By the Numb3rs Fall 2015

People

New Co-Undergraduate Directors

Paul Gartside

Paul GartsideDr. Gartside received his DPhil in Mathematics from the University of Oxford in 1993. Following postdocs in Oxford, the University of Auckland, Moscow State University and NUI-Galway, he took up a Junior Lectureship at Oxford in 1999. He joined Pitt in 2001. His research area is Analytic topology, with a particular interest in `spaces of objects' - function spaces, hyperspaces etc. A frequent theme of his research is that of complexity and computability.

Jonathan Rubin

Jonathan RubinDr. Rubin received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1996.  He was a Zassenhaus Assistant Professor and then a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at The Ohio State University before joining the Pitt Mathematics faculty in 2000.  In addition to his Mathematics position, he is part of the Center for Neuroscience at University of Pittsburgh and several other interdisciplinary centers and is a Visiting Professor in Computational Biology. Dr. Rubin is the main organizer for the Pitt Integration Bee each year, and six graduate students have completed their Ph.Ds at Pitt under Dr. Rubin's supervision.

MAC Coordinator

Daniel Hockensmith

Daniel HockensmithMost of my formative years were spent in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I was born and raised.  In 2006 I made the short trek out to Blacksburg, Virginia, where I received degrees in mathematics and physics from Virginia Tech in 2010.  I continued my education in the graduate mathematics department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  I completed my thesis work, “A Classification of Toric, Folded-Symplectic Manifolds,” under the supervision of Dr. Eugene Lerman and received my Ph.D. in August of 2015.  Throughout my graduate career, I developed an interest in improving undergraduate education in mathematics, which is why I am excited to be serving as the MAC director.  It has been a pleasure so far to see the amount of talent and compassion exhibited by Pitt’s mathematics students inside the MAC.  I am eager to help them continue to make Pitt an excellent and inviting home for mathematics.

Changes in Payroll

Welcome

Matthew Rager, Payroll Manager
Matt RagerMatthew (Matt) Rager has accepted the position as the Payroll Manger for the Math Department, left vacant when Drew Porvaznik retired.  Matt has starting working with us on October 12th.   Matt comes to us with a master’s degree in human resource management , and with 7 years of experience in payroll and human resources.  His most current position was managing payroll for approximately 1,300 employees, processing new hires, payroll changes, employment verifications, benefits, payroll reconciliation and assistance with human resource issues. We look forward to working with Matt for many years to come.

Retirement

Drew Porvaznik
Drew PorvaznikDrew Porvaznik retired from the math depart this past August.  He worked at the University for 25 years and the Math Department for 17 and will be sorely missed by us all.  He recently wrote to us to let us know how retirement is going.

"Retirement has been a very enjoyable experience filled with many activities though I do miss the people in the department. I am spending more time with family, cousins, friends & have reconnected with friends from grade school, high school, college & from when I worked with Boeing Services.

"My activities include working out at the Carnegie Library of Homestead's Athletic Club, participating in the Library's Conversation Cafe which is held every other Monday morning to discuss current events & taking a class in Tai Chi. I also joined the Squirrel Hill Historical Society & attend their monthly meetings.  When I was a teenager, I used to hang out a lot in Squirrel Hill.  Back in those days, Squirrel Hill had a lot more movie theaters than now.  In college, a lot of my friends lived there."