Front Page News

Professor Ricardo Estrada will be one of the plenary (virtual) speakers at the International Conference on Generalized Functions, GF2020, August 31-September 4, 2020, Ghent, Belgium.

The Casa Matemática Oaxaca (CMO) will host the "Topological Complexity and Motion Planning" online workshop, from September 17 to September 20, 2020.
Organizers are Dan Cohen (LSU), Jesus Gonzalez Cinvestav and Lucile Vandembroucq (Centro de Matemática, Universidade do Minho).

Robert J. "Bob" Koch, LSU Math Professor Emeritus and AMS Fellow, passed away on Tuesday, August 11, 2020 at the age of 94. Bob Koch joined the department in 1953, until his retirement in 1989. In 2013 he became part of the Inaugural Class of AMS Fellows. 
At LSU he supervised the Ph.D. theses of ten Ph.D. graduates, including Dennison Brown, who later became the Ph.D. advisor of Jimmie Lawson at the University of Tennessee. In 1986 the math department hosted the LSU Semigroup Conference Kochfest 60 in Bob Koch's honor.

Milen Yakimov is the recipient of the LSU Foundation Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award for 2020. Annually, the award recognizes one LSU faculty member with superior graduate-level teaching and related activities.

Milen Yakimov came to LSU Mathematics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2008 during which time he was a Sloan Research Fellow. He was elected Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2018. Currently, he is the Michael F. and Roberta Nesbit McDonald Professor of Mathematics.

LSU Nicholson Professor of Mathematics Robert Lipton was named Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for the Class of 2020. The Fellows program of the SIAM began in 2008 “to honor SIAM members who are recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the discipline” and “to support the advancement of SIAM members to leadership positions in their own institutions and in the broader society”.

The LSU Department of Mathematics Actuarial Science program recently received Advanced Curriculum (UCAP-AC) recognition from the Society of Actuaries (SOA). This advancement in the status of the Actuarial Science program has been a long-term goal for the LSU Department of Mathematics, and to receive UCAP-AC status, the Actuarial program was restructured with the cooperation of the LSU Department of Experimental Statistics to alter available coursework to better prepare students for additional SOA exams.

Scores were recently released for the 2019 Putnam Mathematical Competition, which was held on Dec. 7, 2019. This competition includes 570 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and consists of a lengthy 6-hour written exam with 12 challenging problems. Although the maximum possible score is 120 points, the median is typically 0 or 1 point!

The creation of the Peg and Tom Madden Mathematics Research Scholarship was made possible by a gift from Dr. James Madden, Patricia Hewlett Bodin Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. This new scholarship is intended to encourage and support LSU Mathematics Undergraduates who are actively engaged in research experiences in the department.

Soula O'Bannon received a 2019 LSU Foundation Staff Outstanding Service Award. The LSU Foundation Staff Outstanding Service Award is an annual award established to recognize the superior work performance and outstanding contributions of full-time, non-academic staff employees of the LSU A&M campus and the LSU AgCenter.

(Photo: Soula O'Bannon with Saundra McGuire)

LSU students performed very well on the 41st. Annual Virginia Tech Regional Math Contest (VTRMC). This annual competition consists of a challenging two and half hour written exam, and there were 758 participants from 98 colleges and universities from 29 states. Out of a maximum possible score of 70 points, the national median was 1 point.,