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2004 DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICSnewsletternewsletter university of california at davis EXCELLENCE in CONTENTS New Faculty & VRAPS 2-3, 8 Math Building Update 4 James Diederich 5 RESEARCH, Life After Davis 4-5, 14-15 TEACHING, Math at the Frontier 6-7 & SERVICE Graduate Program News 9 Awards & Research News 10-12 Emeriti Update 12 Schwarz Conference 13 Staff News 13 New FACULTY R OLAND F REUND Roland Freund comes to Davis from Bell tion. He introduced the concept of quasi- Laboratories. He received his Ph.D. degree minimal residual (QMR) iterations to reme- in Mathematics from the University of dy the often erratic convergence behavior Wüerzburg, Germany, in 1983. He held and possible breakdowns of Lanczos-type positions at the University of Wüerzburg methods for the solution of large systems of and at the Research Institute for Advanced linear equations. The QMR method was the Computer Science at NASA Ames Research first Lanczos-type algorithm that successful- Center. He also spent one year in the ly remedied these problems of earlier meth- Computer Science Department at Stanford ods. Together with Peter Feldmann, he University. In 1992 he joined Bell wrote the pioneering paper on Pade-via- Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Lanczos (PVL) reduced-order modeling and where he was a Distinguished Member of its use in VLSI circuit simulation. PVL and Technical Staff in the Computing Sciences variants therefore have become the standard Research Center until 2004. While at Bell tools for VLSI interconnect analysis. Roland Laboratories, he taught courses at Rutgers is included in ISI’s list of the world’s most University, Columbia University, and highly-cited researchers in Mathematics, Princeton University. which is based on frequency of citation from Roland’s research interests are in scientif- 1981 - present. In 2004, he was elected a ic computing, numerical linear algebra, Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation. dimension reduction of dynamical systems, Cycling is and has always been an competed in the annual race up Mount large-scale optimization, computational important part of Roland’s life. He has rid- Washington, and won his age category in photonics, and algorithms for circuit simula- den double centuries in under 11 hours, New Jersey’s “Hillier Than Thou” race. M ARTIN Z ERNER Martin Zerner was born in 1968 in the where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1999 under large deviations and Lyapunov exponents for North German town of Bückeburg. As an the supervision of Professor Alain-Sol walks in random media, self-interacting random undergraduate, he studied mathematics first Sznitman. The next two years he spent as an walks, coagulation-fragmentation processes, at the University of Hannover and then at Aly Kaufman Postdoctoral Fellow at the and fractal dimension of self-similar sets. the University of Munich, where he graduat- Technion, Haifa, Israel, mainly collaborating Martin’s penchant for difficult, but ed in 1993. Soon thereafter, he started his with Prof. Ofer Zeitouni. In 2001 he became rewarding, work extends beyond mathemat- graduate studies at the Swiss Federal a Szegö Assistant Professor at the ics. In Switzerland, he helped a farmer with Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Department of Mathematics at Stanford milking cows at 5:30 a.m., every day for half University, where he remained until he a year. He still remembers the names of all 19 joined us. cows, but claims that he is very unlikely to The bulk of Martin’s work is in random be found around the department at such an processes in random environments, an excit- early hour. At Stanford, he was one of the ing area of probability theory which has main volunteers in the revegetation project seen substantial developments only recently. for the Foothills and the Arboretum. Initially, For example, imagine a random walker on his motivation was to get an orange vest and the two-dimensional integer lattice who at go legally off trails, but soon he was planting each step jumps at random to one of its four oaks, buckeyes, redwoods and other trees, neighbors. To add a new twist to this well- weeding, watering, and supervising other known model, we require that, before the volunteers; by the end, he was in charge of a walker begins, the jump distribution at each large irrigation system. Martin clearly site is chosen at random, independently of prefers nature to city and heat to cold: only the other sites. In a recent paper with F. recently he was forced to set foot in San Merkl, Martin proved that the event that the Francisco for the first time, he found Palo x-coordinate of such walker goes to infinity Alto too cold, and, while looking for an has probability either 0 or 1. The fact that apartment in Davis, spent a considerable such an apparently simple question lay time searching for one unshaded by trees or unresolved for 20 years illustrates the chal- buildings. lenges of this field. Martin also worked on 2 UC DAVIS MATHEMATICS / 2004 D OROTHY B UCK M ARK H ASKINS T IMOTHY L EWIS Dorothy Buck received her Ph.D. from the Mark Haskins works on the problems in Timothy (Tim) Lewis joins the depart- University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Her doc- the area of differential, algebraic, and sym- ment this year as an Assistant Professor. Tim toral research focused on developing a mathe- plectic geometry that have deep connections received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the matical analysis of the topological changes with mathematical physics and string theory. University of Utah in 1998. Professor Jim that occur when DNA interacts with a class of His 60-page masterpiece on the geometric Keener, one of the founding fathers of mod- enzymes, then experimentally testing her complexity of special Lagrangian 2-torus ern mathematical physiology, was his advi- predictions. Subsequently she held a cones has just appeared in Inventiones sor there. Tim is coming from the Center for Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Mathematicae, a top international journals in Neural Science at New York University, Medical Institute, where she immersed herself mathematics. where he spent the last five years working further in computational biology. She recently After completing his undergraduate with Professor John Rinzel in the field of had an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship which studies at the University of Oxford and mathematical neuroscience. In New York, enabled her to visit UC Davis to build ties with Cambridge University, he came to the United Tim was supported by the prestigious Professor Craig Benham of the Mathematics States for his doctoral research. He received Swartz Foundation Research Grant, and by Department, and with the new UC Davis his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at NIH-NRSA and NSERC (Canada) postdoc- Genome Center. She was an Assistant Austin in 2000. Since then Dr. Haskins has toral fellowships. Professor at Brown University when she was held such prestigious positions as the J.J. Tim published a dozen papers in both offered and accepted her position at UC Davis. Sylvester Assistant Professor at Johns applied mathematical and biological jour- Dorothy’s broad experience in mathemat- Hopkins University (2000-03) and the Sir nals about modeling electrophysiology of ical molecular biology has guided her in for- William Hodge Fellowship at IHES, Paris heart and nerve cells. Here at UC Davis, Tim mulating her current research agenda. She is (2003-04). This year he is on leave from Davis will be joining the Mathematical Biology extending her work on the geometry and at the Imperial College London to collabo- group and pursuing his research interests in topology of DNA, and how these affect cellu- rate with Professor Simon Donaldson on Theoretical Electrophysiology and Applied lar regulatory processes. She also is analyz- complex Floer theory, aiming at extending Mathemaics. ing the topological structures of the intricate the celebrated Donaldson-Thomas theory. In his leisure time, he enjoys cross-coun- networks of interactions involved in coordi- In addition to geometric problems, Dr. try skiing and biking. Tim comes to Davis nately regulating large numbers of genes. Haskins has also worked on problems in with his wife Svenja — they got married last Dorothy is an experienced and gifted mathematical physics, focusing on particle- winter in Colorado on a ski vacation. Their teacher. In their course evaluations her stu- like solutions (solitons) of both discrete and first child, Aviva Kadegge Lewis, was born in dents consistently make highly positive com- continuous nonlinear systems. Davis not long after their arrival, on October ments regarding her course organization, While at Johns Hopkins and University 13, 2004. teaching style and enthusiasm. The quality of Texas, Austin, he taught a wide range of of her teaching has been recognized with the courses from precalculus to graduate receipt of several awards during her career Riemannian geometry. He was recognized to date. for his innovative teaching by being awarded Dr. Buck is spending the 2004-05 year in a Kenan Grant. England at the Imperial College in London. We Professor Haskins will join us in 2005, are looking forward to her joining us in Fall 2005. when we start fresh in the new building. UC DAVIS MATHEMATICS / 2004 3 LIFE AFTER DAVIS M ATHEMATICAL S CIENCES B UILDING By Brons M. Larson Ph.D. 2002 The Mathematical Sciences Building will be located off of California Avenue between Academic Surge and the As a child I reveled in puzzles, mysteries Crocker Nuclear Lab. It is estimated to cost $18.8M and will and games. As I grew older, I came to view provide 38,271 assignable square feet (ASF) over four sto- science as an arena filled with the ultimate ries to the three occupying units: Mathematics, Statistics mysteries, games and puzzles to be solved.