Department News & Events: 2005-06

The Department of Mathematics & Statistics are happy to announce that we are the recipents of a new scholarship fund: Frederick M. Viles '43 Scholarship Fund. This is the result of an endowment from Mr. Viles widow, Mrs. Patricia B. Viles. The fund is shared jointly with the Department of Physics & Astronomy and is to be used to provide scholarships to students majoring in both mathematics and physics or students majoring in one of these disciplines and minoring in the other. The department extends its gratitude to Mrs. Viles for her gift.
Assistant Professor John Donovan is CO-PI on a 3 year NSF grant dealing with mathematics and physics education research. This grant was written in collaboration with Assistant Professor M. Wittman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Assistant Professor Andy Knightly is PI on a 2 year NSA grant with focus in number theory.
Assistant Professor Andre Khalil is CO-PI on two grants, one from the NSF and one from Stryker Orthopedics. Andre's work lies in the theory and application of wavelet-based fractal image analysis. This work is in collaboration with numerous researchers in UM's Institute for Molecular Biology and at the Jackson Laboratory.
For the past year and into this year, Assistant Professor Tod Shockey has been providing development courses for teachers at the Beatrice Rafferty School on the Passamaquoddy Reserve. His research focus in in ethnomathematics and Tod is developing a research program on student learning at the school while there. This work is partially funded by Project Opportunity and the support of UM's Continuing Education Division.
Associate Professor David Bradley was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians this past August held in Madrid, Spain. The title of his talk was: Hypergeometric functions that generate series acceleration formulas for values of the Riemann zeta function. This trip was partially supported by an NSF travel grant and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
Assistant Professor David Hiebeler was invited to serve as research advisor for a summer program at the Mathematical & Theoretical Biology Institute at Arizona State University. Two UM undergraduate mathematics majors, Jen Houle '06 and Pam Reitsma '07, and our graduate student Ben Morin, MA '06 were invited to participate. More details of this endeavor can be seen on the SPEED Lab (Spatial Population Ecological and Epidemiological Dynamics Lab) page
Professors Ramesh Gupta and Pushpa Gupta are on sabbatical this Fall semester. They are visiting the University of Malaysia and are doing research and giving lectures in statistics while there.
The Math Den has moved into its second year offering computer lab based courses in College Algebra and Finite Mathematics for Business. Lecturers Jen Tyne and Paula Drewninany are actively involved in the Den. This pilot program has generous support from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Department of Instructional Technology, and the Continuing Education Division.