Fellows of Math
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MATHEMATICS NEWSLETTER Contents Letter from the Chair 2 New Faculty & KAPs 2-3 AMS Society Fellows 4-5 A Career in Math: Schwarz 8 Focus: Temple on Shock Waves 7 Focus: Walcott on Myocin 9 Fellows of Math Undergraduate News 6 Graduate News 10-11 AMS Recognizing Achievement Emeriti Spotlight: Sallee 6, 15 Department Awards 12-14 Life After Davis 10-11, 14 Staff News 15 Letter from the Chair by Joel Hass Good news continues for the UC Davis Department of Mathematics. Our faculty extended its record of extraordinary pro- ductivity, bringing in numerous research grants and awards. The growing reputa- tion of the campus and the Department has led to increasing enrollments, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. We welcome an outstanding new faculty mem- ber this year, Kevin Luli, who joins us from Yale University. The Department starts the new aca- demic year with 516 majors, up over 100 from last year. Our challenge will be to continue providing high quality classes, in- spired advising, career guidance, research opportunities, and a welcoming environ- ment. We have created a new meeting Picnic Day outside the Math Sciences Building room for our undergraduate majors, which sees constant activity during the week. We are also sponsoring an active Math Club that hosts New well attended weekly meetings. Large numbers of undergraduates are participating in research projects with a variety of faculty. I want to mention the long overdue recognition given Krener Asst. Professor to Prof. Jesús de Loera this year. His tireless work supporting the undergraduate research programs of the Department over many years were recognized with the 2013 Chancellor’s Anastasiia Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research. Tsvietkova We have set up additional drop-in consultation rooms for our calculus students, staffed for six or more hours each day. A major source of new students has been from overseas, due Anastasiia Tsvietkova was born in Lithu- to the UC Davis 2020 Initiative, which is leading to a substantial expansion in student num- ania and received her undergraduate degree bers. While we have always had international graduate students, the campus is now attract- from Kyiv National University in Ukraine. ing international undergraduate students in significant numbers. Mathematics is proving to She was a doctoral student at the University be a big draw for these students, ranking behind only Economics as a target major. This year of Tennessee, working with Morwen Thistle- 49 international students begin as Math majors at Davis, most of them from China. They are thwaite. After receiving her Ph.D. degree in excellent students and we look forward to their presence in the Department this year. 2012, she spent a year as a VIGRE Postdoctor- This year we will host several national and international research conferences at Davis, al Fellow at Louisiana State and then a semes- including one over the coming Spring break in honor of faculty member Albert Schwarz. ter as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program on Professor Schwarz has a long and distinguished career that began in Moscow in mathematics, Topology, Geometry and Dynamics at ICERM, then took a diversion into physics. For the last twenty years he has played a key role in the Brown University. Department. His early career is featured in this newsletter. Anastasiia’s research interests lie in the area Our faculty is continuing to produce outstanding new results in a wide range of math- of knot theory and low-dimensional topology, ematical areas. I know this not just from my own knowledge of their work, but also from with a particular emphasis on intrinsic geo- the offers that they have been getting from the world’s leading universities. We have been metric properties of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. fortunate that our faculty are committed to excellence at Davis. The campus is planning a Currently she explores relationships between significant expansion, roughly 20% enrollment growth over the next seven years, and this the geometry of finite-volume hyperbolic offers us a chance to hire a new generation of mathematicians. 3-manifolds and quantum or arithmetic in- I am continuously impressed by the extensive and deep mathematical activity that I see variants, and—for links—to the combinatorial happening around me. Whether it is faculty working in their offices, graduate students talk- picture given by the link diagram. Addition- ing to each other or to their advisers, undergraduates in office hours or talking in the halls, or ally, Anastasiia has a side interest in geometric visitors giving seminars, there is a buzz of mathematical activity. In the Departmental offices I group theory. see the staff providing friendly and efficient services. The faculty teaching evaluations, which Anastasiia is looking forward to joining the I read each quarter, are a pleasure to review. Mathematics is a key to a better world, and at UC Davis geometry and topology group and Davis the future is bright. the Department in January 2014. 2 Incoming Academic Staff New Faculty Kevin Luli The Department is pleased to welcome Kevin Luli into our faculty. Kevin received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2010. His thesis adviser was Charles Fefferman. After serv- New New ing as a Gibbs Assistant Professor in Mathe- matics at Yale University for three years (2010- Krener Asst. Professor Krener Asst. Professor 2013), he joins the Department as an Assistant Professor. Rafa Granero Michael Bishop Kevin’s research focuses primarily on har- Belinchón monic analysis and the partial differential Michael Bishop is returning to Davis after equations that arise in fluid mechanics. In par- Originally from Villaverde y Pasaconsol, a an eight-year hiatus. In 2005 he graduated ticular, he has been working on several aspects small village in Cuenca, Spain, Rafa Granero from UC Davis with a B.S. degree in Math- of the Whitney extension problems, develop- Belinchón completed his M.Sc. at the Autono- ematics. In 2013 he received his Ph.D. in ing related algorithms and pursuing applica- mous University of Madrid and Paris-Dau- Mathematics from the University of Arizona. tions of these problems to other fields. Exam- phine University, and his Ph.D. at the Insti- His thesis adviser was Professor Jan Wehr. ples include the organization of large data sets tute of Mathematical Sciences in Madrid. His In his dissertation Michael studied the and computational commutative algebra. thesis advisers were Professor Diego Córdoba low energy states of both non-interacting and Kevin is very happy to return to northern and Professor Rafael Orive. In his dissertation interacting quantum systems in random Ber- California where he has strong roots. He ob- research he investigated the effects of inhomo- noulli-distributed environments. These states tained his secondary school education at Drew geneities in porous media on the dynamics of model the behavior of Bose-Einstein conden- College Preparatory School in San Francisco internal waves. In his last year as a Ph.D. stu- sates, an aggregated state of matter that re- and his undergraduate training at Stanford dent he spent several months at the University quires very cold temperatures and can show University. When not working on mathematics, of Pisa in Italy, working with Professor Luigi quantum effects on a macroscopic scale. His he enjoys hanging out with friends, reading Berselli. current research studies the existence and na- novels and listening to classical music (some- At UC Davis, he will continue his study of ture of Bose-Einstein condensation in random times even while working!). He likes hiking the partial differential equations that arise in environments. At Davis he will work with Pro- and swimming, and plays basketball and ten- fluid mechanics, biology, astrophysics and oth- fessor Bruno Nachtergaele. nis. Kevin has been trying to learn to play the er disciplines. His focus will be on free bound- When not doing mathematics, Michael piano by watching YouTube videos, so far with ary problems and one dimensional models. enjoys reading history, economics, current mixed success. It seems that playing the piano In addition to his research, Rafa enjoys events and literature. He plays ultimate Fris- is harder than proving a theorem. hiking with his wife, Elena, playing sports and bee and follows professional sports. reading. 3 Fellows of Math: Recognition from the American Mathematical Society In 2012 the American Mathematical Society elected its inaugural class of Society Fellows. The Department is proud that five of our faculty members received this signal honor. The mathematical interests and achievements of each new Fellow are described here. Joel Hass Greg Kuperberg Joel’s research focuses on problems in Over the course of his career Greg has three-dimensional geometry and topology. His made contributions in many areas of math- initial contributions were in minimal surfaces ematics, including quantum algebra, quan- and 3-dimensional manifolds. In a paper co- tum computation, combinatorics, geometric authored with Michael Freedman and Peter topology, convex geometry and differential Scott, he showed that surfaces of smallest area geometry. A recurring focus of his research have the fewest possible self-intersections. is quantum mathematics, where the word This result has found many applications in the “quantum” means non-commutative general- study of 3-manifolds. izations of mathematical objects that are usu- He also has worked on problems relating ally described by commutative algebras. Thus, to the computational complexity of algorithms quantum probability is the study of non-com- in topology and geometry. Specifically, with mutative algebras and random variables, while Lagarias and Pippenger, he has shown that quantum groups are like Lie groups, but with the problem of determining whether a curve non-commuting coordinates. is not knotted is in NP. With Agol and Thur- Greg is best known for short proofs and ston, he showed that determining the genus of elegant constructions in his various areas of a surface in a 3-manifold also is NP complete.