Mathematical Sciences Blog

Dr. Piret this weeks Props for Profs winner

Published October 10, 2016

$image111742-pers$ This week’s Jackson CTL Props for Profs Winner is Cécile Piret, an assistant professor in Mathematical Sciences. Piret’s anonymous nominator praised the way she went above and beyond with “many review sessions before tests and long office hours.”

Even though Piret was teaching the class for the first time, the nominator felt that she put in “a lot of effort” and perhaps more importantly “asked for student input and used that information to try to make her class better.”

Piret and her nominator will each receive a $5 gift certificate to purchase a snack or drink at the Library Café or several other locations on campus.

Pinelis Published in Electronic Communications in Probability

Published October 1, 2016

By Heather Powers

Professor Iosif Pinelis published a paper, “On a Multidimensional Spherically Invariant Extension of the Rademacher-Gaussian Comparison“, in the Electronic Communications in Probability 2016.

MIT Professor to Deliver Kliakhandler Lectures

Published September 21, 2016

By Heather Powers

$stanley$ The Second Annual Kliakhandler Lectures will be held Sept. 29-30 at Michigan Tech. Richard Stanley of MIT will deliver the lectures which are sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences and funded by a generous gift from former faculty member Igor Kliakhandler.

The Kliakhandler lecture series brings a top mathematician to campus each year to give a pair of lectures.Stanley is a prolific mathematician who has won numerous honors, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has won the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ George Pólya Prize in Applied Combinatorics, the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition from the American Mathematical Society and the Rolf Schock Prize for Mathematics.

His first lecture is from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29 in Dow 641. Stanley’s lecture will be “Plane Tilings,” in which he will discuss the challenges of filling a planar region with a given collection of shapes (tiles). A jigsaw puzzle is a familiar type of tiling, though it is not very mathematical; decorative tile floors often use plane tiling to create an aesthetic effect. The physicist Roger Penrose created a family of tilings that are known as Penrose tilings.

Stanley will survey some interesting mathematics associated with plane tilings and discuss questions such as the following: Is there a tiling? If so, how many are there? If no tiling exists, how can we prove this? What special properties, such as symmetry, can a tiling possess? These questions involve such subjects as combinatorics, group theory, probability theory, number theory and computer science.

From 1 to 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30 in Fisher 138, Stanley will deliver a colloquium entitled “A Survey of Alternating Permutations.” Permutations are fundamental transformations in mathematics, and alternating permutations comprise one of the most important families of permutations. Stanley will discuss several aspects of the theory of alternating permutations and describe applications to topics such as group theory and geometry.

Pinelis publishes in Journal of Theoretical Probability

Published September 2, 2016

By Heather Powers

$3$ Iosif Pinelis published a paper, “Positive-part moments via characteristic functions, and more general expressions“, on August 30th in Journal of Theoretical Probability, Online First.

Stenzelbarton, Gezek, and Judge are Outstanding Graduate Student Teachers

Published March 2, 2016

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Graduate student Amanda Stenzelbarton is a recipient of the Spring 2016 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, as announced by the department.

Mustafa Gezek and Samuel Judge are Fall 2015 recipients.

Joseph Reath Receives Graduate Student Service Award

Published March 2, 2016

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Graduate student Joseph Reath is a recipient of the Spring 2016 Graduate Student Service Award, as announced by the Graduate School.

A member of the Graduate Student Government and is nominated and voted on by that body of students and approved by the Dean. Nominated students have exhibited an outstanding contribution to graduate education at Michigan Tech.

Liang, Pastine, and Dunn Receive Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship

Published March 2, 2016

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Graduate students Chao (Chad) Liang and Adrian Pastine are recipients of the Spring 2016 Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship, as announced by the Graduate School.

This award goes to graduating graduate students nominated by their academic school or department for their academic achievements.

Jarret R. Dunn is a Fall 2015 recipient.

New Funding – Vladimir Tonchev

Published February 15, 2016

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Sponsored Research

Vladimir Tonchev is the principal investigator on a research and development project titled “Combinatorial Designs, Error-Correcting Codes, and Finite Geometry,“ which was awarded a $39,998 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, National Security Agency. This is the first year of a potential two year project, totaling $79,501.

From Tech Today

Michigan Tech Rises in NSF Research Expenditure Rankings

Published February 15, 2016

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Research

December 2, 2015—

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released its annual research spending report, and Michigan Tech has moved up in its rankings.

Of 634 institutions that received research funding in 2014, Tech received $68.5 million, ranking 163rd overall nationwide. The University ranked 117th among public institutions.

Mechanical engineering research at Tech received $13.1 million in research funding, ranking 19^th in the nation. Atmospheric science — a new interdisciplinary category — received $3.1 million and ranked 34^th.

14 Disciplines in Top 100

Fourteen disciplines at Michigan Tech ranked in the top 100 for research spending. They are atmospheric science (34^th), business and management (76^th), biomedical engineering (94^th), chemical engineering (90^th), civil engineering (89^th), electrical engineering (62^nd), environmental science (52^nd), humanities (94^th), mechanical engineering (19^th), metallurgical and materials engineering (58^th), mathematical sciences (88^th), oceanography (56^th), overall engineering (84^th), and visual and performing arts (85^th).

“The research funding environment is increasingly competitive, and our improvement in overall ranking, as well as the increases in last year’s funding that will impact future rankings, all indicate the exceptional efforts of our faculty, staff, and students,” said David Reed, vice president for research.

NSF ranks research activities by discipline, not by organizational structure, Reed pointed out, so the spending in some of Tech’s institutes and centers, such as the Michigan Tech Research Institute, the Keweenaw Research Center and the Great Lakes Research Center, are included with the appropriate academic departments rather than reported separately.

Michigan Technological University (www.mtu.edu) is a leading public research university developing new technologies and preparing students to create the future for a prosperous and sustainable world. Michigan Tech offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering; forest resources; computing; technology; business; economics; natural, physical and environmental sciences; arts; humanities; and social sciences.

From Tech Today

In Print – Iosif Pinelis

Published November 25, 2015

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Iosif Pinelis published the paper “Rosenthal-Type Inequalities for Martingales in 2-Smooth Banach Spaces, in Theory of Probability & Its Applications,” Volume 59, Issue 4, 699-706. The abstract of the paper is available here.

From Tech Today