News from the Mathematics Department At
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Winter 2013-2014 Volume 8 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1ntegraL NEWS FROM THE MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT AT MIT Building E17/18. Our old home was a fourth-floor addition. Their design quickly enshrouded in a cocoon of scaf- beautifully marries a contemporary “glass folding and plastic sheets. Its interior is box” top with the classically styled lower being deconstructed and rebuilt, eventu- building. It solves the space shortage by ally to emerge better than ever. Target providing additional offices and meeting completion date: January, 2016. rooms. The additional cost was a concern, As you can see from the drawing on this but we reached out to key department page, a signature feature of the renovation supporters who appreciated the value of is the addition of a new fourth floor over this approach and contributed additional the south and east sections of the building. funds. For their timely help with this proj- This addition wasn’t in the original plan. ect we are deeply grateful to Tom Leigh- Here’s how it came to be. ton, Art Samberg, and David desJardins as well as to Jim and Marilyn Simons, Bob One of the renovation goals was to allevi- Dear Friends, and Lisa Reitano, Ted Kelly, Alex Morcos, ate our severe space shortage. During the and other friends for major gifts. I know, Integral is later than usual. So summer of 2012, extensive planning and much has been happening, we haven’t had design suggested a solution to this prob- Other Business time to stop and tell till now. Read on . lem: split the first floor horizontally into Dan Spielman and Ben Green are giving two floors and convert a few classrooms to Our extraordinary faculty are recognized this year’s Simons Lectures. William Law- offices—voilà, the space shortage is solved. with marvelous honors every year, and son from the Yale School of Public Health The heavily-used classrooms would be this year I’d like to call out two that make joined the department as our new Ad- missed, but overall this plan seemed good. us especially proud: Jacob Fox received ministrative Officer. Finally, Marc Kastner Later that fall, our Facilities department the first-ever Packard Award given to a stepped down from his position as Dean wisely commissioned a mockup of the member of our department while at MIT. of Science to become the next Director of split-level space to see how two floors with Mike Artin received the Wolf Prize for the Office of Science at the DOE, pend- ceilings 7' 6" high would compare with the his achievements in algebraic geometry, a ing Senate confirmation. I’ve assumed his current magnificent 16-foot ceiling. truly monumental recognition. The mockup quickly clarified that In other major faculty news, three new even though this plan would gener- assistant professors have joined the de- ate lots of additional office space, no partment: Jörn Dunkel, physical applied one would want to be in those of- mathematics; Ankur Moitra, theoretical fices. We needed a different plan. computer science; and Charles Smart, Roll back the clock several months. probability theory. Steve Kleiman retired John Bush and others on the faculty in January, 2014. Following in his father’s were pressing me to investigate footsteps, Steve came to MIT in 1958 as building a roof deck, a concept that an undergraduate in EE, but then switched appealed to us, but not to those in to mathematics. He graduated with an SB the administration who would be in 1961, studying with Arthur Mattuck as responsible for that outdoor space. his academic advisor. Steve got his PhD Our facilities people were unen- under Oscar Zariski and David Mumford thusiastic about pursuing the roof at Harvard in 1965 and joined our depart- deck idea. We argued for further study: duties as interim Dean, in addition to my ment in 1969. He has been active in alge- our renovation would be the template responsibilities as Head of Mathematics. braic geometry and commutative algebra for other main group renovations, so this If I stay on as Dean next year, this will be since then, supervising 22 PhDs. Steve decision should be made only after care- my last letter to you as Head. Stay tuned. produced the MIT Undergraduate Journal ful consideration. Facilities Head Dick of Mathematics for eleven years. Have a good year! Amster agreed, and got administration Building 2 Renovation approval to study how we might use the The Building 2 renovation is underway! roof for a deck or other construction. The Mathematics Department moved Our master designers at Ann Beha Ar- Michael Sipser over the summer to temporary digs in chitects then produced this drawing for Department Head 2 New Faculty Ankur Moitra, Assistant Professor of Jörn Dunkel, Assistant Professor of Charles Smart, Assistant Professor Applied Mathematics in theoretical Applied Mathematics, comes to MIT of Mathematics, came to MIT as a computer science, received his PhD at from postdoctoral appointments at the CLE Moore Instructor in 2011. Smart MIT under Tom Leighton in 2011. Ankur Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. is an analyst who works primarily on has held joint postdoctoral appointments He received his PhD in statistical physics nonlinear PDEs arising in probabilistic at Princeton and IAS. His research under Peter Hänggi from the University settings, often as a scaling limit of a concentrates on algorithmic design of Augsburg in 2008. His dissertation ad- discrete stochastic process or game. He across a wide variety of areas, including dressed unresolved questions linking the completed his PhD at UC Berkeley under statistical inference, optimization, and laws of special relativity to thermodynam- Leo Harrington in 2010, followed by a learning theory. ics. His current program involves devel- year at Courant as an NSF fellow. oping models and mathematical tools for understanding biological phenomena. Faculty Recognitions Victor Kac and David Vogan were elected members of the awards. Victor Kac gave the Hadamard Lecture Series at the National Academy of Sciences. Larry Guth was awarded the IHÉS, a series of eight lectures titled, “Algebraic structures Salem Prize for outstanding contributions in analysis. Larry arising in physics and applications.” also gave the 2013 Marston Morse Lectures at the IAS, titled Lie Wang was promoted to Associate Professor. “The codimension barrier in incidence geometry.”Michel Goemans was selected to be a SIAM fellow, and also received Research Staff Award the 2012 Farkas Prize of the INFORMS Optimization Society. Chelsea Walton, CLE Moore Instructor and NSF postdoctoral Gigliola Staffilani and Tom Leighton were elected fellows of fellow, received the School of Science Infinite Kilometer Award the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences. David Jerison for her work as Coordinator of the PRIMES Circle Program. received the 2012 Stefan Bergman Prize of the AMS with collaborator Jack Lee. The AMS named 29 of our faculty to Staff Distinctions their 2013 Class of Fellows. Bonnie Berger received the Cesar Duarte received the 2013 MIT Excellence Award in Alumni Achievement Award from Brandeis. Gilbert Strang the category of Innovative Solutions for creating many of the was given the Doctor Honoris Causa from Aalborg University department’s design projects and playing a major role in plan- in Denmark. Jonathan Kelner received the 2012 School of ning and coordinating our move to temporary space in E17/18. Science Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education. Jacob Debbie Bower, Shirley Entzminger, Susan Ferguson, and Fox, Sug Woo Shin, Charles Smart, and Jared Speck each Avisha Lalla each received the School of Science Infinite Mile received a Sloan Research Fellowship. Jacob Fox, Laurent Award, for going “Above and Beyond” in their contributions to Demanet, and Gonçalo Tabuada received NSF CAREER the Mathematics Department. 3 Mike Artin honored with Wolf Prize Jacob Fox receives the Packard Mike Artin received Jacob Fox received the 2013 the 2013 Wolf Prize Packard Fellowship in Science in Mathematics, and Engineering, the first math presented by Israeli faculty member to do so while President Shimon at MIT. Jacob’s program is at the Peres at the Knesset. interface between combinatorics “Michael Artin is one and computer science, geometry, of the main architects analysis, and number theory. Jacob of modern algebraic works on fundamental problems geometry,” the on structure and randomness in citation begins. “His fundamental contributions encompass extremal combinatorics, especially a bewildering number of areas in this field.” The citation lists involving the Szemerédi regularity numerous contributions, such as the development of the lemma and Ramsey theory. Jacob also received a Sloan Fellow- theory of étale cohomology with Alexander Grothendieck and ship and an NSF CAREER award. defining étale homotopy with Barry Mazur; advances to the theory of moduli and modern intersection theory, and seminal work on the theory of surface singularities and in deformation Clark Barwick and Laurent Demanet theory. According to Department Head Mike Sipser, Mike is selected for Career Development an extraordinary mathematician, a legendary teacher, and a wonderful colleague. We’re proud of him! Assistant Professorships Laurent Demanet was awarded the Class of 1954 Career Development Assistant Professorship. Laurent works in scientific computing, concentrating on problems in Toby Colding awarded wave-based imaging and inverse problems, with applications to Cecil and Ida Green Professorship seismology, medical imaging, and synthetic aperture radar. He Toby Colding was se- maintains a robust research group of UROPs, graduate lected by the Provost students, and postdocs and recently received an NSF for the Cecil and Ida CAREER award. His PhD is from Caltech in 2006. He was Green Distinguished a Szegö Assistant Professor at Stanford before joining our Professorship, effec- faculty in 2009. tive September 2013. Clark Barwick was selected He has also held the for the Cecil and Ida Green Norman Levinson Career Development Assistant Professorship of Math- Professorship.