Front Page News

Delong Meng, a 2009 graduate of Baton Rouge High School who just entered MIT, won a Silver Medal and was a member of the USA Team finishing sixth at the 2009 International Mathematical Olympiad, held this year in Bremen, Germany. In previous years, Delong won multiple awards at the High School Math Contest organized by the LSU Mathematics Department. Over the past year, Delong was coached by one of the department faculty, Professor Hongyu He.

As the LSU Office of Public Affairs tells us, "The metaphorical 'Rainmaker,' a term borrowed from the business parlance, is one whose special skills and efforts bring welcome resources or respect to an organization. In the university context, Rainmakers are those who are nationally and internationally recognized for innovative research and creative scholarship, who compete for external funding at the highest levels and who attract and mentor exceptional graduate students."

Professor Susanne Brenner was appointed as Vice President for Publications of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). As Vice President for Publications, she will have oversight of the SIAM journals, work with the book publishing program as well as other SIAM programs, and serve as a member of the SIAM Council. SIAM is the third largest mathematical society in the US and has a large domestic and international membership of over 12,000.

Professor Brenner will begin her Vice Presidential duties January 1, 2010.

An X-math session (as in eXtreme) on the twisted Alexander polynomial will be held from June 29 to July 10. In the second week Abhijit Champanerkar will visit us and will give some additional talks on the A-polynomial with possible relations to twisting.

Jintao Cui, a doctoral student of Professor Susanne Brenner, received student paper prizes awarded at the 2009 SIAM SEAS Spring Meeting held in Columbia, SC. The selection committee was very impressed with his presentation of his research, as well as the contributions his research has made to mathematics.

Congratulations to Jasson Vindas, doctoral student of Ricardo Estrada, who has been awarded the Costa Rica Young Scientist Award. The prize is rotated among the different scientific areas, and is given to a young mathematician every 4 years. The first math winner, in 1992, also has an LSU connection.

Congratulations to Professor Gestur Olafsson who has been selected to receive the Distinguished Research Master Award. This award is the university's highest research honor. “The career awards are intended to recognize individuals with a long-term record of truly distinguished research and scholarship while at LSU.” Professor Olafsson will receive an salary supplement and the University Medal.

Olafsson joins two other mathematics faculty recipients:

Professor Susanne Brenner is the co-chair of the 2010-2011 Thematic Year "Simulating our Complex World: Modeling, Computation and Analysis" at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Dr. Horst Beyer's lecture notes "Beyond partial differential equations. On linear and quasi-linear abstract hyperbolic evolution equations"
[Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1898. Berlin: Springer (2007)] was included in the sixteen highlights selected by the editors of Zentralblatt MATH for 2008.  Dr. Beyer's work is the outgrowth of a two-semester course on linear semigroup methods, linear and quasi-linear hyperbolic systems of partial differential equations, and the abstract theory of evolution equations, given at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

The Editorial Committee of the American Mathematical Society has reappointed Professor Susanne Brenner to a second term as an editor of Mathematics of Computation. She joined this editorial board as Associate Editor in 1993 and have served continuously since then.