He also has been Jesus De Loera a leader in the development of software tools Arthur Krener joined the faculty of the for nonlinear control. His Nonlinear Systems Jesus De Loera has made many notable Mathematics Department at Davis in 1971, Toolbox is a suite of MATLAB routines that contributions to discrete mathematics and its immediately after receiving his Ph.D. from implement a variety of the latest methods of applications, as well as to the education of our Berkeley. He spent his entire career at Davis, nonlinear control. students at UC Davis. retiring in 2006 as a Distinguished Professor Art’s work has earned him many honors. He started his career working in the area of Mathematics. In addition to being named a Fellow in the of discrete and computational geometry. His Art’s mathematical interests focus on non- American Mathematical Society, he also is a Ph.D dissertation solved an outstanding prob- linear control theory, where he did founda- Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied lem posed by Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevin- tional work. With Hermann, Krener gave the Mathematics (SIAM), the Institute of Electrical sky concerning the structure of the space of definitive treatment of controllability and ob- and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the In- triangulations of a product of simplices, a servability for nonlinear systems based on dif- ternational Federation for Automatic Control topic started by J. Stasheff and Milnor in the ferential geometric tools. The importance of (IFAC). He has won numerous awards includ- 1970’s. Later, in joint work with Below and this paper was recognized immediately. It was ing a Guggenheim Fellowship, the SIAM Reid Richter-Gebert, he solved another longstand- cited by the IEEE Control Systems Society as Prize, the IEEE Bode Lectureship and an IFAC ing problem by showing that finding a trian- one of Twenty Five Seminal Papers in Control Certificate of Excellent Achievements. gulation of a convex 3-polytope with the mini- published in the twentieth century. It forms Krener held a variety of administrative mum number of simplices is NP-hard. the basis for many of the seminal advances in posts while at UC Davis, including Chair of He also has made important contributions control theory that have followed. the Department of Mathematics, and member in other areas of discrete geometry, in particu- Around 1960 the well-known Pontryagin of the Committee on Academic Personnel. lar on computational problems involving lat- Maximum Principle was developed for opti- He began and endowed the Krener Assistant tice points, volumes, and integrals of polyhe- mal control problems. These are the first order Professorships. This program brings several dra. His work in this area has been applied necessary conditions that a control must satis- excellent young mathematicians to UC Davis in many fields of mathematics, including al- fy to be optimal. But they are not always deter- each year. He also was founding Chair of the gebraic geometry, representation theory and minative, particularly for problems where the SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems algebraic combinatorics. Together with others control enters affinely. The High Order Maxi- Theory. at UC Davis he has developed the highly suc- mum Principle that Krener developed gives cessful software package LattE that provides many useful computational methods for dis- 2 Fellows of Math: Letter from Recognition from the American Mathematical Society the Chair by Dan Romik

This has been a great year to be a math- ematician. A ranking of U.S. occupations published last April by the job search website CareerCast and quoted in the Wall Street Jour- crete geometry problems. nal, Forbes and other notable media outlets, In recent years Jesus’ research interests declared ‘mathematician’ to be the top job in have extended to encompass more applied the United States in 2014. (Lumberjack was areas of mathematics, including integer and ranked as the worst job, in case you were combinatorial optimization. An Integer Linear wondering.) Color us unsurprised: Here in Program (ILP) problem is this: given a matrix the UC Davis Mathematics Department we A, vector b and linear function f(x), find the have always known how much fun and how maximum value of f(x) over all integer vec- rewarding math is! Of course we are delighted tors x that satisfy Ax = b and every compo- that the rest of the world is catching on, as this nent of x is non-negative. In pioneering work enables the Department to enjoy an exciting with Hemmecke, Koeppe and Weismantel, De wave of growth. the past year the Department graduated ten Loera proved the first theoretical results for In the past year we have hired four excel- doctoral students. Our incoming class of grad- the generalization of this problem in which lent new faculty members: Javier Arsuaga, Mi- uate students comprises 20 students. We are f(x) is a non-linear objective function. To put chael Friedlander, Mariel Vazquez and Eugene proud of our continued ability to attract tal- this results in context, recall the celebrated Gorsky (who will arrive later this year). Also, ented graduate students, which form an essen- result by H.W. Lenstra: When the number of Niels Grønbech-Jensen has joined us by tran- tial part of any successful research program, variables is fixed there is an algorithm to solve sitioning into a joint appointment with Me- and wish them luck in their work. ILPs in polynomial time on the input size. De chanical and Aeronautical Engineering. And Our undergraduate program is growing in Loera et al. extended this to the case when f this year we have appointed Andrew Sorn- size and prominence. This is due both to the is non-linear. Although they showed that the berger to be our first Research Scientist. growth in undergraduate enrollments at UC problem becomes NP-hard, even in dimen- In the coming year our growth will con- Davis, and to the increasing recognition of the sion two, they designed an approximation tinue unabated, with a recruitment for one value and importance of STEM (Science, Tech- algorithm to maximize an arbitrary integral tenure-track position at the Assistant Profes- nology, Engineering and Mathematics) educa- polynomial over the lattice points of a convex sor level, and no fewer than four additional tion. This year our undergraduate program rational polytope with a fixed dimension. faculty positions in a joint recruitment effort includes 568 math majors, the most ever. And The excellence of Jesus’ De Loera’s work with the Physics Department. we are launching a new major, Mathematical has been recognized by all the mathematical The Department also has been successful Analytics and Operations Research, which al- societies. He has been a plenary speaker for in many other ways. Two of our members, Pro- ready is attracting significant interest. the AMS, the MAA, and SIAM. In 2010 he was fessor Jesus De Loera and Professor Emeritus The excellence of our instructors’ teaching co-winner of the computer society award from Arthur Krener, were elected as Fellows of the continues to be recognized at the national lev- The Institute for Operations Research and the American Mathematical Society. They join five el. This year, our popular lecturer Dr. Duane Management Sciences. of our faculty who were recognized with this Kouba was awarded the 2014 Golden Section De Loera is an outstanding mentor and prestigious honor in 2012. In May we hosted Distinguished Teacher Award by the Math- teacher. While at UC Davis he has supervised a large conference held to honor the research ematical Association of America. eight Ph.D students, five postdocs, and over achievements of Professor Albert Schwarz. En- I’ll conclude with a note of thanks to our 30 undergraduate honors theses. More than titled “The Mathematics of Quantum Theory,” outgoing chair, Joel Hass. His four years of sig- 45 undergraduates have conducted research this highly successful event featured talks by nificant accomplishments as chair have left the with him. He received the 2003 UC Davis Fields Medal-winner Andrei Okounkov of Co- Department in great shape. Joel now is focus- Chancellor’s fellow award, the 2006 UC Davis lumbia University and several other luminaries ing on research activities, with a quarter-long award for diversity, the 2007 Award for Excel- from mathematics and theoretical physics. In visit to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. lence in Service to Graduate Students by the the present academic year we have scheduled We are immensely grateful to our many UC Davis Graduate Student Association, and talks and visits by other famous mathematical contributors for their generous donations, the 2013 Chancellor’s award for mentoring scientists, including the Fields Medalists Ed- which support and make possible many of our undergraduate research. But the success of his ward Witten and Charles Fefferman. activities. If you are considering joining this many students is his greatest reward, and one We have had impressive success in teach- select group, see the back of the newsletter for he receives every day. ing, our other essential area of activity. Over information on how to donate. 3 Incoming Academic Staff

of chromosomes. He uses a multidisciplinary approach because he believes that this prob- lem, like many other current scientific prob- lems, cannot be solved within the confines of a single discipline but must be approached from a broader, more integrative perspective. His research currently is supported by grants from the NSF and the NIH and was featured in the NSF highlights in 2001. His research program provides opportunities for participation and training by both undergrad- New Faculty uates and graduate students from Mathemat- ics, Biology, Physics and Computer Science. Niels Javier has presented his research at numer- ous national and international venues. Most Gronbach-Jensen notably he was plenary speaker at the “Math Niels received his M.S. in Applied Math- Institutes Modern Mathematics” conference in ematical Physics and his Ph.D. in Physics in 2008 and at the annual international Confer- 1989 and 1991, respectively, both from the New Faculty ence in Computational Physics in 2012. Technical University of Denmark. His the- Javier has also organized conferences in sis topics involved nonlinear phenomena, Javier Arsuaga mathematical and computational biology; he squeezing of uncertainty in quantum optics, is one of the cofounders and organizers of Bi- and solitons and phase-locking in nonlinear Javier received his B.S. degree in Math- ology and Mathematics in the Bay Area (BaM- differential equations. ematics from Universidad de Zaragoza, Zara- BA). Since 2005 this group has organized an After completing his doctoral work, Niels goza (Spain). In 1995 he came to the United annual conference on mathematical biology spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher in States to work under the direction of De Witt that brings together biologists and quantita- Applied Physics at Stanford University, where Sumners (Florida State University) on appli- tive researchers from industry and academia he was introduced to bio-molecular modeling. cations of knot theory to DNA structure. His throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. These In 1992 he moved to the Condensed Matter Ph.D. research focused on the use of knot the- conferences have been instrumental in creat- and Statistical Physics group in the Theoreti- ory to understand DNA packing in viruses and ing a regional community in mathematical cal Division at Los Alamos National Labora- was funded by a fellowship of the Program in and quantitative biology, and in helping sci- tory. He entered the division as a postdoctoral Mathematics and Molecular Biology (PMMB). entists and students transition from quantita- fellow, then became a Staff Member, and fi- He was awarded his degree in 2000, and then tive fields into biology, where their expertise is nally was promoted to Team Leader. While at became a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Depart- urgently needed. Los Alamos, he worked in a variety of areas. ments of Mathematics and Molecular and Cell These included high-performance computa- Biology at Berkeley, working under R. K. Sachs tional implementations of molecular dynamics and N.R. Cozzarelli, respectively. In 2003 Ja- analyses for materials modeling, model and al- vier was appointed a Research Scientist at the gorithm development for studying the role of UCSF Cancer Center, and subsequently as a electrostatics in bio-molecular self-assembly, tenure track Assistant Professor of Mathemat- and practical models for predicting radiation ics at San Francisco State University (SFSU). effects in crystalline materials. He also con- After nine years at San Francisco State he now tinued his work on nonlinear dynamics and joins the Departments of Molecular and Cell phase-locking of oscillators. Biology and Mathematics at UC Davis. In 1999 Grønbech-Jensen joined UC Davis Since 2005 Javier has held short term visit- as a Professor of Applied Science. At that time ing positions in the Biochemistry Department he also was appointed as a Faculty Scientist at at the University of Oxford and the Cancer Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Pres- Center at the Universidad de Salamanca. ently that appointment is in the Applied Math- Javier’s primary research interest is in de- ematics & Scientific Computing Department. veloping and applying mathematical methods ...continued on page 7 to the study of the three dimensional structure 4 topological changes affected by enzymes such as topoisomerases and site-specific recombi- nases. In collaboration with Javier Arsuaga, Mariel also studies chromatin architecture and DNA packing in confined environments. The excellence of Mariel’s research already has been recognized by a variety of awards. She is the 2014 recipient of the Mohammed Dahleh Distinguished Lectureship at UC Santa Barbara, a 2012 recipient of the U.S. Presi- dential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and a 2011 NSF CA- REER Award. The PECASE honored her “for excellent interdisciplinary and international research at the interface of mathematics and biology, and for creativity and dedication to recruiting, training, and mentoring, and help- ing students from underrepresented groups achieve their goals.” New Faculty She has served on the Advisory Board at New Faculty the National Institute of Mathematical and Mariel Vazquez Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS). She is associ- Michael Mariel obtained her B.S. in Mathemat- ate editor of the newly-formed journal Fron- Friedlander ics from the National University of Mexico tiers in Molecular Biosciences, and member (UNAM) and a Ph.D. from Florida State Uni- of the Human Resources Advisory Commit- “Doing the best with what you’ve got.” versity, where she worked with De Witt Sum- tee at MSRI. Mariel is committed to increas- This is how Michael Friedlander describes his ners. After receiving her doctorate, she held ing representation of women and under-rep- principal field of research, mathematical opti- appointments as a Postdoctoral Fellow/Visit- resented minorities (URM) in mathematics, mization. ing Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley work- she has mentored URM students and has been Optimization is essential for solving an ing with Rainer Sachs. While at Berkeley, involved in grants focused on minority re- enormous array of modern-day problems that Mariel received an Exxon Mobil Project NExT cruitment and training. Notable engagements arise in fields such as machine learning, signal Fellowship. She moved from there to San include a plenary lecture at the 8th Australia- processing, and medical-treatment planning. Francisco State University, where she spent New Zealand Mathematics Convention (Mel- Michael is interested in answering the nine years. Mariel now joins the UC Davis fac- bourne, Australia; December 2014), the 2014 mathematical and computational questions ulty as Professor of Mathematics and of Mi- Mohammed Dahleh Distinguished Lecture that underpin algorithms for solving such crobiology & Molecular Genetics. She comes (UCSB), a 2014 Distinguished PIMS lecture in problems. The ubiquity of digital-data acqui- to Davis as a CAMPOS faculty scholar. This Mathematical Biology (University of Saskatch- sition, and our demands for higher fidelity in program aims to bring multicultural perspec- ewan, Canada), and invited keynote lectures processing the data, mean that these problems tives to science. at the 2013 Undergraduate Research Confer- are now getting enormous, making the work Mariel’s research focuses on the applica- ence at the Interface of Biology and Math- of the optimizer ever more complex and inter- tions of topological and discrete methods to ematics (NIMBioS, University of Tennessee at esting. Michael is equally happy working on the study of DNA, with an emphasis on the Knoxville), the 2013 Sonia Kovalevsky Math both sides of the optimization coin: proving Day (University of Texas at Austin), the 2012 theorems and writing software to implement Modern Math Workshop and the 2010 BaM- his ideas. BA Conference (Stanford University). Mariel Michael received his B.A. in Physics from has held numerous visiting positions, includ- Cornell University in 1993, and his Ph.D. in ing appointments in the Biochemistry De- Operations Research from Stanford Univer- partment at the University of Oxford (UK), sity in 2002. From 2002 to 2004 he was the the Molecular Biology Department CID/CSIC Wilkinson Fellow in Scientific Computing at (Barcelona), and the Institute for Mathematics Argonne National Laboratory. He comes to UC and its Applications (Minneapolis). Davis after ten years in Canada, where he was Mariel enjoys spending free time with her Professor of Computer Science at the Univer- husband, Javier Arsuaga, and her children. A sity of British Columbia in Vancouver. He also nice relaxing day would include a walk in a has held visiting positions at UCLA’s Institute beautiful park, reading or writing in a coffee for Pure and Applied Mathematics (2010) and shop, and visiting an art museum or going to at Berkeley’s Simons Institute for the Theory of the symphony. Mariel enjoys communicating Computing (2013). mathematics to children, taking photographs ...continued on page 7 and seeing/making art. 5 Incoming Academic Staff Academic Staff

New Krener Asst. Professor Ying He

In 2013 Ying He received both her Ph.D. degree in Mathematics and her Master’s de- gree in Computer Science. Both degrees were awarded by Purdue University. New New Prior to coming to UC Davis she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Purdue Krener Asst. Professor Krener Asst. Professor University, and a visiting researcher in the Di- vision of Mathematics and Computer Science Ruifang Song Erik Slivken at Argonne National Laboratory. Ying’s research interests span a wide range Ruifang Song is originally from China. She I am originally from Minnesota. But I spent of areas in applied and computational mathe- received her Ph.D. from Harvard University the better part of the last decade first in Japan, matics. Currently she is particularly interested in 2011 under the supervision of Professor and then Seattle, and therefore do not have in developing scalable solvers for acoustic and Shing-Tung Yau. Her thesis work concerned that awesome Lake Wobegon accent. I am not electromagnetic scattering using high order the period integrals and Picard-Fuchs equa- sure if I ever did. spectral element methods. She also is working tions of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in homoge- Before entering graduate school at the on a variety of fluid dynamics problems. neous spaces. After Harvard, she moved to the University of Washington, I worked in video At UC Davis, Ying He’s mentor will be Pro- University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she games and politics. Both had their moments, fessor Elbridge Puckett. She also will work was a Van Vleck Visiting Assistant Professor but the pull of mathematics brought me back with other researchers from Computational from 2011 to 2014. to school. Infrastructure in Geophysics (CIG) to develop Dr. Song’s primary research interests lie in My research interests focus on Probabilis- state-of-the-art computational methods for algebraic geometry, and particularly in prob- tic Combinatorics in general. More specifical- modeling heterogeneities and mixing in the lems inspired by mathematical physics. More ly I work on problems involving percolation, Earth’s mantle. specifically, her work focuses on Calabi-Yau permutations, pattern-avoidance; anything Ying He’s family lives in San Jose, so on manifolds and mirror symmetry, moduli spac- that starts with a ‘p’, apparently. (Partitions weekends she enjoys spending time with es, D-modules, and Hodge theory. Her mentor and Polytopes too!) them. Her favorite off-hours activities include at UC Davis is Professor Motohico Mulase. If you stop by my office to chat (math or hiking, exploring great food, and watching In her spare time she enjoys hiking, swim- otherwise), I may put on a pot of coffee or tea. movies. ming, running, reading and watching movies. Bring a mug!

6 New Faculty - Gronbach-Jensen

...continued from page 4 At Davis Niels has further developed his interest in phase-locking to the behavior of macroscopic quantum systems. Specifically, he seeks to determine if the interpretation of experimental observations of ultra-cold super- conducting devices requires quantum models, or if they can be equally well understood as a manifestation of nonlinear resonances due to pulsed perturbations. More recently, he has developed and analyzed new algorithms for discrete-time modeling of Langevin systems, with a focus on obtaining time-step indepen- dent thermodynamic responses from simula- hasn’t looked back (although he does glance tions. to the side occasionally). Niels has been a Professor of Mechanical After accepting a tenure-track split ap- and Aeronautical Engineering since 2011, pointment in the Mathematics Department when the Department of Applied Science was and the College of Engineering at the Univer- closed. He now joins our faculty, with a joint sity of Georgia (UGA), Andrew teamed up with appointment between Mathematics and Me- Jim Lauderdale, a developmental biologist and chanical and Aeronautical Engineering. New Research Scientist geneticist. Their joint laboratory spent the fol- Outside of work, Niels has made use of lowing decade developing experimental and the local Davis University Airport, where he Andrew theoretical methods for imaging and simulat- trained to become a commercial pilot of single ing epileptic seizures in the larval zebrafish engine aircraft. Sornborger While at UGA, Andrew also pursued other research interests, including quantum simu- Andrew is the first faculty member in the lations on quantum computers. In one such Department to hold an exclusively research- project, Andrew proposed a quantum protocol based position. Trained as a theoretical physi- for a quantum tunneling simulation. It now New Faculty - Friedlander has been implemented on a quantum com- cist, and working in fields as disparate as ...continued from page 5 theoretical and computational neuroscience, puter, and is the first demonstration of a fully Dr. Friedlander enjoys serving the com- quantum computing, gravity, cosmology, non- digital quantum simulation. putational optimization community. He cur- linear field theory and multivariate statistics, Andrew came to UC Davis when his wife rently is on the editorial boards of the SIAM Sornborger is perhaps best described as a accepted a position as a wildlife veterinarian at Journal on Optimization, the SIAM Journal on journeyman theorist. the One Health Institute of the School of Vet- Matrix Analysis and Applications, the SIAM As a graduate student, Andrew studied erinary Medicine. He has started off his Profes- Journal on Scientific Computing, and -Math the physics of the early universe under Rob- sional Researcher position with a bang. Days ematical Programming Computation. ert Brandenberger at Brown University. After after being appointed, PI Andrew and a team This year he was elected for a 2-year term completing his Ph.D. he accepted a postdoc- of researchers at UC Davis, UCSF and UGA as the Program Director for the SIAM Activ- toral position in Stephen Hawking’s Gravita- received a major grant from the Collabora- ity Group in Optimization, where his main tion and Cosmology group at Cambridge, tive Research in Computational Neuroscience responsibilities will be to help organize the tri- then moved to the Theoretical Astrophys- program, a joint NSF/NIH initiative to study ennial SIAM Meeting in Optimization. ics group at Fermilab. Due to an interest in the dominant theory of seizure formation and Michael, his wife Anna and their five year- cognition and a new wife with a graduate fel- propagation in the central nervous system. In old son Paul, are all enjoying life in Davis. lowship at Columbia, Andrew changed fields addition to being PI, Andrew is responsible When he isn’t working on algorithms, Michael to theoretical neuroscience and joined Larry for the data analysis and large-scale neuronal spends time on projects in his woodworking shop. Sirovich’s Applied Mathematics group in the simulation components of this project. Biomathematics Department at the Mount Si- In his copious spare time, Andrew takes nai School of Medicine in New York City. At care of his 4 year old son, Rafael, plays the vio- Sinai, Andrew was introduced to a new love, lin, rock climbs and flies sailplanes (roughly in the analysis of neural data. Since that time he that order). 7 Updates from The Graduate Programs by Sasha Soshnikov, Graduate Program Chair and Steve Shkoller, GGAM Chair

This year the Graduate Program in Math- Chartrand, a second year GGAM student, won perspectives on protein folding. James Glimm ematics welcomes 11 new graduate students. a prestigious National Defense Science and (Stony Brook) presented a Distinguished Lec- They were selected from more than 200 ap- Engineering Graduate Fellowship. And Kaele ture on roles of mathematics in the sciences. plicants, one of the largest pools the Program Vogel, one of our entering students, has been And George Papanicolaou (Stanford) gave ever has had. awarded an NSF Graduate Fellowship. three lectures on mathematical economics. The Graduate Group in Applied Math- The 5th Annual Davis Math Conference This year Steve Shkoller resumed leader- ematics (GGAM) welcomes nine new graduate took place on October 16, 2014. It was orga- ship of GGAM after a one year sabbatical at students this year, seven to the Ph.D. program nized by the Galois Group and was devoted Oxford University. During his absence the and two Master’s students. They were selected to research projects of both Pure Math and Group was ably led by Albert Fannjiang. from a candidate pool of over 100 applicants. Applied Math students. The Conference aims The annual GGAM mini-conference took Several graduate students received presti- to present current research conducted in the place on Jan. 25, 2014, and was a great suc- gious prizes during the 2013-2014 academic Department to graduate students and faculty. cess. This annual event brings together the year. Axel Saenz-Rodriguez won the Gradu- This year’s conference covered a diverse range faculty and students of GGAM to share re- ate Research Mentorship Fellowship. Amanda of topics from topology, algebra and analysis search results and interests. This year’s pro- Young won the William K. Schwarze Schol- to mathematical physics and biology. gram included talks on mathematical biology, arship. Lingyun Li was awarded the Alice The Department and its graduate pro- non-linear waves, dynamic optimization in Leung Scholarship in Mathematics. Edward grams hosted numerous distinguished visiting economics, neurobiology, percolation theory, Tavernetti won the Henry Adler Prize for ex- speakers during the year. Notable highlights discrete time algorithms and atmospheric cellence in teaching. Eric Brattain-Morrin was include the following: Steven Smale (CUHK) modeling. awarded the Yueh-Jing Lin Scholarship. Tom gave a colloquium talk on new mathematical

Alumni Update

Adrienne Petersen Margaret Rosasco Katherine D. White B.S., 2002 B.S., 1990 B.A., 1981 Math & American Studies

Adrienne Petersen continued her studies After graduating from UC Davis, Margaret Katherine White got her Master’s degree to in Mathematics to get her Masters at Univer- went on to Central Michigan University, earn- gain software skills, but credits her growth and sity of Nevada, Reno in 2008. She held a lec- ing her Master’s degree in 1995. She was hired job success to the critical thinking and learn- turer position at Great Basin College in Elko, as an Assistant Mathematician by Sierra En- ing skills she acquired at UC Davis. Her Amer- Nevada and is presently a lecturer at Univer- ergy and Risk Assessment, and later became ican Studies program developed her ability to sity of Nevada, Reno. Adjunct Faculty in the Mathematics Depart- think outside the box, and Mathematics taught She married Brad Petersen in August of ments at Modesto Junior College, Columbia her to think theoretically. 2012, and their first son, Blake, was born in College, and Merced College. In 2013 she Upon graduation she worked for Argo July 2013. received a Degree in Education, Curriculum Systems in Sunnyvale as a software engineer. and Instruction from the University of the Pa- Then she moved to the then-startup company, cific. She presently holds a faculty position in QUALCOMM. She rose from software engi- Mathematics at the University of the Pacific in neer to VP, and continued as VP when Leap Stockton, California. Wireless was spun off. She was elected to a four year term on the local school board. She now is retired and living in Del Mar, California, where she does volunteer work in the community. 8 2013 - 2014 Graduate Degree Recipients Alumni Update

Brummitt, Charles : Ph.D., Applied : “Models of Systemic Events: Interdependence, Contagion, and Innovation,” D’Souza : Postdoctoral Researcher, Columbia University Juan Gomez B.A., 1998 Chong, Euna : Ph.D., Math : “Nonlinear Equations of Mixed Type and Transonic Flows,” Hunter : Lecturer, University of California, Davis Inspired by the passion for undergraduate math education exemplified by Motohico Mu- Jiang, Mi : Ph.D., Applied : “Computational Studies of Competing Phases in Model Hamiltonians,” lase, Abigail Thompson, Arthur Krener and Jensen : Postdoctoral Researcher, Theoretische Physik HIT, Zurich Evelyn Silvia in his undergraduate education, Juan Gomez has made it his goal to try and Kwok, Ricky : Ph.D., Applied : On the Distribution of the Leading Particle in the Asep with Step match their passion at the high school level. Initial Condition and the Self-Adjoint Asep,” Tracy Currently this involves working on several committees for the California Department of Li, Binglin : Ph.D., Math : “Towards a Theory of Abel-Jacobi Maps and Limit Linear Series for Education to align to the Common Core State Curves of Compact Types,” Osserman Standards in Math. During the past two years, Juan has been an active member of the Focus Li, Lingyun : Ph.D., Applied : “Central Limit Theorem for Linear Statistic of Eigenvalues of Group for the 2013 Revision of the Mathemat- Large Random Matrices,” Soshnikov ics Framework for California Public Schools, served as an Instructional Materials Reviewer O’Brien, Matthew : Ph.D., Applied : Joy for the California Department of Education, reviewed and recommended literature for the Reed, Matthew : Ph.D., Applied : The Central Limit Theorem for Linear Spectral Statistics Recommended Literature List for the CDE, of Submatrices of the Gaussian Wigner Random Matrices,” Soshnikov: Adjunct Professor, helped align the existing literature list to the Sacramento City College CCSS-M—all with the end goal to make math education more relevant to today’s high school Zhang, Naizhen : Ph.D., Math : “Towards the Bertram-Feinberg-Mukai Conjecture,” Osserman : students. Lecturer, University of California, Davis Currently, Juan is working on leading Carmel High School, where he teaches Math, Badeau, Garrett : Applied, M.S. : Mogilner through the implementation process in adopt- ing, not only curriculum, but the pedagogy Copos, Calina : Applied, M.S. : Guy required to make students better problem solvers—just like his professors at UC Davis Fogelson, Benjamin : Applied, M.S. : Mogilner always advocated. On a personal note, Juan just welcomed a Luttmer, Laura : Math, M.A. : Thompson beautiful baby girl Lena Elizabeth in the last year, which only helps drive him to lead the Miller, Jacob : Math, M.A. : De Loera change in the way mathematics is taught.

Ochiai, Jason : Applied, M.S. : Saito

Ray, Corina : Math, M.A.

Rensi, Efrem : Applied, M.S. : Freund

9 Allan L. Edelson

The Mathematics of Quantum Theory A Conference in Honor of Albert Schwarz

On May 23-26, 2014, a conference was Vaughan Jones, Maxim Kontsevich and Andrei held at UC Davis to honor Professor Albert Okounkov, as well as John Schwarz, one of the Schwarz, a Distinguished Professor in the founders of string theory. The talks focused on Mathematics Department. Although some recent developments in topological quantum might have called it his eightieth birthday par- field theory and topological strings. ty, Dr. Schwarz preferred the title ‘A Celebra- Members of the wider Davis community tion of Sixty Years of Mathematics and Physics also enjoyed John Schwarz’s public lecture, Research’. (The early years of Dr. Schwarz’ ca- entitled ‘String Theory: Past, Present and Fu- reer were highlighted in last year’s newsletter.) ture’. A stellar group of internationally famous All of his colleagues in the Department of Our Conferences & Seminars researchers came to Davis to celebrate Albert’s Mathematics wish Albert a very happy birth- We have regular seminars, special colloquia fundamental contributions to mathemat- day, and thank him for his tireless (and ongo- and conferences throughout the year for a va- ics and physics, and to present their own latest ing!) service to mathematics at Davis. riety of audiences, some for the experienced research. They included three fields medalists, mathematician and some, usually during sum- mer, for the casually interested. Visit our web- site to find out who is talking and when.

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/

10 Allan L. Edelson 1940 - 2014

The UC Davis Mathematics community is Italy, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de saddened by the passing of emeritus Professor Lausanne in Switzerland, the University of Allan Edelson. Dr. Edelson joined the Math- Louvin-la-Neuve in Belgium and the Univer- ematics Department in 1970, and remained sity of Orleans in France. with us until his retirement. In his time at Da- In addition to his departmental activities, vis he played key roles in the development of Dr. Edelson served in several important ad- the Department and of the campus. ministrative capacities while at the University Allan Edelson was born in Los Angeles, of California, Davis. He was our Assistant Vice and moved to Northern California to attend Chancellor for Academic Affairs from 1988- UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. He com- 91, and Acting Vice Provost for Faculty Rela- pleted his Ph.D. at SUNY Stony Brook in 1969. tions from 1991-92. Professor Edelson’s early work was concerned In his spare time he was an avid outdoors- with the fixed sets of group actions on almost man, and made the most of the opportunities complex manifolds. His more recent work was California afforded. He was a fly fisherman in nonlinear partial differential equations, fo- and mountain climber in the warmer seasons, cusing in particular on elliptic equations on and loved skiing with his family. unbounded domains. He used both function- Professor Edelson leaves behind his moth- al analytic and topological methods to analyze er Ione, his sister Donna, his children Daniel, equations in this class. Naomi, and Reuben, as well as four grandchil- Through his career Dr. Edelson held vis- dren. He is warmly remembered by his many iting positions at a variety of foreign Univer- students, and by his colleagues and friends at sities. These include University of Florence, UC Davis.

Read More by Edelson

Papers written by Allan Edelson can be found online: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&as_sauthors=”Allan L. Edelson”

Mathematics for the Future

The Department of Mathematics wishes support, and/or Departmental priorities. Your A list of donors can be found on the back to thank all alumni, parents, students, faculty, gifts ensure our future success. cover of this newsletter. Thank you for your staff and friends who support the Department continuing support. each year. For a list of our endowed funds, We appreciate the many donors who dou- Give Online please see our web site: ble or triple the impact of their gifts through their employers’ matching gift program. For http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/about/donation/ If you would like to give, please go to the more information about matching gifts, you UC Davis secured giving site at: Your gift to the Department is tax deduct- can go to: ible, and you can choose to have your name http://giving.ucdavis.edu/DeptMath/General http://matchinggifts.com/ucdavis/ published or remain anonymous. Please choose “Mathematics General Sup- Your gift can be used towards undergradu- For additional questions please contact the port” for the gift designation and follow the ate and graduate support, faculty and research prompts. Development Office at (530) 752-3429. 11 Our Continuing Lecturers Commitment to Undergraduate Excellence

The Mathematics Department is strongly committed to excellence in education. We strive to train our students to become excellent thinkers and problem solvers. Each of the Department’s three Continuing Lecturers, profiled below, is an outstanding teacher. Together they contribute greatly to the success of our educational mission at the undergraduate level.

Lawrence Marx Ali Daddel

Dr. Marx received his Ph. D. in Mathemat- Ali Daddel did his undergraduate work proven to be highly effective and much appre- ics from the University of Minnesota in the at Shiraz University in Iran, and received a ciated by the students. field of commutative algebra. He was anin- Master’s of Science degree from the same in- Ali has contributed in many other ways to structor for five years at LSU, and since 1984 stitution in 1980. He taught for five years at a the success of the Department’s instructional he has been teaching undergraduate math- Teacher Training College in western Iran be- mission. He developed a computer lab course ematics at UC Davis. fore coming to the U.S. for his Ph.D., which he in linear algebra, and a course on the History Lawrence Marx is broadly esteemed as an completed at UC Davis in 1990. He joined the of Mathematics, which now is required of all excellent instructor. Every lecture is impecca- Mathematics Department that same year, and majors who select teaching as their plan. bly prepared, and presented with crystalline has been with us ever since. Dr. Daddel’s deep commitment to mathe- clarity. He creates an atmosphere of excitement Dr. Daddel greatly enjoys teaching and matics education is shown by his participation in the classroom. His warm and friendly per- interacting with students, and is a strong be- in many forms of outreach. He helped form sonality is very encouraging to the students, liever in active learning. He strives to keep and coached the local ARML team (ARML = with whom he is very popular. He always is all his students actively involved even while American Regions Mathematics League, an generous with his time, willing to help all who lecturing to large classes. To amplify impor- organization that holds annual mathematics come to him. tant points or techniques he assigns problems competitions for teams of high school stu- In addition to his other responsibilities, in class, to be done immediately by all stu- dents). He also has taught students at low Dr. Marx is an undergraduate adviser in the dents. He also provides many forms of sup- performing high schools in Sacramento, and Mathematics Department, and teaches in the plementary assistance, including study guides participated in summer training programs for COSMOS summer program for gifted high and sample test questions, answer sheets for their math teachers. school students. homework problems and exams. He makes Ali has received wide recognition for the liberal use of handouts, slides and computer excellence of his teaching. He has won the De- models, and assigns independent projects for partment’s Outstanding Lower Division Teach- extra credit. He requires his entering students ing award several times. And he was awarded to assess their study habits, with an eye to op- the 2011 the Academic Federation Award for timizing them. His teaching methods, which Excellence in Teaching. he has carefully refined over the years, have 12 Duane Kouba

Duane graduated from Colorado State University in 1982 with a Ph.D. in functional analysis. Although he had teaching offers, both temporary and tenure-track, from several schools, he accepted a 3-year Lectureship at UC Davis because of our stellar academic rep- utation and because Davis, CA was a famously bicycle-friendly town. Even though Duane loves mathematics, in his words “I find students to be infinitely -cu rious, interesting, and enthusiastic.” For this reason he chose to focus his energies on teach- ing rather than develop a more research-based career. Dr. Kouba’s educational philosophy has the instructor’s expectations clear, and to teach (calculus.org), a website containing problems evolved over the years. Early in his career he ALL the students to be self-motivated, confi- with very detailed solutions for a wide range felt that his primary role in the classroom, and dent, and independent learners. He strives to of calculus topics. Although the website has his first responsibility to the students, was to teach students that THEY are responsible for expanded slowly, its number of users has in- teach ‘rigorous mathematics.’ But his views their own learning and education. The in- creased exponentially. Despite the website changed in the 1990’s after receiving a heart- structor and the class itself are just the me- being relatively unfinished, a current Google warming card from a former student. In es- dium through which each student can learn. search under “calculus problems” will some- sence the card said this: Dr. Kouba has earned many awards in times list this as the top site. The popularity of “Hi, I am a former student of yours (9 recognition of his excellence in teaching. He The Calculus Page led to his employment by years prior). I will graduate from the School has been named the outstanding mathemat- Khan Academy in 2013. of Osteopathy here in Los Angeles in a few ics teacher of the year in 1992, 1999, and Recently Dr. Kouba has begun teaching weeks. I am writing to thank you for being 2006. In 2007 the ASUCD named him the international mathematics classes during the my source of inspiration. When I was in your top instructor in the Division of Mathematics summer months. In 2013 he taught math- class I struggled with calculus and had doubts and Physical Sciences. This year he was given ematics courses to high school and middle about becoming a medical doctor. However, the 2014 Mathematics Association of Amer- school students in Thai Nguyen City, Vietnam. you always told me I could do it, that if I re- ica Golden Section Distinguished Teaching In 2014 he taught several calculus classes at ally wanted to be a doctor I would find a way Award, and the G. Thomas Sallee Mathematics Cebu Technological University in Cebu City, despite how I was doing in calculus....” Teaching Award. Philippines. At first Duane didn’t recall who she was. When not engaged in teaching Dr. Kouba However, he refreshed his memory by look- enjoys basketball, both playing and coaching. ing in his records for that student’s grades. He was assistant coach for UC Davis men’s She was a 21 year old single mother of a one basketball from 1995-2013. He is an unoffi- year old baby, who was struggling to pay her cial international basketball ambassador, play- bills and simultaneously to meet the academic ing street basketball with impoverished, but standards at UC Davis. And she received a enthusiastic youth in the Philippines. In addi- grade of C in his class. tion he regularly provide new basketballs and Up until that point Duane had assumed nets for the rims in as many neighborhoods as that he only had a beneficial influence on the possible. For these reasons his many students ‘best’ students in the class. But this, he found, and colleagues have given him the nickname was sadly mistaken. Now his goal in teaching ‘Coach’. is to keep the class’ standards high, to make In 1996, he created The Calculus Page 13 Life After Davis

Kathy Herman Lewis B.S., 1984

Whenever the UC Davis Magazine crashes tions and Non Euclidian Geometry. But, try as Area and shared a house with two of my for- through the mail slot in my front door, it car- I might, nothing came close to unseating my mer classmates that I realized just how much ries in a promise of expansion: expansion of chosen field until the beginning of my junior I had missed during my years of college. mind, senses and world view. I am surprised year, when I took a required course with the Through their eyes I glimpsed a very differ- by the pride and loyalty I feel, a quarter cen- title of “Careers in Mathematics,” or some- ent experience filled with pleasant adventures, tury after I earned my B.S. In fact, I have more thing like that. Picnic Day parades and an appreciation of all respect for my Alma Mater now than I did in Each week we listened to a guest lecturer Davis has to offer. Somehow they found time my collegiate years. In those days I was far who described the ins and outs of his or her for fun amongst the requisite studying. too concerned about my GPA, my future love profession. Halfway through the quarter, I Although too many of my days were spent prospects and my career to enjoy the richness was convinced that my options as a graduate stressing about grades, I do recall some mem- of experience offered at UCD. were actuarial nirvana, teaching, or brilliance. orable moments from my college years. The My reasons for picking a school were Teaching required more schooling, which I weeks of sore-butt that marked the renewal of somewhat random. Davis was far enough from was loath to pursue, ditto on the actuarial test- my bicycling skills at the start of each academ- home to live on campus, but close enough to ing cycle, and brilliance was not in my genes. ic term and the unmistakable stripe that ac- allow for the occasional weekend trip home. My one hope came on the day that a woman companied me on rainy days. I remember sit- Ultimately, I chose UC Davis because it was a from Bell Labs spoke. She was engaging, well- ting in high-school quality bleachers watching well-rounded school and I had no idea what balanced and appealing and the career path a young Ken O’Brien lead our football team direction to take in life. On the advice of my she described exhibited those traits as well. It to victory and sharing his pride of achieving high school counselor, I declared a major in was a career in Computer Science. grandeur in athletics while excelling in aca- which I had an aptitude – mathematics. The At the end of my junior year with only demics. theory was that if I declared something, at three quarters of schooling left, I switched As I look back in my rear view mirror, I least I would wind up with an adviser. Three from straight mathematics to the newly feel nothing but gratitude for my time at UC years into my schooling I realized that my ad- formed Mathematics and Computer Science Davis. The myriad classes in multiple fields viser was the king of the “fuzzy problem”. My major. I attacked my final year in school with have helped me engage in conversations with career plans, it turned out, fell into this cat- a real excitement for Computer Science and a people in a variety of career disciplines as I egory as well. clear picture for my immediate future beyond have built software systems in a number of dif- I spent my first two years wandering the the walls of UC Davis. Unfortunately, I found ferent industries. Well-rounded was the way course catalog, trying on classes for size. The myself holed up in the computer lab in the to go. Mathematics degree requirements were quite wee hours of the morning taking advice from To those of you still at Davis, I’ll say this: liberal, only 1/3 of the units were required the lab assistant: the kind of advice that in- enjoy all that Davis has to offer academically, courses and the rest could be satisfied with a cluded, “go home, sleep, eat, shower.” environmentally and socially. I encourage you plethora of different options. I found French So determined was I to graduate in the to savor the bounty at your feet even as you literature and Chemistry moved me toward prescribed four years, I missed out on many look forward to your next horizon. graduation just as easily as Differential Equa- of the non-academic blessings of Davis. It was upon graduation when I moved to the Bay 14 Updates from The Undergraduate Program by Tim Lewis, Undergraduate Program Chair

We began the 2014-2015 academic year the experience of our undergraduate students by welcoming 205 new students to our under- and to attract more students to mathematics. graduate major programs. This is the largest Last year, we established MAT 189, an ad- incoming class in the history of the Mathemat- vance problem-solving course, as the capstone ics Department. With this large influx, the to- course for all our undergraduate programs. In tal number of students in our four majors is this course, students will study topics from a now 568, which also is an all time high for the wide range of mathematics and applications, Department. and use the knowledge acquired from other The Department awarded 61 undergradu- course to analyze exciting problems. We also ate degrees this year – 44 in Mathematics, 13 committed to offer more special topics courses in Applied Mathematics and 4 in Mathemati- for undergraduates (MAT 180). This year’s cal and Scientific Computation. Two of these special topics courses are The Mathematics of graduates received departmental citations. In Theoretical Physics (Prof. Andrew Waldron), addition, Victor Fuentes, Aaron Hsu and Em- Game Theory (Prof. Ben Morris), Symmetric ily Macway graduated with highest honors. Groups, Symmetric Functions and Computer The numbers of these awards testifies to the Explorations (Prof. Anne Schilling) and Set commitment and dedication of our majors. Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis (Prof. We place great importance on providing John Hunter). our students with a supportive and encourag- This year we launched a new undergradu- ing environment throughout their time with ate major in Mathematical Analytics and Op- us. A variety of activities are designed to fos- erations Research. The new major will address ter this atmosphere. Our new students were business’s critical need for scientifically trained invited to attend our Undergrad Welcome analysts who can use mathematical models to Event, which took place on October 10th. We interpret big data, analyze markets and fore- discussed with them the importance of start- cast trends. ing early to plan their individual program of Once again, the Department ran a vigor- study in concert with their faculty adviser. We ous Research Experience for Undergraduates also stressed that we are here to help all our (REU) program over the summer. Students students succeed. We described the multiple worked on a variety of projects spanning pure sources of support that are available when and applied mathematics, from discrete geom- needed. etry to mathematical physics and mathemati- Two important mathematics interest cal biology. Many of the students who partici- groups are focused on undergraduates. The pated in this Summer REU will present their Math Club meets weekly (Wednesdays 5:30- research in the Undergraduate Research and 7:30pm 1147 MSB). It provides a place where Exploration seminar. Any student interested Are You a Graduate? people with common interests in mathematics in getting involved in undergraduate research can meet and socialize, and learn about a vari- is encouraged to visit the following site for We want to hear from you! Please send us ety of topics in current mathematics research. more information: information about yourself so that we can stay All mathematics students are welcome at the http://math.ucdavis.edu/undergrad/re- in touch and share in your experiences out- Math Café. Here faculty and graduate student search side of UC Davis. volunteers are available to tutor any student Undergraduate research is a great way to Please complete our Alumni Questionnaire: in any course. Professor Monica Vazirani has jump start a mathematics career! http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/news/alumni_quest worked hard to make this opportunity avail- There are many opportunities available in or send e-mail to: able to students. We are happy to report that the Department for enrichment of the under- [email protected] is it a strong success. graduate experience. Everyone is welcome; We will do our best to include it in the next The Department of Mathematics contin- please join us! newsletter. ues to expand our course offerings to enrich 15 2013-2014 Department Awards Recipients

Eric C. Ruliffson Scholarship William K. Schwarze Scholarship Robert Lewis Wasser in Mathematics in Mathematics Memorial Scholarship Eric Canady Ruliffson attended UC Da- William Karl Schwarze was born in 1942 Robert Lewis Wasser was born in 1973 in vis from 1964-1968, loved the study of math in San Francisco. He excelled in mathemat- Sacramento. He excelled in many areas—he and excelled in it. He was first and foremost a ics in high school and at UC Davis, where was selected as a National Merit Scholar in problem solver, which helped him to achieve he received a bachelor’s degree. He went on 1991 and participated in the Academic De- life-long personal and professional success. to graduate school at Berkeley and a career cathlon. Robert began at UC Davis in 1991. While attending UC Davis, Eric worked as a as a mathematics teacher in San Francisco. His academic achievements were numerous summer intern in the actuarial department Perhaps due to his mathematical insights, and impressive. He was one of the few stu- of Pacific Mutual Insurance in Los Angeles Bill also became a successful investor in real dents in our Department who had already tak- and was hired by them upon graduation. Af- estate. After his death in 1988, a trust he es- en as a sophomore some of our most challeng- ter serving in the Navy, Eric attended gradu- tablished with the SF Foundation has donat- ing courses, such as Math 127. His instructor ate school in demography at UC Berkeley. In ed to a variety of humanitarian purposes, in in that course, Professor Don Chakerian, said 1973 he resumed his actuarial career at Pacific particular to the Schwarze Scholarship to be how much he was inspired by their discus- Mutual Insurance. He became a partner at the presented today. This award is given to gradu- sions and that Robert’s presence made the San Francisco office of Coopers & Lybrand ate students in Mathematics who have demon- whole class much more lively and spirited. Af- and named a Fellow in the Society of Actuar- strated outstanding mathematical scholarship ter his tragic death in an automobile accident ies. He was subsequently elected to the Board and exceptional promise of making a strong in 1993, prior to his Junior year, his grand- of Partners for Coopers and Lybrand, the first professional contribution as a mathematics mother, Vera May Wasser, initiated the Rob- actuary to be so honored, and later served on teacher and educator at the pre-college or col- ert Lewis Wasser Endowment in his memory, the Board of Partners for PricewaterhouseCoo- lege level. with contributions from family and friends. Its pers, the world’s largest consulting firm. The Recipient – Amanda Young goal is to benefit promising mathematics stu- Eric C. Ruliffson Scholarship in Mathematics dents at UC Davis. is awarded annually to students of junior or Recipient – Amanda Pan senior standing majoring in mathematics. Recipients – Rico Lin and Ekaterina Kovalenko

16 Henry L. Alder Award Evelyn M. Silvia Scholarship for Galois Group Service Award Professor Henry L. Alder received his Ph.D. Future Mathematics Teachers The Galois Group is “the official voice of from UC Berkeley in 1947. After spending a The Evelyn M. Silvia Scholarship for Fu- the graduate students in Mathematics.” All year on the faculty in the Department of Math- ture Mathematics Teachers was established by graduate students in the Department of Math- ematics at Berkeley, he joined the Davis faculty generous donations from family and friends ematics are members of Galois; this is how as an Instructor of Mathematics. He advanced of the late Professor Evelyn Silvia. Evelyn was graduate students in mathematics collectively to the rank of Professor in 1965, and officially hired by the Department in 1973 after receiv- communicate with Department faculty and retired in 1992. He then served as Department ing her Ph.D. from Clark University. The focus staff. The group also coordinates and facili- Chair from 1992 to 1994. After his retirement, of Evelyn’s passion and unwavering commit- tates various activities, such as Monthly Game Professor Alder continued to teach in the De- ment was to develop talented mathematics Nights and New Student Welcomes. partment for many years. teachers at the K-12 grade level. She was ex- Every year, the Galois Group presents an Professor Alder was also active in other tremely generous with her time, whether it award to recognize outstanding service and/or campus programs and was always a strong was as a campus committee member or as an sustained commitment to the graduate group. advocate for quality teaching. In 1999, Profes- adviser assisting students. Recipient – Tina Denena sor Alder gave a gift to the UC Davis Founda- This scholarship honors Professor Silvia’s tion to establish an endowment. This provides memory by encouraging students who aspire Departmental Citation Awards support to mathematics graduate students at to be future mathematics teachers. It recognizes The Department recognizes undergraduate UC Davis through the Henry L. Alder Prize for a junior or senior with a major in mathemat- students of exceptional ability who have taken Excellence in Teaching, an award given each ics, applied mathematics or statistics who has both a very strong selection of mathematics year to the graduate student who is deemed to shown an interest in teaching mathematics. courses and have made substantial contribu- be the top teacher among all graduate students tions to the Department or their program. In Recipient – Morgan Imel in mathematics. addition, they have all received strong recom- Recipient – Edward Tavernetti Alice Leung Scholarship in Mathematics mendations from the faculty. Alice Siu-Fun Leung received a Master’s Recipients – Victor Fuentes G. Thomas Sallee Mathematics degree in Mathematics in 1975 from UC Da- and Emily Macway Teaching Award vis. She later worked as a global property The G. Thomas Sallee Mathematics Teach- management accountant in Hong Kong. She Citation for Outstanding Performance ing Award honors Professor Emeritus Tom Sal- remembered with fondness her days at UC These citations honor undergraduates who lee’s 40-year career with the Department, his Davis. She enjoyed gardening and working as have taken a very strong selection of mathe- dedication to being an excellent teacher, and a volunteer helping animals. matics courses and distinguished themselves his life goal of developing and supporting tal- In her will, Ms. Leung generously provid- with exceptionally high grade point averages. ented mathematics educators. ed funding to award scholarships annually to Recipients of Highest Honors – Lea Riedel, An endowment was established in his graduate students in Mathematics. This award Chun Yu Hong, Richard Lo, Aaron Hsu, name that allows the Department to recognize is given to students who have shown excep- Gregory Lauro, Joshua Sumpter, Zayar the best teaching of lower-division mathemat- tional promise in all aspects of mathematics, Hlathu, Sara Thomas, Nathan White ics courses on an annual basis. including research, scholarship and teaching. Departmental Honors Awards Recipient – Duane Kouba Recipient – Lingyun Li Every year, undergraduate students have G. Thomas Sallee Mathematics Prize Yueh-Jing Lin Scholarship in Mathematics the opportunity to participate in mathematical This award is also given in recognition of Yueh-Jing (Jean) Lin and Chau-Hsiung research, culminating in a senior thesis. Stu- Professor Emeritus Tom Sallee, and reaffirms (Mike) Chuang created the Yueh-Jing Lin dents typically work under the guidance of a his life goal of developing and supporting tal- Fund in 2009. This endowment provides faculty mentor to complete original research. ented individuals in mathematics. This prize scholarship support to one or more math- The results are reviewed, and pending on the recognizes exceptional undergraduate stu- ematics students each year. The scholarships quality and substance, the student can receive dents of junior or senior standing who com- are available to high-achieving mathematics Departmental high or highest honors. peted in this year’s Spring Mathematics Com- students, either undergraduate or graduate. Recipients of Highest Honors – petition. Mr. and Mrs. Chuang are alumni of UC Davis Victor Fuentes, Aaron Hsu, Recipient – Ruian Chen who met while they were graduate students on and Emily Macway campus. Jean received her Master’s degree in Honorable Mention – Trevor Glynn mathematics in 1971, and Mike received his master’s degree in agricultural education in 1969. Recipients – Eric Brattain-Morrin and Emily Javan 17 Life After Davis

Deanna Needell Ph.D., 2009

I entered the UC Davis Graduate Program (a postdoc at Michigan at the time; now a pro- in Mathematics after receiving my Batchelor’s fessor at Cal Tech) to design a similar tech- degree in Mathematics and Computer Sci- nique with even stronger guarantees, which ence from the University of Nevada, Reno. I has become a state of the art method for CS took the Analysis course taught by Prof. Ro- today. man Vershynin and absolutely loved both the In 2009 I received my Ph.D. from UC Da- subject and the way it was taught. That sum- vis. Then I took a two year postdoctoral posi- mer Dr. Vershynin invited me to work on a re- tion at Stanford, working with Prof. Emman- search project, an opportunity which I happily uel Candes, one of the core researchers in CS. accepted. That was my very first experience I have been privileged to receive a variety doing mathematical research, and although I of honors for my research. These include the enjoyed it, I have to admit it wasn’t my most IEEE Best Young Author Paper award, and an productive summer. Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. I also have received At that time I learned about a relatively a Simons foundation grant, and an NSF CA- new field, Compressed Sensing (CS). This REER award. These will help me continue my aims to provide ways to efficiently compress research program in CS by funding travel, col- large dimensional signals without acquiring laborations, and student research. traveling, swimming, biking, and hiking and the entire signal. (For example, Compressive While at Davis I taught several classes, with going to the beach with our dog, Jacobi. I col- Signal Processing (CSP) has shown that the Prof. Becca Thomases as my teaching mentor. lect Starbucks mugs from around the world, important information in many signals can be One day she mentioned that I seemed to enjoy and love anything chocolate. recovered from a far smaller sample than tradi- teaching. I said that I loved both research and I am extremely grateful to my research tionally thought.) CS and CSP have important teaching, and wished I didn’t have to choose mentor, Prof. Vershynin, for all that he did applications in many areas, including imag- one over the other in my career. She quickly for me. He was a fantastic adviser, teacher, ing, analog-to-information conversion, radar, replied “Well, that means you want to work and role model. I also am grateful to Becca large scale information synthesis, geophysical at a place like Claremont McKenna!” I wasn’t Thomases, my teaching mentor. My time with data analysis, and computational biology. familiar with the Claremont Colleges, but af- them at UC Davis established the trajectory of CS uses techniques from random matrix ter her comment I began looking into them. I my career. theory, functional analysis, probability, statis- soon realized that Claremont McKenna could tics, and many other areas. Suddenly, I was be the perfect place for me. So, after two years hooked. I loved working on an ‘applied’ prob- at Stanford I was thrilled to accept a position lem using tools from pure mathematics, and I as Assistant Professor at Claremont McKenna was delighted to be doing rigorous theoretical College (CMC). research. We developed a novel algorithm for Although I grew up in Truckee, where there CS and were the first to show that a linear time is lots of snow and cold, I quickly adapted to algorithm could give the same stability guar- the beautiful weather of Southern California. antees as previous approaches. This bridged My husband, Blake Hunter, also is an Assistant a gap in the field and answered an important Professor at CMC. We are very happy here, open question. Then I worked with Joel Tropp enjoying cooking, hosting board game parties, 18 Tom Sallee’s Puzzlers

1. This is a classic problem plus variants. As- Solutions: sume, as we do in mathematics, that the earth 2. If we restrict ourselves to integers, you is a perfect sphere 40,000 km. in circumfer- 1. Let R = radius of earth and h = height above the earth. want to use as many 3’s as possible (since, for ence, and a wire is wrapped tight around the example, you are better off using 3*2 instead equator. a. Then R h R , so h . of 5) and then 2’s as needed. So the maximum a. Lengthen the wire by one meter. If the 2π( + ) = 2π + 1 = 1/2π product is 3^32*2^2. wire stands out evenly all the way around b. If the length you have added is x, then pulling≈ 0.16 mthe wire taught makes a right triangle If you are allowed to use any set of posi- the earth, how far above the earth is it? tive numbers, you want equal numbers (de- b. Take the wire from part (a) and pull it up of angle , hypoteneuse R + h and adjacent side R, where h is the height above the ground note as x) and you will have (100/ x) of them. as high as you can. How far above the earth θ The product is then x ^(100/ x). Taking loga- can you pull it? that we are seeking. Examining this triangle one finds that rithms, we want to maximize (100/ x)*ln(x). This maximum occurs when ln(x) = 1 or x 2. A set of positive integers sums to 100. R x/ R , and R +h R . Expanding the trig functions in series and = e and 100/e ~= 36.8. A little more work What integers should be chosen to maximize θ + ( 2) = tan θ = sec θ shows you want 100/ x = 37 and x = 100/37 the product? What is that maximum? How retaining the smallest terms (as is valid for very small angles), the first equation gives 2R 3 ~= 2.7027. This product is about 28% larger much larger would the answer be if you were than the product that involves only integers. allowed to use any positive numbers? = x, while the second equation gives h = R . Solving for h gives 23 1/3 2 3. 1, 2, 3, 130, 131, 132, 133, 120, 121, 3. If you write a number in base, say, 5, when h =R x θ 2/3 5/3 122, 123, 110, 111, 112, 113, 100, 101, 102, you write 213 this means 2*(5^2) + 1*(5^1) When x , one finds that h = . (3 ) /2 103, 230 +3*(5^0) = 50+5+3 = 58. Write out the first = 1m 121.43 OR twenty integers in base (-4). You may only use m -13, -12, -11, -10, -23, -22, -21, -20, -33, the digits 0, 1, 2, and 3. -32, -31, -30, -1303, -1302, -1301, -1300, Note: this can be done either using no ex- -1313, -1312, -1311, -1310. pressions with negative signs or only expres- sions with negative signs. Staff News by Gladis Lopez This has been a very productive year! We now are fully staffed, and everyone is excited Join us on Facebook! Get News by Email to see the growth in our student enrollment and our faculty. We welcome Dan Romik as Would you like to help the environment the new Department Chair, and wish him ev- and save the Department of Mathematics ery success. money by receiving future newsletters by During this year, Jessica Goodall left the email? If so, just indicate your preference on Department to accept another position, and the newsletter subscription page on our web Danielle Sherwood joined us as the new con- site: tacts and grants coordinator. Gladis Lopez http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/news/ continues her 70% appointment in the Math- ematics Department. The Department of Mathematics is on As always, you can also view past newslet- Marianne Waage is now working 50% time Facebook! Visit us there to get updates on ters on the Newsletter Archive located on our on the computational staff, having reduced current seminars, events and news. We’d be web site: her time after the arrival of her baby, Connor happy to include any memories or photos you http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/research/news/archive/ Irving Waage. Tina Denena also had a new ad- have of the Department on our wall. dition to her family, Cooper Anthony Wayne. To “like” us, search for “Department of Congratulations to Tina and Marianne, and to Mathematics - UC Davis” on the Facebook their families! web page: Sarah Driver’s partner is pregnant; their https://www.facebook.com/ baby is due to arrive February 5, 2015. We are very excited for Sarah and Cynthia and wish them well. Please contact our administrative staff for any assistance you may need. Enjoy the aca- demic year! 19 Nonprofit Org U.S. Postage MATHEMATICS PAID 1015 Department of Mathematics UC Davis University of California, Davis One Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616-8633

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The Department of Mathematics wishes to gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the fol- lowing donors, who have contributed to its sup- port over the past three years.

Mary Elizabeth & Rex Allen American Mathematical Society American Society for Engineering Education Jennifer Lee & Youn-Sha Chan Yueh-Jing Lin & Chau-Hsiung Chuang Doyle Cutler Gennis Emerson Joy & Daniel Faletti Gary Gruenhage Carol and Fields Gunsett Robert Guy Abigail Thompson & Joel Hass Stephen Hennagin Herbert Holden Robert Jaffa Marjorie Kelly Jack Latimer Jeffrey Martell Mika & Nelson Max Charles Morris, III Rangers Scholarship Fund Douglas Reifler Sandra Ruliffson Amre Saadeh San Francisco Foundation Erica & Bryan Schultz The Simons Foundation Roy Simpson Jennifer & Seth Stevelman Allan Thompson Featuring the 2013-14 Academic Year Ngangiang & John Thoo University of Utah Newsletter Committee: Carolyn Weist Craig Benham, Editor Sally & Robert Weist Gladis Lopez, Management Services Officer Earl Wong Marianne Waage, Designer Marion E. McCurdy & Sidney R. Wong