LOOK INSIDE:

Program Updates:Graduate . . . . . . . . . 2Undergraduate . . . . . .3

K-12 Outreach . . . . . . . . 3

Faculty News . . . . . . . . .4

New Research Grants . .4

Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

College of Science and Technology

U P D A T E

Mathematics

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Fall 2014

Greetings! I am delighted to share the fall 2014 Mathematics Update,covering (mostly) the 2013-2014academic year. Some highlights: Thispast year’s PhD graduates have allsecured either tenure-track academicor postdoctoral research positions.Many undergraduates participated inmathematical research with facultymentors. Our outreach efforts continueto impact K-12 students throughoutthe Philadelphia area. Departmentfaculty members continue to berecognized for outstanding research.

Many thanks to departmentcolleagues, students and staff for all of their hard work during the past year,and I wish all of you well in 2015.

Best regards,

Ed Letzter

Professor Irina Mitrea:Crossroads of harmonicanalysis, partial differentialequations and geometricmeasure theory

Many phenomena in engineering and mathematicalphysics, such as elasticity, fluid flow, unisotropicplate bending and electromagnetism, can bemodeled by means of boundary value problems for a

certain elliptic differential operator in a given domain. If the domain in question issmooth, like a sphere, a variety of classical mathematical tools are available for thetreatment of such problems.

The situation is radically different, however, if the domain in question has an irregularboundary, which is the prevalent case in real-world applications. Indeed, domainsthat appear smooth to the naked eye in fact exhibit corners, edges, cracks, and/ormicroscopic asperities and irregularities of a very intricate nature.

Professor Irina Mitrea’s work, situated at the crossroads of harmonic analysis, partialdifferential equations (PDE), and geometric measure theory, deals with thedevelopment of new mathematical techniques capable of handling elliptic boundaryvalue problems in irregular settings, including domains with isolated singularities,Lipschitz domains and uniformly rectifiable domains. She has recently co-authoredtwo research monographs, Multi-Layer Potentials and Boundary Problems for HigherOrder Elliptic Systems in Lipschitz Domains, and Grupoid Metrization Theory withApplications to Analysis on Quasi-Metric Spaces and Functional Analysis, published,respectively, by Springer-Verlag and Birkhauser in 2013.

During the academic year 2014-2015, Mitrea will be a von Neumann Fellow at theInstitute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where she is completingcollaborative work on two new research monographs. One is focused on Riemann-Hilbert problems in uniformly rectifiable domains; the other monograph deals withboundary problems for the Hodge-Laplacian on regular Semmes-Kenig-Torosubdomains of Riemannian manifolds. She is also working with her current PhDstudent, Hussein Awala, and with a former PhD student, Katharine Ott, on a research project involving PDE with mixed boundary conditions of both Dirichlet and Neumann type. Mitrea’s current research collaborators also include EmilioMarmolejo-Olea, Jose Maria Martell, Dorina Mitrea, Marius Mitrea, Michael Taylor,Warwick Tucker and Elia Ziade. Mitrea’s professional accomplishments include the 2008 Ruth Michler Memorial Prize from the Association of Women inMathematics and an invited plenary address at a 2010 American MathematicalSociety sectional meeting.

Support MathematicsThere are many opportunities to contribute to the continuedsuccess of the Department of Mathematics. You can support student scholarships,faculty endowment andinnovative programs.

To learn more about how you canimpact the department’s futureand the future of our graduates,contact Andy Davis, AssociateDirector of Development, atadavis@temple.edu or go tocst.temple.edu.

FACULTY PROFILE

New PhDs

Gitnet Gidelew, May 2014. Gidelew’sthesis, Harmonic Analysis onCombinatorial Graphs, was completedunder the direction of Professor IsaacPesenson. Dr. Gidelew is now tenure-track assistant professor at RichardBland College of William and Mary.

Jessica Hamm, August 2014. Herthesis, Multiplicative Invariants of RootLattices, was completed with thesisadvisor Professor Martin Lorenz. Dr.Hamm is now tenure-track assistantprofessor at Winthrop University.

Stephen Shank, May 2014. His thesis,Low-rank solution methods for large-scale linear matrix equations, wascompleted under the supervision ofProfessor Daniel Szyld. Dr. Shank has a postdoctoral research appointment at MIT.

Dong Zhou, August 2014. His thesis,High-order numerical methods forpressure Poisson equation reformulationsof the incompressible Navier-Stokesequation, was completed under thedirection of Assistant Professor BenjaminSeibold. Dr. Zhou will continue hisresearch at Temple and at MIT, workingon an NSF-funded project with Dr.Seibold and also with Professor R. RubenRosales (MIT).

Summer Schools and Internships

Hussein Awala and Luca Pallucchiniattended the Mathematical SciencesResearch Institute (MSRI), Berkeley,summer graduate school in geometryand analysis, July 28 to August 8, 2014.

Kathryn Lund was awarded a TempleUniversity First Summers ResearchInitiative grant to study traffic modelingwith Dr. Seibold.

Fadoua El Mostaid was a summer internat the Center for Biofilm Engineering,Montana State University.

Star-Lena Quintana participated in the2014 Industrial Math/Stat ModelingWorkshop for Graduate Students, WaterPurification via Membrane Separation, atthe Statistical and Applied MathematicalSciences Institute, Research TrianglePark, North Carolina.

Scott Ladenheim was a summer internat Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratories.

Workshops and Conferences

Christian Millichap spoke at the 2014Graduate Student Geometry andTopology Conference, Austin, Texas, andat the 2014 Spring Eastern SectionalMeeting of the American MathematicalSociety, University of Maryland,Baltimore.

Eric Stachura gave a presentation at thefall 2013 Southeastern Sectional Meetingof the American Mathematical Society,University of Kentucky, Louisville.

Luca Pallucchini particpated in theInternational Conference on ComplexAnalysis and Geometry, WuhanUniversity, China.

Fadoua El Mostaid gave a presentationat the annual meeting of the PacificNorthwest section of the MathematicalAssociation of America, University ofMontana, Missoula, June 2014.

Hussein Awala gave a presentation atthe 72nd Midwest PDE Seminar, PurdueUniversity, November 2013.

Ahmad Sabra spoke at Progress inHarmonic Analysis and GeometricMeasure Theory, Temple University, April2014, and at the Eastern SectionalMeeting of the American MathematicalSociety, Temple University, October 2013.

Dong Zhou spoke at the EasternSectional Meeting of the AmericanMathematical Society, Temple University,October 2013, and at the InternationalConference on Spectral and High OrderMethods, Salt Lake City, June 2014, andparticipated in the Short Course onUncertainty Quantification, StanfordUniversity, June 2014.

Scott Ladenheim presented a talk at theSociety for Industrial and AppliedMathematics annual meeting in Chicago,July 2014, and received second prize forbest student paper at the 13th CopperMountain Conference on IterativeMethods, April 2014.

Selected Graduate StudentPublications

Christian Millichap: “Factorial growthrates for the number of hyperbolic 3 -manifolds of a given volume,”Proceedings of the AmericanMathematical Society, to appear.

Ahmad Sabra (with C. Gutierrez): “Thereflector problem and the inversesquare,” Nonlinear Analysis: Theory,Methods & Applications, 2014; “Design ofpairs of reflectors,” Journal of the OpticalSociety of America A,31(4), 891 899.

Graduate Student Profile

Stephen Shank, PHD ’14, MATH

GRADUATE PROGRAM

In a decade, Philadelphia native StephenShank has gone from delivering pizzas toaccepting a prestigious post-doctoralposition at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT).A 2007 magna cum laude Temple

graduate in mathematics, Shank wasawarded his PhD in mathematics at the2014 Commencement. His graduate workhas focused on scientific computing andnumerical linear algebra research. At MIT heis researching seismic imaging related to oiland gas exploration with the Imaging andComputing Group in the Department ofMathematics.“With seismic imaging I think we’ve

barely scratched the surface of the Earthand I’d really like to contribute toinnovations that will help continue to powerour daily lives,” says Shank.“Temple,” he adds, “was fantastic for

me, both in terms of my classes and theopportunities I was afforded that led me toMIT.” As an undergraduate he worked as atutor in the university’s Math and ScienceResource Center and, as a graduateteaching assistant, taught six pre-calculusand calculus courses. Support from a European Union-U.S.

program enabled him to launch hisdissertation research during a semester atthe University of Bologna. The remainder ofhis thesis was written while employed as aresearch assistant with his advisorProfessor Daniel B. Szyld, supported by agrant from the National Science Foundation.His experience performing mathematicalresearch led to a summer spent working asan intern at Sandia National Laboratories.Shank also somehow found time to

collaborate with two childhood friends todevelop KangaStock, an inventory controlmobile app currently being used by acorrugated box plant that has significantlyreduced the time required to conduct aninventory and caught inventory errors of upto $50,000 on the company’s books. “It’s alot more efficient and accurate than theprocess they were using,” says Shank.

—Bruce Beans

K-12 OutreachApproximately 40 middle-school students participated in the annualTemple University Mathematics Circle in November 2013. Topicsfor this year included algorithms, prime numbers, the golden ratio,logic, probability, topology, and math in music and art. The program was organized by Professor Irina Mitrea, Associate

Professor Instructional Professor Maria Lorenz, Dr. Elia Ziade,and Temple mathematics graduate student Jessie Hamm. Sponsorsincluded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), theNational Association of Mathematics Circles, the National DefenseEducation Program, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, CarderockDivision.

In April 2014, Professor Mitrea and department volunteers, including Temple math faculty Drs. Maria Lorenz and Sunnie Joshi,represented the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM)at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, in Washington, DC.This year’s theme was cryptography, and the festival included 750exhibits, including hands-on learning for children and parents, andattracted more than 325,000 participants. A full report is available inthe July/August AWM newsletter.

Also in April, Temple’s hosted its third annual Sonia Kovalesky Day,organized by Maria Lorenz and graduate student Jessie Hamm.This one-day event featured numerous mathematical activities.Funding and support for this event was provided in part by theMathematical Association of America, the National DefenseEducation Program, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division.

Graduate student Eric Stachura organized a two-hour workshop“Hands on Geometric Optics,” in the STEM Scholars Program forHigh School Students, at The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, May 2014.

The 2014 Temple Girls and Mathematics Summer Program ran July 7-11, 2014. Fifty middle school girls participated, studyingmathematics of origami; geometric constructions with the ruler andthe compass; the game of life; braids; mathematical card tricks;reasoning by contradiction; taxicab geometry; operations andrelations.

Directed by Professor Irina Mitrea, with assistant directors Drs. Janet Fierson and Meredith Hegg, the program was supportedby the National Defense Education Program, the Naval SurfaceWarfare Center, Carderock Division, and the MathematicalAssociation of America.

• In November 2013, Louis Graup (below) won FirstPlace at the CST Undergraduate Research ProgramSymposium for his poster, Optimization ofMacroscopic Models for the Approximation ofMicroscopic Traffic Flow. His research wassupervised by Assistant Professor BenjaminSeibold. Graup also presented his research in thestudent paper session at the Fall Meeting of theEastern Pennsylvania-Delaware Section of theMathematical Association of America, at St.Joseph’s University.

• Several undergraduate students engaged inmathematics research, including Joshua Lloret(supervised by Dr. Brian Rushton), Mark Mikida(Professor Yury Grabovsky), Samuel Lee (AssistantProfessor Benjamin Seibold), and Joseph Buhler(Seibold).

• In April, Louis Graup and Samuel Lee presentedtheir research at the 21st Temple UndergraduateResearch Forum & Creative Works Symposium.

• The Math Club met frequently throughout theacademic year for interesting and entertaininglectures, the Calculus Carnival, and the annual PiDay Celebration.

• Associate Professor (Instructional) Maria Lorenz isnow director of the Temple undergraduate programsin mathematics.

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM

GRADUATE PROGRAM continued

Stephen Shank (with D. Fritzsche, A. Frommer, and D. Szyld),“Overlapping blocks by growing a partition with applicationsto preconditioning,” Society for Industrial and AppliedMathematics Journal of Scientific Computation, 2013.

Awards

Jessie Hamm was selected as 2014-2015 Project NExTFellow of the Mathematical Association of America. He alsoreceived the 2013 College of Science and TechnologyDistinguished Graduate Student Teaching Award.

Changes

At the end of June 2014, Professor Martin Lorenzstepped down as graduate chair. The department is gratefulfor his dedicated service to the graduate program. In July2014, Professor Shiferaw Berhanu began serving asgraduate chair.

Non ProfitOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPhiladelphia, PAPermit No. 10441803 N. Broad Street

400 Carnell HallPhiladelphia, PA 19122

Professors Irina Mitrea and Igor Rivin(above) were elected to the 2015 class of Fellows of the AmericanMathematical Society. Professor Mitreawas cited for contributions to partialdifferential equations and related fieldsas well as outreach to women and under-represented minorities at all educationallevels. Igor Rivin was singled out for hiscontributions to geometry and relatedfields, pure and applied. The Fellows of the American

Mathematical Society programrecognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to thecreation, exposition, advancement,communication, and utilization ofmathematics. The program was initiatedwith the inaugural class of 2013.

Associate Professor (Instructional)Maria Lorenz was awarded the2013 College of Science and TechnologyDean's Distinguished Excellence inMentoring Award.

Professor Daniel Szyld was electedVice President at Large of the Society forIndustrial and Applied Mathematics.

Temple hosted the Fall EasternSectional Meeting of the AmericanMathematical Society, October 12-13,2013. There were approximately 400attendees, 21 special sessions and fourplenary addresses. Local organizers wereProfessors Shiferaw Berhanu andEdward Letzter, with many departmentfaculty, students, and staff helping tomake the meeting a great success.

The 2013 Grosswald Lectures,“Configuration Spaces,” were deliveredby Professor Günter M. Ziegler of FreieUniversität Berlin, September 23-25.

Temple hosted its third annualNumerical Analysis Day graduatestudent conference, organized byAssistant Professor Benjamin Seiboldand Professor Daniel Szyld. The keynotespeaker was Professor Marcia Berger, ofthe Courant Institute of MathematicalSciences.

The department hosted the third annualNorth American Gone Fishingworkshop on Poisson Geometry,September 28-29, 2013. Previous GoneFishing workshops were held atWashington University and UCLA.Associate Professor Vasily Dolgushevwas the local organizer.

• Associate Professor David FuterConnections in low-dimensionaltopology, NSF

• Professor Yury GrabovskyLinear and non-linear elasticity:Study of exact relations andinstabilities, NSF

• Professors Yury Grabovskyand Isaac KlapperSpatiotemporal distribution ofoxygen in biofilm infections, NIH

• Professor Martin LorenzNoncommutative andcommutative invarianttheory,National Security Agency

• Professor Brian RiderLimit laws arising in randommatrix theory, NSF

• Assistant Professor Benjamin SeiboldControl of Vehicular Traffic Flowvia Low Density AutonomousVehicles, NSF

• Professor Daniel SzyldMultiple preconditioners forsaddle-point and otherproblems, NSF

FACULTY AWARDSNEW RESEARCHGRANTS

EVENTS