Front Page News

LSU undergraduate math major Andrew Williamson was ranked at the 97th percentile on the recent William Lowell Putmam Mathematics Contest for undergraduate math majors. With a score of 56 out of 120 he was ranked 128th out of 4296.

Congratulations to Susanna Dann (soon-to-be LSU PhD, advisor Prof. Olafsson), who has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her advisor there will be Prof. Alexander Koldobsky.

Dr. Susanne Brenner, the Michael F. and Roberta Nesbit McDonald Professor of Mathematics at LSU, has been selected to give the 2011 Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture.

Congratulations to Girja Tripathi (LSU PhD Dec. 2010, advisor Prof. Schlichting), who has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Tata Institute, Mumbai.

Three LSU math majors, Philip Benge, Guillaume Dupré, and Hannah Manuel, won the first-place prize in the Student Team Mathematics Competition on February 25. The competition is a regional mathematics contest for college students in Louisiana and Mississippi, sponsored by the Louisiana-Mississippi section of the Mathematical Association of America. The LSU team dominated the competition, scoring 131 of 150 points possible. The second-place team only scored 109 points. Congratulations to Philip, Guillaume, and Hannah!

Congratulations to Jens Christensen (LSU PhD 2009, advisor Prof. Olafsson). After two years at the University of Maryland, Jens has accepted a 3-year postdoctoral position at Tufts University.

Aaron Lauda, a visiting researcher in the Math Department for the Spring semester 2011, has  won a 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship. Awarded annually since 1955, these two year fellowships are given to 118 early-career scientists and scholars in science, mathematics, economics and computer science, in recognition of achievement and the potential to contribute substantially to their fields.

Patricio Jara (LSU, Ph.D. 2008, adviser Prof. Frank Neubrander) received a three year research grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Mathematical Sciences (Award #1008101) for his research on the “Numerical Inversion of the Laplace Transform and its Applications to Evolution Equations”. Congratulations Patricio!

Mihály (Misi) Kovács (LSU, PhD. 2004, adviser Prof. Frank Neubrander) is this year's sole recipient of the New Zealand Mathematical Society's “Early Career Award for Mathematical Research”. Misi's citation for the prize reads “for his innovative research in the field of stochastic partial differential equations, particularly their numerical approximation”. Congratulations Misi!

Robert Lipton has been elected Vice Chairman of the SIAM Activity Group on Mathematics of Materials Science. The activity group sponsors the Biannual SIAM Conference on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science.