Faculty and Student News
Fall 2007
Pittsburgh Quarterly Article "The Proof of the Proof" Features Dr. Hales and His Work on the Kepler Conjecture Proof
"40,000 lines of computer code, 300 pages of logic. [University of Pittsburgh professor Dr. Thomas Hales] nails a computation that is the most important mathematical discovery in the last 25 years. Now he just has to dedicate the next 20 years to proving it."
August 19, 2007
Professor Gunduz Caginalp is quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about investing in today's market
July 9 , 2007
Chair of Math Department becomes Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Science for Undergraduate Students
Professor Juan Manfredi, currently chair of the Department of Mathematics, will become the School of Arts and Sciences associate dean for undergraduate studies, effective September 1, 2007. Professor Ivan Yotov will serve as interim chair of the Department of Mathematics from September 1 until August 31, 2008.
June 10, 2007
Department Faculty Featured in New York Times Article About the Stock Market
University of Pittsburgh professor, Dr. Gunduz Caginalp's work on the article “Overreactions, Momentum, Liquidity and Price Bubbles in Laboratory and Field Asset Markets", Published in The Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets, now The Journal of Behavioral Finance, was used help explain the current trends of the stock market.
March 13, 2007
Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh Receive Training Grants from National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have received three grants totaling more than $7 million from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Science Foundation to support programs that train undergraduate and graduate students in basic neuroscience, computational neuroscience, multimodal neuroimaging, and other interdisciplinary endeavors. The programs will be offered through the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), which is jointly run by the universities.
“The three new grants the CNBC has received will enable our students to participate in the synthesis of disciplines, which is the essence of modern neuroscience,” said Peter Strick, professor of neurobiology and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and codirector of the CNBC. “We are moving into a new era of multidisciplinary training in which we are asking our students to stretch intellectually. The result is a new generation of multidisciplinary neuroscientists who are comfortable asking complex questions and then using the most appropriate approaches to solve them.”
March 1, 2007SIAM News 'Mathematics and the Brain' Issue Features Department Faculty
The Department of Mathematics features prominently in the March 2007 "Mathematics and the Brain" issue of SIAM News. Professor G. Bard Ermentrout serves as a guest editor and is the author of an article titled "Neurophysiology and Waves" with department PhD alumnus David Pinto.
Professor Jonathan Rubin also is coauthor of an article titled "Neuronal Dynamics and the Basal Ganglia," and PhD alumnus Boris Gutkin is the coauthor of an article titled "Phase-Resetting Curves and Neuromodulation of Action Potential Dynamics in the Cortex."
The articles highlight the fact that Department of Mathematics faculty are making important and productive contributions to the growing field of mathematical neuroscience.
January 16, 2007Professor Hales Recognized by the American Mathematical Society for Kepler Conjecture Proof
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has granted Professor Thomas C. Hales the society’s inaugural David P. Robbins Award, in honor of his proof of the Kepler Conjecture. Professor Hales shares the prestigious award with Samuel Ferguson of the National Security Agency, who coauthored part of the published proof. The AMS has lauded their work as “a landmark achievement.”
More: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, New Scientist
May 3, 2005Professor Vainchtein Receives National Science Foundation's CAREER Award to Study How Materials ‘Remember’ Their Shapes
Assistant professor of mathematics Anna Vainchtein has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. The prestigious, five-year, $400,000 award will fund Vainchtein’s work on materials with “shape memory.” The project also will involve training graduate and undergraduate students in an interdisciplinary research program, mentoring female graduate students, and outreach activities for middle school and high school students.