闯辞颈苍颈苍驳听Minghao Rostami鈥檚 prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant, which started this August and runs for five years, three other professors in the聽鈥擩ani Onninen, Dan Coman and Lixin Shen鈥攚ere awarded NSF grants for their ongoing work, and two more, Stephan Wehrli and Claudia Miller, saw a one-time grant for hosting a regional seminar.
In total, the awards combine for more than $460,000 in support for academic year 2022-23 (based on the annual value of each multiyear grant). This represents an increase of about 20% over last year.
鈥淭hese grants from NSF reflect the high esteem that our faculty are held in by the mathematical community, and the impact of their research on the field,鈥� says Graham Leuschke, professor and chair of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences. 鈥淲e鈥檙e proud of the recognition that their scholarship has brought them. These grants are important accomplishments, and the support will allow our faculty to go on to even greater heights.鈥�
Onninen
聽received a three-year NSF grant, beginning June 2022, for his work on聽. The project will explore energy-minimizing deformations and their applications to the study of non-linear elasticity鈥攚hich examines how physical materials warp, bend or are otherwise altered in response to stress鈥攁nd will further develop analytic and geometric tools to address the mathematical challenges the resulting constraints present.
鈥淚n a very simplistic illustration, suppose a blacksmith is hammering a hot piece of iron or steel to create a new shape,鈥� says Onninen. 鈥淲hen to stop hammering? Every stroke creates an element of the energy-minimizing sequence of homeomorphisms. If the weak limit fails to be invertible, then it tells us when to stop hammering prior to the conditions favorable to the formation of cracks.鈥�
The project will include research opportunities for graduate students over its three-year duration.
Coman
聽was awarded a three-year NSF grant, beginning this July, for his project,聽. The project aims to advance knowledge and understanding in the areas of complex analysis (which studies functions depending on variables that are complex numbers), complex geometry and potential theory. These critical areas of study provide powerful tools for solving important problems in fields of pure and applied mathematics (such as image and signal processing) and physics.
鈥淚 will study spaces of sections of holomorphic line bundles and the asymptotics of the related Bergman kernel functions, for example, which in physics terms are related to the quantum mechanics of particles in a magnetic field,鈥� says Coman.
Coman will work together with colleagues at the University of Cologne, Germany, and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, for part of the research. And two current mathematics Ph.D. students, Melody Wolff and Jesse Hulse, will receive summer support under the grant.
Shen
聽was another recipient of a three-year NSF grant, for his聽. There is a growing problem of overly large data sets in such fields as information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, civil infrastructure and environmental science, and an increasing demand for competent data processing models. Shen is leading an effort to develop a more computationally efficient approach to optimizing data.
鈥淭he success of the proposed research will provide the opportunity for many useful and interesting applications in mathematics, computer science and medical communities,鈥� says Shen. 鈥淥ur medical collaborator at MSKCC [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center] has shown great enthusiasm in developing our methods for medical image reconstruction when low radiation doses are used in emission computed tomography.鈥�
The projects will heavily involve graduate students, helping prepare them for the significant challenges that will continue to be posed by the big-data era. 鈥淪ince the work has a strong relevance with industry, medical sciences and defense, the educational component of the proposed research will pave the way for job opportunities for students who take part,鈥� Shen says.
Miller (left) and Wehrli
Mathematics Professor聽 and Associate Professor received an NSF grant to host the on Oct. 22 at 黑料不打烊. The one-day, in-person conference brought together researchers from New York state and nearby regions, working in various areas of topology鈥攑rimarily algebraic and low-dimensional鈥攚ith the hopes of building a cohesive topology community in the region. Three distinguished young researchers, 聽(Columbia University),聽 (Swarthmore) and聽聽(University of Massachusetts鈥擜mherst) served as plenary speakers, and there were an additional 14 talks within parallel afternoon sessions.
The conference was the third installment of the UNYTS series, founded in 2017 by Miller and Wehrli, together with professors Inna Zakharevich of Cornell University and Adam Sikora of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Story by Laura Wallis
