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Fall 2013 Issue MATHEMATICS + BERKELEY Newsletter of the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley Fall 2013 Message from the chair Retiring are Alexandre New courses Chorin, long one of the We wrote last year about our new course FROM RENEWAL leaders of our group in designed to offer undergraduates intend- TO REGROWTH Applied Mathematics, who ing to major in life sciences an introduc- will however remain active as tion to the mathematical tools they will Dear Friends, a Professor of the Graduate need to cope with the rapidly changing School, and Robert Bryant, The theme of the chair’s letter research perspectives in biology, psychol- whose directorship of MSRI last year was renewal, marked ogy, and sociology. This course is now ended in June. coming into its own and is generating by new leadership in the de- Chair Arthur Ogus partment as well as new initia- Our accountant Nancy Palmer wide interest across many fields. This tives that we hope will lead to an exciting also retired; although her wisdom and year Math 10A has an enrollment of over period of regrowth of our department. experience will be missed, we are very 250 students. We are very pleased with how these happy with the dynamism of her replace- Starting this spring, our department will initiatives are coming to fruition and are ment, Heather Read. also be one of ten which will participate excited to report on several more that we I am continuing to serve as Department in the new Berkeley Connect mentoring will be rolling out in the next year. Chair, and Martin Olsson remains our program, designed to help students Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs, but De- succeed in their major and to forge ties Growth nis Auroux has temporarily relinquished among undergraduates, graduates, and As demand for education in scientific his role as cochair to resume teaching faculty. Funded by private donors with fields grows, so does demand for instruc- this fall. Michael Christ will be Vice matching funds from campus, this tion in mathematics. We have nearly a Chair for Faculty Affairs and Fraydoun initiative will allow us to combine the thousand more students enrolled in our Rezakhanlou, Vice Chair for Undergrad- best aspects of a large research university courses this year compared to last year, a uate Affairs. like ours with the intimacy provided by a 15% increase. The frontiers of mathemat- small college environment. ical research are also expanding explo- Renovated Facilities sively, in ways that can’t be quantified. Last year we were very happy to have Honors Our department has continued to inno- completed the renovation of the depart- Our faculty continues to maintain its vate in both instruction and research, mental common room in 1015 Evans, position at the cutting edge of research, endeavors which are intimately bound along with an adjacent faculty lounge. as evidenced by its new crop of awards together in departments like ours. We are continuing with ambitious cap- and honors. These are too numerous to To keep pace with the rapidly changing ital improvements this year, including continued on page 2 landscape, our first priority is to renew new photo displays, a new mailroom, a Contents and regrow our faculty. This year we new graduate student lounge, and an have two new ladder faculty arrivals: exciting interactive space on the newly FROM RENEWAL TO REGROWTH 1 Associate Professor Katrin Wehrheim refinished ninth floor outdoor patio. NEW FACULTY 2 These last two projects were financed (symplectic geometry and low-dimen- FAREWELLS AND WELCOMES 3 sional topology) and Assistant Professor in part by a very generous donor; we are Vivek Shende (algebraic geometry and extremely grateful both for his financial AWARDS AND HONORS 4 topology). You will find their profiles support and for his contributions to GRADUATE PROGRAM NEWS 5 the very careful design planning, which on page 2. Our recruitment efforts ALSO IN THE NEWS 6 will redouble this year, with up to four also involved students, faculty, staff, and faculty positions to be filled. several outstanding architects. FACILITIES UPDATE 8 MATHEMATICS + BERKELEY 1 From renewal to regrowth Mathematicians in Seoul in 2014, chosen an “Excellence in Management” award by continued from page 1 to reflect the most exciting developments the staff, a fitting followup to her having list here, except for a few highlights: in research in the last four years. won the Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff award last year. • Ian Agol received the American Math- Based on honors like these, as well as ematical Society Veblen Prize and the research publications and Ph.D. place- Finally, we would like to thank those of London Mathematical Society Senior ments, our department retains its rank you who have supported the Berkeley Berwick Prize for his proof of Thur- as the top public university mathematics Math Department over the past years, ston’s Virtual Fibering Conjecture. department in the world, according to and those who may be thinking of doing the Shanghai rankings and a number of so in the future. Both the State of Cal- • Rob Kirby, the PAM Divisional Library other metrics. ifornia and the federal government are prize for his publishing company’s cutting back their support of higher edu- contribution to open access scientific Thanks cation and research, and it is in no small literature. I am deeply grateful for the help, both part thanks to contributions by alumni • John Lott, the National Academy of Sci- technical and conceptual, that Denis and other friends that we have been ences Award for Scientific Reviewing. Auroux provided during his year as Co- able to compete with our better-funded • Hugh Woodin, the Hausdorff Medal, chair for Strategic Planning, and for the private peers and maintain our standing for his work on set theory. support and guidance of Mark Richards as the top mathematics department in a in his role as Dean of the Division of public institution in the world. • James Sethian was elected to the Na- Mathematical and Physical Sciences. tional Academy of Sciences. The department staff is as remarkable as Arthur Ogus, Chair Furthermore, we recently learned that the faculty in making our community two of our faculty, Vera Serganova and Professor Ogus (PhD Harvard 1972) has been a function as well as it does, and I want es- member of the department faculty since 1974. His Ian Agol, were selected to be among pecially to thank our Department Manag- the twenty-one Plenary Speakers at the research area is algebraic geometry. Professor er Mary Pepple, who was nominated for Ogus became Department Chair in Fall 2011. upcoming International Congress of Faculty Profiles NEW FACULTY Vivek Shende Katrin Wehrheim Assistant Professor Associate Professor Katrin Vivek Shende joins our Wehrheim comes to UC Berkeley department from MIT. from MIT, where she joined the His research area is alge- faculty in 2005. Wehrheim is an braic geometry. Shende’s expert in symplectic topology, work relates enumerative gauge theory and geometric geometry and singu- analysis. She is best known for larities of plane curves her work on pseudo-holomor- to knot invariants and geometric representation theory. phic curves and Floer homology. Wehrheim obtained her PhD Shende was an undergraduate student at the University of from ETH Zürich in 2002 as a student of Dietmar Salamon; her Michigan. After a stint in a quantum computing research dissertation was awarded the ETH Medal. She was an Instructor group in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, he at Princeton University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Insti- became a graduate student at Princeton University, where tute for Advanced Study before taking a tenure track position at he obtained his PhD in 2011 under the supervision of Rahul MIT. She received a Sloan Fellowship in 2007, and the Presiden- Pandharipande. After graduating from Princeton he became tial Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2010. In a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. 2012 she became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. 2 MATHEMATICS + BERKELEY Faculty and staff News Lecturers, Postdocs and Visitors The department is welcoming a lecturer FAREWELLS AND and several postdoctoral fellows this fall: WELCOMES Marius Beceanu (PDEs and Analysis), PhD University of Chicago 2009, Morrey Ladder Faculty Assistant Professor. Even as we welcome two new members Alexander Coward (Topology), D.Phil. of the ladder faculty, Associate Professor Oxford 2008, Lecturer. Katrin Wehrheim and Assistant Profes- Prof. Alexandre Chorin Tim Cramer (Representation Theory), Marius Beceanu sor Vivek Shende (see their profiles on PhD Yale 2013, RTG Postdoctoral Fellow. page 2), we must also bid farewell to Kenji Kozai (Geometry / Topology), PhD some of our esteemed colleagues: Stanford 2013, RTG Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Alexandre Chorin, who had Andrew Lawrie (PDEs and Analysis), been a leader of our group in applied PhD University of Chicago 2013, NSF mathematics, retired in June 2013. He Postdoctoral Fellow. will however remain active as a Professor Gang Liu (Differential Geometry), PhD of the Graduate School. Professor Robert University of Minnesota 2013, Morrey Bryant also retired in June 2013, at the Assistant Professor. end of his term as director of MSRI. These Prof. Robert Bryant Fei Lu (Applied Mathematics), PhD Uni- Alexander Coward colleagues have made many remarkable contributions to math- versity of Kansas 2013, Postdoctoral Fellow. ematics and to the Department, and we wish them well. Takuya Machida (Probability), PhD Yoko- We are very saddened by the death of our former colleague Pro- hama 2010, JSPS Research Fellow. fessor Emeritus Paul L. Chambré, who had joined our faculty in 1951 and held positions jointly in Mathematics and Nuclear Matthias Morzfeld (Applied Mathematics), Engineering until his retirement in 1989. PhD UC Berkeley 2011, Postdoctoral Fellow.
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