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August 2018, No 18

Chair’sCorner

Elizabeth

Housworth

I write this knowing it is the lastnewsletter I get to open as Chair.In the fall, our faculty will elect mysuccessor. So even though almost ayear remains in my second term, Iwill take this opportunity to reflectand reminisce about the tough, re-warding, and fun aspects of leadingthe Department of Mathematics.Being chair is tough. It often feelslike I’m taking the SAT or GRE:Three faculty members, Bobby, Joe,and Sue, are qualified to teach courseX. Bobby and Sue prefer to teachat 11:00 am on Tuesday and Thurs-day. Constraints on Bobby’s schedulemake teaching in other time-slots dif-ficult for him. Sue is similarly con-strained but could teach at 1:25 pmon Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fri-days. Joe likes to teach at 8:00 amon Monday, Wednesday, and Fri-day. Students who take course X alsotend to take courses Y and Z, to

which instructors and times have al-ready been set. Y will be offered at11:00 am Tuesdays and Thursdays,while Z will be offered at 1:25 pmon Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fri-days. Students in course X dislike8:00 am courses so much that manywill choose not to take it if we sched-ule it at that time, in which case wemight have to cancel it.Problem: Assign course X an in-structor and time slot so as to max-imize the satisfaction of all parties.Solution: First find a way to shiftthe instructors and times for Y or Z(again) in hopes of making all par-ties reasonably happy.Tough, like I said, but. . .Being chair is rewarding. When Ido find good solutions to problemslike the one above, or find schedulingflexibility that lets colleagues travelto important conferences and work-shops in their areas, or find fundingsources for visitors, conferences, andworkshops here, or figure out howto replace the department’s espressomachine so that departmental math-ematicians have delicious coffee toturn into theorems, thus improvingdepartmental scheduling and teach-ing and outreach and advancement—all this is not just challenging: it is

rewarding! And the challenges them-selves have spurred me to grow per-sonally in rewarding ways—to growmore patient, for instance (thoughsome colleagues may dispute that!).Another example: since I have tomake public presentations severaltimes a year, I am learning the artof public speaking. It still makes menervous—but it no longer makes myvoice quake, and I am even startingto enjoy it, which leads into the nextitem. . .Being chair is fun. I have met manynew and fascinating people acrosscampus and at other institutions inmy capacity as Chair. I have learnedmany things about how other de-partments and universities deal withall kinds of issues. (Such learning of-ten makes me be grateful for beingin this department on this campus!)By handling the department’s tenureand promotion cases, and puttingforward various award nominations,I also get to see first-hand how valuedmy colleagues are by our professionnationally and internationally.And—because it is a key responsi-bility of the Chair, and crucial forthe good humor of the department—I have learned the art of April Fool’sDay jokes.

Indiana University Department of Mathematics Alumni Newsletter

The thing I will miss least: work-ing with the University Architect onfurniture and renovations. The thingI will miss most: the master keythat gives after-hours access to allthe goodies - papers, pens, cookies,sugar, coffee, etc.I am deeply grateful to all our fac-ulty, staff, students and alumni, forall they—you—have done, and con-tinue to do, to make this departmentsuch a wonderful place for workingand learning. I look forward to work-ing with my successor to ensure asmooth transition next summer. ⊗

DepartmentNews

As this is written, the InternationalCongress of Mathematics (ICM) isscheduled for the first week of Au-gust 2018, in Rio de Janeiro. Heldjust once every four years, the ICMis attended by thousands of math-ematicians from around the world,and hosts the presentation of theFields Medal—the most prestigiousaward in Mathematics. The confer-ence schedule also includes a menuof about 150 talks, in almost 20different subject areas. To be in-vited to deliver one of these talksis an honor reserved for the world’stop tier of mathematicians, and sig-nals that one’s research has earnedsubstantial international recognitionand respect. At past ICM’s, threeof our current faculty have beenhonored this way: Professors SergeiPinchuk (1983 and 1998), VladimirTouraev (1990), and Russ Lyons(2006), along with two of our livingemeriti: Ciprian Foias (1970, 1978)and Eric Bedford (1990).

Demeter to speak at ICM

The 2018 ICM will add anotherone of our colleagues to the elitegroup above: Prof. Ciprian Deme-ter is slated to give an invited talkat the ICM in Rio de Janeiro thisAugust, in the Analysis and Opera-tor Algebras Section. He plans to fo-cus on the impact of a Fourier ana-lytic tool, ”decoupling” on other dis-ciplines such as number theory andPDEs. Two of his publications on thetopic, collaborating with Jean Bour-gain of the Institute for AdvancedStudy in Princeton and Larry Guthof MIT, have appeared in the pre-eminent Annals of Mathematics. In2016, their work settled the Vino-gradov Mean Value Conjecture—aresult concerning the number of so-lutions of a system of Diophantineequations. That conjecture appearsto be purely number-theoretic, so itsresolution using analytic tools fromoutside number theory came as acomplete and beautiful surprise.

Ciprian Demeter

Demeter, who grew up in Romania,has not previously attended an ICM;he expects the experience to be ex-citing: “I will be able to attend highquality talks in virtually all major ar-eas of mathematics, and to witnessthe Fields medal ceremony. And thenof course, it’s gonna be in Rio!”

Outstanding Junior Faculty

Nam Le joined our department in2014, and got a well-deserved promo-tion to Associate Professor this year.Along the way, Nam also receivedone of just five Outstanding JuniorFaculty awards given on the en-tire Bloomington Campus this year.That award includes a $15,000 grant,and the campus hosted a special re-ception for all five winners on April16. Nam works in PDE. Collaborat-ing with Ovidiu Savin of ColumbiaUniversity, he was able to settle ques-tions about the global regularity ofMonge-Ampère eigenfunctions thathad been open for 30 years.

Nam Le

Nam is the second Outstanding Ju-nior Faculty awardee from our de-partment in the last three years:Associate Prof. Noah Snyder, whojoined us in 2012 and works at the in-terface of low-dimensional topologyand algebra, received the award in2016.In 2015, incidentally, Snyder was alsorecognized with an NSF CAREERAward for his research on tensorcategories—and for outreach activi-ties he undertook as an NSF Post-doctoral Fellow at Columbia Univer-sity from 2009 to 2012.


Noah Snyder

Prestigious Fellowship forPh.D. Alum Toan Nguyen

One of our graduate alumni was rec-ognized with a prestigious award too:Toan Nguyen, who earned his Ph.D.at IU in 2009 under Prof. KevinZumbrun, won the 2018–19 AMSCentennial Fellowship. The awardincludes a full year of financial sup-port: a $93,000 grant and a $9,300travel expense allowance. It goes toa single early-career mathematicianeach year, based on excellence in re-search. Toan, now an Associate Pro-fessor at Penn State, works in PDE—especially wave and fluid dynamics.Check out his blog, called Snap-shots in Mathematics! at https://nttoan81.wordpress.com.

Davis elected AMS Fellow

The AMS also honored our longtimecolleague Prof. James Davis. Lastfall, Davis was named an AMS Fel-low, a title that “recognizes mem-bers who have made outstandingcontributions to the creation, ex-position, advancement, communica-tion, and utilization of mathemat-ics.” Davis is a topologist, and in se-lecting him as a Fellow, the AMScited his “contributions to geometric

topology especially through surgerytheory, and for exposition.” Jim isthe 16th member of our department(including emeriti) so honored, andwe can truly be proud of that num-ber: Only 25 other math depart-ments have as many AMS Fellows aswe do, and most of those have larger(often much larger) faculties.

Jim Davis

Gordon Award goes to LindaMcKinley

In April, Senior Lecturer LindaMcKinley received the Gordon Fac-ulty Award. That award, namedfor Michael Gordon, a former ViceChancellor and Dean of Students, isgiven by the IUB Dean of Studentsfor outstanding contributions to theDivision of Student Affairs.Linda began her outstanding ser-vice to the Mathematics Depart-ment as our “Basic Skills Coordi-nator” in 1985, and has won nu-merous teaching awards within themath department—including an IUTrustee’s Teaching Award this year.Beyond being a master teacher her-self, however, she oversees much ofthe instruction others provide to stu-dents at the 100-level. She annuallymentors an army of two to threedozen graduate students who teachour basic-skills courses every year.

She also coordinates our courses forfirst-generation college students, andin the last few years, has taken on thetask of teaching our graduate stu-dents how best to carry out their owninstructional duties.Linda has also become the go-to ex-pert for advisors across the Bloom-ington campus. They rely on herexperience and judgement through-out the year to assess and ad-vise students on their readiness forour lower-division math courses. Wehave been truly lucky to have Linda’sconsummate skill and tireless dedi-cation for so many years. She richlydeserved the Gordon Faculty Awardand has our hearty congratulations.

Linda McKinley

IUB Math at Bourbaki

The Séminaire Bourbaki is an emi-nent mathematics seminar that hasmet on a regular basis in Paris since1948. It is, as Wikipedia puts it, “oneof the major institutions of contem-porary mathematics, and a barom-eter of mathematical achievement,fashion, and reputation.” To haveone’s work discussed at one of theseseminars is an enviable distinction,and in the last year or so, no lessthan three of our faculty membershave had that honor:


https://nttoan81.wordpress.com

https://nttoan81.wordpress.com

• In June of 2017, the workof Prof. Ciprian Demeter, JeanBourgain, and Larry Guth on theVinogradov Mean Value Conjec-ture (see above) was presented atBourbaki by Lillian Pierce. Youcan see her lecture at https://bit.ly/2KCxzHZ.

• Prof. David Fisher’s recent break-throughs on the Zimmer conjec-ture (work he did jointly withAaron Brown and Sebastian Hur-tado Salazar; see last year’snewsletter) was presented at theSéminaire Bourbaki in October of2017.

• In this year’s June 23 Bourbakiseminar, Alessio Figalli of ETHZürich highlighted Prof. Nam Le’sjoint work with Ovidiu Savinon the smoothness of the firstMonge-Ampère eigenfunction (seeabove).

The Elegance of Probability

In September, at Tel Aviv Univer-sity, Prof. Russ Lyons was fetedwith a conference honoring his 60thbirthday (see last year’s newslet-ter for details). Lyons reports thatthe conference title The Elegance ofProbability, was aptly reflected inthe talks themselves. The openingspeaker, Benjamin Weiss of HebrewUniversity, gave an unusual intro-duction that culminated in a lovelywarm wish for Russ. You can en-joy Weiss’ introduction, at https://bit.ly/2KEe2qn, where links tothe other conference talks can alsobe found.

Distinguished Visitors.

Finally, our list of departmentalhighlights has to include the talks

given here by some highly accom-plished guests. Our weekly collo-quium features a steady stream ofstimulating visitors, but we alsobring in especially acclaimed visitorsfor select occasions.

• In September, Prof. Sylvia Serfatyof NYU’s Courant Institute gavethe year’s first Sherman MemorialLecture, Microscopic descriptionof Coulomb-type systems. Profes-sor Serfaty, who is French, won theEMS Prize in 2004 for her contri-butions to the Ginzburg-Landautheory, the Henri Poincare Prizein 2012, and the Mergier-BourdeixPrize of the French Academy ofSciences in 2013. As this is writ-ten, she is also slated to give a ple-nary lecture at the August 2018ICM.

Readers of this newsletter willsurely enjoy the interview Ser-faty gave to Quanta Magazinein 2017. Check it out at www.quantamagazine.org/sylvia-serfaty-on-mathematical-truth-and-frustration-20170221.

• In late October, Serfaty’s NYUcolleague Prof. Robert Kohn gaveour second Sherman Lecture,speaking on Prediction withoutprobability: a PDE approach toa two-player game from machinelearning. Kohn has upwards of 150publications over a career span-ning four full decades—and atleast 25 Ph.D students, includingour own Peter Sternberg. Kohngave an ICM plenary lecture in2006, and his many other honorsinclude the 2014 AMS Steele prizeand a Sloan Fellowship.

• The very next week, we hostedour first Distinguished Lecture Se-ries of the year. Prof. Marc Burger

of ETH Zürich (Switzerland’s pre-mier engineering university) gavea series of three lectures on HigherTeichmueller Spaces: Geometric,Arithmetic, and non-Archimedeanaspects. Burger is a wide-ranging,widely-cited mathematician whohas served on the editorial boardsof Inventiones Math. and Com-mentarii Math. Helvetici—two ofthe most prestigious journals inmathematics.

• In early March, Prof. AlexLubotzky of Hebrew Universityin Jerusalem and the Courant In-stitute gave our final ShermanLecture of the year: Highly di-mensional expanders: from Ra-manujan graphs to Ramanujancomplexes. Our invitation toLubotzky was unpredictably well-timed: Just a few weeks prior tohis visit, Lubotzky won the 2018Israel Prize—that country’s high-est cultural honor—for “researchin finite and infinite group the-ory. . . that has had influence inmany fields, most especially ex-pander graphs.” Lubotzky wasonly 23 when he earned his Ph.D,and has also won the Erdös prize(1990), the Sunver Balaguer Prize(1992), the Rothschild Prize inMathematics (2002)—and evenserved for 3 years in the Knesset(Israel’s parliament)!

• Capping off the year’s embarrass-ment of riches, Prof. Amie Wilkin-son visited from the University ofChicago to grace us with a Dis-tinguished Lecture Series on TheErgodic Hypothesis and Beyond.Wilkinson collaborated in solvingthe C1 version of Problem 12 onStephen Smale’s list of mathemat-ical problems for the 21st Cen-tury. One of the world’s foremostexperts on stable ergodicity, she


https://bit.ly/2KCxzHZ

https://bit.ly/2KCxzHZ

https://bit.ly/2KEe2qn

https://bit.ly/2KEe2qn

www.quantamagazine.org/sylvia-serfaty-on-mathematical-truth-and-frustration-20170221





gave an invited talk at the 2010ICM, and won the AMS RuthLyttle Satter Prize in 2011 “forher remarkable contributions tothe field of ergodic theory of par-tially hyperbolic dynamical sys-tems.” Amie is a truly gifted ex-positor who gave us a beautiful se-ries of talks.

Her expository gifts extend be-yond the lecture hall too: lastyear, she published an essay in theNew York Times Science section,memorializing two recently de-ceased colleagues. Her essay, WithSnowflakes and Unicorns, MarinaRatner and Maryam MirzakhaniExplored a Universe in Motion,is well worth searching out onthe NYT website. You can alsohear her discuss the FundamentalTheorem of Calculus on a Scien-tific American podcast: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/amie-wilkinsons-favorite-theorem/.

New Faculty

The mathematical muse is famousfor preferring the young, and a goodmathematics department must striveto maintain a steady influx of early-career talent. We did well on thatfront this year, with two promisingtenure-track hires and a diverse in-coming group of five new Zorn Post-doctoral Fellows.

Tenure TrackAfter years of searching for theright person to inaugurate the Char-lotte Ann Griffin Assistant Profes-sorship, we are delighted to reportthat Prof. Julia Plavnik will be as-suming that title. Originally fromSpain, Prof. Plavnik got her Ph.D.

in 2013 under the direction of So-nia Natale at Argentina’s Universi-dad Nacional de Córdoba. She workson category theory and noncommu-tative algebra, and their applicationsto physics. Her nascent career has al-ready produced an impressive list ofpublications, and she has organizednumerous workshops and AMS spe-cial sessions. She comes to IU afterpostdoctoral stints at the Santaló In-stitute in Buenos Aires and, most re-cently, Texas A&M.

Julia Plavnik

Louis Fan

We are also excited about hiring WaiTong (Louis) Fan, a probabilist com-ing from the University of Wisconsinin Madison. A 2014 Ph.D. from theUniversity of Washington in Seattle,

Fan describes himself as passionatelyinterested in understanding complexsystems that arise in nature and ap-plied sciences: growing tumors, vi-ral infections, cooperation and con-flicts in ecosystems and social sys-tems, pattern formation in reaction-diffusion systems, etc. He developsand analyzes stochastic models thatconnect phenomena across differentscales of observation: from the molec-ular scale to a continuum descrip-tion; from gene level to single-celllevel, tissue level, organelle leveland ecosystem level. Doing so re-quires not only in-depth mathemati-cal analysis of well-designed models,but also collaboration with expertsin other fields and integration of em-pirical data. Fan calls it “both an artand a science.”

He and Plavnik will each arrive withNSF-supported research programs.We look very much forward to wel-coming them this fall.

Zorn PostdocsOur Zorn Postdoctoral Fellowship isa 3-year position targeted at mathe-maticians no more than 2 or 3 yearsinto their careers. Not everyone wehire stays for the full 3-year term, sothe number of openings varies yearto year, but we had five positions tofill this year, and we’re very pleasedwith the talent we were able to re-cruit:

• Andrea Giorgini recently earnedhis Ph.D. at Politecnico di Milano.He has already collaborated withseveral experts in PDE’s (specifi-cally the Cahn-Hilliard equations,and variations on them) as well asnonlocal models of fluid mechan-ics (e.g. material with memory).Andrea will be mentored by Dis-tinguished Prof. Roger Temam.

• Ching-Wei Ho just graduated


https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/amie-wilkinsons-favorite-theorem/





from UCSD, but has already pub-lished a paper in the IU Math-ematics Journal (with RobertStrichartz of Cornell), intriguinglytitled, Energy measures of har-monic functions on the Sierpin-ski gasket. His mentor here will beProf. Hari Bercovici.

• Artem Kotelskiy describes hiswork as being at the crossroadsof symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology. He earnedhis 2018 Ph.D. at Princeton, andProf. Paul Kirk will mentor himat IU.

• Bartosz Langowski got his Ph.Din 2016 at the Wroclaw Universityof Technology. He comes to IU towork with Prof. Ciprian Demeter.His interests focus mainly on realharmonic analysis in the contextof non-trigonometric orthogonalexpansions. He is excited aboutthe chance to work with Deme-ter. . . and perhaps to play a littlebasketball.

• Asilya Suleymanova spent lastyear as a postdoc at the MaxPlanck Institute in Bonn after get-ting her PhD at Humboldt Uni-versity of Berlin in 2017. Shelikes to use the heat kernel tostudy spectral geometry, and willbe mentored here by Prof. ChrisJudge, who has been known toshare that predilection. ⊗

Farewells

Two of our Senior Lecturers—boasting over 20 years of service be-tween them—will move on to newchallenges this fall.

Will Orrick joined us in 2002 as aVisiting Assistant Professor. In 2004,he successfully applied for one of

our newly created Lecturer positions,and since then, has taught thousandsof IU students as one of our mostversatile and valued lecturers. Asidefrom the standard big service coursesM118 (Finite Math) and M119 (In-tro to Calculus) Will has led Statis-tics (K301), Math History (M380),Discrete Math (M380), and honorssections of M118. Outside the class-room, he helped to lead our MathCircles program for kids, and heplayed a key role on the team thatdeveloped our newest math model-ing course, M106: The Mathemat-ics of Decision and Beauty. He wassingle when he came to Blooming-ton, but will be leaving with thewife he met here—IU Ph.D. JayoungNam, soon to be an Assistant Profes-sor in the Business School at South-ern Methodist University in Dallas,which will be their new home—alongwith their Bloomington-born 5-year-old twins.

Will Orrick

Shabnam Kavousian arrived here in2011 to serve as both a lecturerand as our Ed School liaison. Inthe latter capacity, she has been re-sponsible for coordinating the “T”courses we offer for Elementary Edstudents. A Math Ed Ph.D. her-self, Shabnam has not only taught,but also mentored the instructors

of those courses. She has done out-reach to nearby public schools andexperimented with clickers in herown classes. She also developed acurriculum for V118 —a variantof M118 that features some graphtheory—and (like Will) helped withthe creation of M106 and workedwith talented local youngsters inMath Circles. Unlike Will, however,Shabnam won’t be going far. NextFall she starts a new position withSICE—IU’s School of Informaticsand Computer Engineering—here onthe Bloomington campus.

Shabnam Kavousian

Shabnam and Will both broughtcommitment and passion to theirwork here, and we are deeply gratefulfor all they contributed to us duringthese past years. We will miss them,and we wish them the very best ofluck in the next chapter of their ca-reers. ⊗

Remembering Bill

This year marked the passing of abeloved and central figure in the his-tory of our Department: Bill Ziemer.Bill joined the Department in 1961and remained a fixture until his re-tirement in 2003. Few figures, if any,can match his lifetime impact on thisDepartment.


The 1960’s were a time of great ex-pansion and change for the IU MathDepartment and Bill was at the cen-ter of it as soon as he arrived. Alongwith colleague Maynard Thompson,who arrived in 1962, he undertooka drastic overhaul of curriculum anddepartmental protocol that put theDepartment on a steady course forthe future. Then in the 1970’s andagain in the 1980’s, Bill was electedChair of the Department. He alsoserved a stint as Associate Dean ofthe Graduate School.His first term as Chair came at atumultuous time when different fac-tions within the Department wereat odds. Bill was able to makepeace by healing a potentially disas-trous schism—ushering in a harmo-nious atmosphere that has endured.In his second term, he hired manyoutstanding new faculty, and tookthe Department into the computerage by introducing mathematicalword processing software (TeX) andspreadsheets into our daily work-flows.Bill also played a crucial role inthe rise to prominence of our in-house journal, the Indiana Univer-sity Mathematics Journal. Duringhis years as managing editor hegreatly enhanced the refereeing pro-cess, and together with former assis-tant editor Elena Fraboschi, began tocomputerize the journal. The IUMJnow enjoys international prominencethanks in no small part to Bill’s in-novative and steady leadership.As a researcher, Bill had a stellarinternational reputation as an ex-pert in the area of geometric measuretheory (GMT). He got his PhD in1961 under the direction of WendellFleming at Brown University whenGMT was a burgeoning young field,two of its founding developers beingFleming and Herbert Federer, also at

Brown. Bill emerged as a leader inthe application of GMT techniquesto elliptic regularity theory, show-ing that various classes of nonlin-ear partial differential equations pos-sessed smooth solutions. In additionto dozens of highly regarded papersin this area, Bill wrote two graduatetexts on the subject: “Weakly Dif-ferentiable Functions,” which sits onthe shelf of nearly every researcherin regularity theory, and “Fine Reg-ularity of Solutions of Elliptic Dif-ferential Equations,” the latter co-authored with Jan Maly. He alsowrote two analysis textbooks, one atthe introductory undergraduate leveland the other at the introductorygraduate level.

Bill Ziemer (1934–2017) in 1979.

As a teacher, Bill was a master in hiscraft. He constructed lectures metic-ulously, taking the utmost care tostress key points and present illumi-nating examples. Outside the class-room, he was known as a warm men-tor whose door was always open—and whose office hours were alwaysfull. He also directed eleven PhD stu-dents. In recognition of his great con-tributions in the classroom, for hisresearch contributions and for his ad-ministrative skills, he was awardedthe Indiana University DistinguishedFaculty Award in 1996.Bill had numerous interests outside

mathematics. An accomplished ath-lete, he excelled in tennis, squashand racquetball. He was also an avidsailor, frequently spending weekendswith his family on his Thistle-classboat, and racing in local and re-gional competitions. He loved mu-sic and was a talented singer, be-longing to the Bloomington Cham-ber Singers as well as the “Bloom-ingtones,” a barbershop quartet,Bill was a cherished friend and modelcolleague. He is survived by his wifeof over 60 years, Suzanne, his threechildren Bill, Laura and Sarah, andsix grandchildren, to whom he was adevoted and loving husband, fatherand grandfather. ⊗—Peter Sternberg

GraduateProgram

Completing his two-year termas Director of Graduate Studies,Prof. Mike Mandell has guided ourgraduate program through anothersuccessful year, recruiting a goodincoming class, signing off on 34new graduate degrees (11 of themPh.D.’s) and overseeing the progressof our continuing students.

Graduate Director Mike Mandell


Recruiting class

Twenty new students are slated tojoin our program in Fall 2018, witha 50/50 split between domestic andforeign. Four of the domestic stu-dents actually hail from Indiana: oneeach from Ball State, Notre Dame,Rose-Hulman, and IU. The foreignstudents on the other hand, comemostly from the other side of theworld: Three each come from Chinaand South Korea, and one eachfrom Taiwan, Indonesia, India, andGreece. All of them qualified for fullfinancial support and most have fel-lowships for at least one semester.

Current students

• During this past year, Prof. Man-dell’s student CalvinWoo, had thebenefit of a President’s DiversityDissertation Fellowship. Calvinworks in Algebraic K-Theory, Sta-ble Homotopy Theory, and Alge-braic Geometry.

• Zhao Yang, a student ofProf. Kevin Zumbrun, won theCollege of Arts and Sciences Dis-sertation Research Fellowship for2018–19. The award will relieveYang from some teaching respon-sibilities, allowing him to focusmore fully on his research intoApplied Analysis and PDE.

• Our annual William B. Wilcoxaward, recognizing an outstandingcurrent graduate student, wentto Shizuo Zhang, who is hardat work on his dissertation. In-deed, in nominating him for theWilcox award, Zhang’s advisorProf. Valery Lunts wrote: I havenever seen such enthusiasm fromone of our grad students—he canspend literally day and night work-ing on a problem!

• Our best first-year grad stu-dents are recognized each yearby the Williams award, named inmemory of the late Prof. JamesP. Williams, who was particularlydevoted to our graduate program.This year, we had a three-waytie: the Williams award went toDaniel Freese, Sean Sanford, AricWheeler, and Zuyi Zhang.

New Graduates

Many of our newly minted Ph.D.’sfinished with distinction and willstart new positions next fall.

• Our chair, Prof. Elizabeth Hous-worth minted two new Ph.D’s thispast year. Chen Xu, who was co-advised by Walter Professor ofEconomics Todd Walker, workedon Wavelet Analysis of EconomicData and now heads for a jobin industry. Ruiyu Yang was co-advised by Prof. Predrag Radi-vojac of the Computer Sciencedepartment. Yang wrote a thesisentitled Methods for PhylogeneticReconstruction and Their Proper-ties, and has now been hired byJ.P. Morgan in New York City.

• Raghavendra (Raghav) Venkatra-man, advised by Prof. PeterSternberg won the department’sOutstanding Thesis award for hisdissertation “Periodic Orbits tothe Gross-Pitaevskii System andthe Analysis of a Model for Ne-matic Liquid Crystals”. Raghavenjoyed a College of Arts and Sci-ences Dissertation Research Fel-lowship in his final year, allowinghim to focus fully on completinghis dissertation. He put that fel-lowship to good use, winning ourdepartmental award for the year’sbest thesis. Raghav is now headed

for a 3-year postdoc at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh.

Raghavendra Venkatraman

• Prof. Sternberg also advised An-dres Zuñiga, who, like Raghav,wrote a double-barreled the-sis: Heteroclinic Connections forMulti-Well Gradient Systems anda Generalized Least GradientProblem. Andres will continuehis research as a 1-year postdocat Paris Dauphine University inFrance, followed by a 2-year stintat McMaster University.

• Samantha Allen, whose thesis inTopology dealt with the non-orientable four-genus of knots,will take up a postdoc position atDarmouth College in New Hamp-shire. Samantha was advised byProf. Charles Livingston.

• WonTae Hwang and ZhipengLu both wrote theses underProf. Michael Larsen this year.Hwang, who worked on the pos-sible automorphism groups of 2-dimensional abelian varieties, willbe a postdoc at KIAS (Korea In-stitute for Advanced Study). Luwrote his thesis on the number ofcommutators in the general lineargroup GL(n, Fq) that can equal afixed element of determinant 1. Hetoo got a postdoc position for nextyear—in Göttingen, Germany.


• Hongming Nie earned hisPh.D. with Prof. Kevin Pilgrimon iteration at the boundary ofNewton’s maps. After spendingsome time this summer with acollaborator in Chile, he will as-sume a postdoctoral job at He-brew University of Jerusalem.

• Not all our graduates are stay-ing in academia. Justin Cyr vir-tually wrote a double thesis (450pages!) that included work inProbability (Stationary determi-nantal processes in Zd) supervisedby Prof. Russ Lyons), and workin Stochastic PDE’s (Existenceresults for SPDE’s with Levynoise) supervised by Prof. RogerTemam). Justin has taken a jobwith Wells Fargo.

We congratulate all our new mas-ters and doctorates—and take greatpride in their accomplishments. ⊗

UndergradProgram

Undergrad Director Jee Koh

Our undergraduate majors shinedagain this year. Here are a few oftheir most notable achievements:

• Eighteen math majors wereelected to Phi Beta Kappa.

• Our Putnam team—Baptiste De-jean, Andrew Henderson, andManasse Kwete—placed 81st inthe 2017 national Putnam Com-petition.

• Locally, the team of AnthonyConiglio, Baptiste DeJean, andNathanial Lowry earned a first-place finish at this year’s Indi-ana College Mathematics Compe-tition (ICMC) held by the Indianasection of the Mathematical Asso-ciation of America (MAA). Start-ing in 2010, we have won ICMCevery year that we competed.

• The team ofNanjie Chen, Alexan-dra Embry, and Xutao Hu earneda strong score to place 21st among52 competing teams from Indi-ana, Michigan, and Illinois. (Thisyear was a “trisection” meetingof the MAA, drawing faculty andstudents from these neighboringstates too.)

• Math majors Jeffrey Ting andRunxia Zhao teamed up reach thesemi-final round of the 2018 So-ciety of Actuaries’ (SOA) CaseCompetition (see Kevin Pilgrim’saccount in “Math Career News”).

• Juniors Anthony Coniglio andAlexandra Embry each presentedtheir REU research work inthe Rose-Hullman UndergraduateMath Conference (special thanksto Lecturer James Hendricksonfor driving them there).

Several of our graduating seniors willnow head to graduate programs:

• Nanjie Chen (Math BS) will starta graduate program in Math atBoston University. Baptiste De-jean, who earned his Math BS in

just three years, will stay at IUfor one more year to complete hisMath MA degree.

• Thomas Frye, an Econ minor, willseek his Ph.D. in Economics atFlorida State University.

• Andrew Henderson (treasurer ofour math club and president ofthe IU Physics club (he double-majored in physics) heads for LawSchool at Notre Dame in the fall.

• The Math Club president was Jor-dan Lenchitz (Math BA, FrenchBA, and Music BM). He will pur-sue a Ph.D. in Music Theory atFlorida State University.

Finally, I want thank all faculty,staff, and students who made mywork as Director of UndergraduateStudies easier and enjoyable thesepast two years. I now hand the jobover to Prof. Ayelet Lindenstrauss,who is off to a running start. Ourundergraduate program is sure to ex-tend its strong record under her lead-ership. ⊗—Jee Koh

Careers

Kevin Pilgrim, Alumni/Career Liaison


Alumni Giving Back

After Dr. Gail Homan Adele (B.A.’62, M.A. ’63) earned her Ph.D.in Math at Michigan State Univer-sity in 1968, she enjoyed a long ca-reer at Western Washington Univer-sity and at the University of Idaho,teaching and mentoring math stu-dents over several decades. Inspiredby the strong foundation and encour-agement she got at IU, Dr. Adele hasnow endowed the Gail Homan AdeleMathematics Scholarship to supportnew generations of women in Math-ematics. Renewable for up to threeyears, it offers support to one sopho-more, one junior, and one senior eachyear in the form of a generous mone-tary grant. This year’s recipients arelisted with the other 2018 undergrad-uate award winners toward the endof this newsletter.Over the past year, our students ben-efited from the time and energy ofseveral other alumni too, as their sto-ries illuminate possible career pathsafter graduation:Dionissi Aliprantis ’04 is a ResearchEconomist at the Federal ReserveBank of Cleveland. During a virtualvisit via Skype, he shared a rich col-lection of stories related to his re-search, from evaluating the effective-ness of water delivery programs inHaiti, to gun violence in Cleveland.Local resident (and my new next-door neighbor) Joshua Cisney ’11 is aproject developer for Renewable En-ergy at local provider Hoosier En-ergy. His answer to a student’s ques-tion about his typical day was won-derful: Last week I wrote up legal con-tracts, analyzed models using com-plex spreadsheets—and put on myboots and jeans to go into the field.Neuroscientist Garry Cooper ’07(pictured below) is the CEO ofChicago-based IT startup Rheaply,

Inc. He met with a diverse group ofstudents, both graduate and under-graduate, from a variety of majorsand programs. He described the com-plexity of finding the right graduateprogram, the pitfalls of succeedingtoo well in your lab (They want youto stay!), the excitement of his doc-toral research into Alzheimer’s, andthe challenges of running a startupcompany. Rheaply, recently featuredin Nature, provides IT infrastructurefor research networks to buy, sell,trade, donate, and rent resources.

Garry Cooper, founder of Rheaply

Daniel Oates ’10 works as a For-eign Affairs Officer at U.S. Depart-ment of State, and returned to cam-pus with other STEM-major alumsfor a well-attended forum hosted bythe College’s Walter Center for Ca-reer Achievement.Thomas Whalen ’89, an Economistfor the Antitrust Division at theUS Department of Justice, describedhow his math training prepared himto dive in and learn new things earlyin his career.Do you have a story? Our students and faculty would love to hear from you! Visit our "share your story" por-tal at https://math.indiana.edu/ forms/alumni-stories.html

Math career newsOur student-led active Actuary Clubgot a valuable boost this year fromEdward Robbins, retired formerpresident of the Society of Actuar-

ies (SOA). In the late fall, Mr. Rob-bins presented a fascinating intro-duction to the profession, and sometypical actuarial problems. In thespring, working with Prof. RussellLyons, he helped mentor studentsJeffrey Ting and Runxia Zhao asthey prepared a report for entry intothe 2018 SOA Case Competition.The SOA received 70 unique submis-sions from universities all over theworld, including the U.S, Canada,and many Asia/Pacific and Euro-pean countries. Teams were taskedwith analyzing the future solvency ofa long-term health care program ina fictitious small nation. UndergradsTing and Zhao did extremely wellin the competition, earning semi-finalist honors with a report thatthe SOA judges said “was extremelywell-done and brought to light manyimportant ideas and analyses.”Supported last fall (as in past years)by a donation from alumnus AnneKoehler (B.A. ’62, M.A. ’63, Ph.D.’68), five Math majors joined a con-tingent of Econ students—and Eco-nomics Department chair GerhardGlomm—for the 2017 Fall Careers inEcon & Math field-trip to St. Louis.Lukas Graham, Li Liu, ForsythiaPezel, Jue Wang, and Duohong Xianetworked with alumni at a recep-tion at the St. Louis Federal Re-serve Bank, attended panel discus-sions at the Brown Shoe Companyand at Buckingham Financial, andtook in the Black Repertory The-atre’s production of "Dot", by Col-man Domingo, at the Edison The-ater. Their itinerary also squeezed ina visit to the Cahokia Mounds StateHistoric and UNESCO World Her-itage site just east of the Mississippi,in Illinois.Another trip is planned for Fall 2018.Chicago, here we come!Are you curious about what our


https://math.indiana.edu/forms/alumni-stories.html

https://math.indiana.edu/forms/alumni-stories.html

math majors do after graduation?Statistics about their career pathsare now available online at https://careers.college.indiana.edu/career-outcomes/. Though small,the Mathematics dataset is strikingfor the large proportion of studentsheading to graduate programs andthe breadth of the industries hiringmath majors. ⊗

—Kevin Pilgrim

DirectedReading

In Fall 2015, Zorn Postdocs Cor-rin Clarkson and Jeffrey Meier pro-posed a Directed Reading Program(DRP) for IU math majors. Theidea: To pair math-hungry under-grads with graduate students eagerto share expertise. The Math De-partment would introduce the part-ners to each other, who would thenchoose and study a topic of interesttogether, with guidance provided bythe graduate partner.Clarkson and Meier had seen sim-ilar programs at other universi-ties, and Department Chair Eliza-beth Housworth embraced their pro-posal. Our department already hadan established summer program offaculty-supervised research for un-dergrads, but, as Housworth putsit, “. . . another important tool is theability to learn mathematics throughbooks and papers, and this programhelps to teach those skills.” She in-centivized participants with grantsto five grad student mentors, and byproviding topical books for their un-dergraduate mentees. So began ourDRP.During the semester-long program,

students and their mentors meet foran hour each week. The undergrad-uates are expected to spend at leastfour additional hours weekly engag-ing with their topic, and to give a15-minute end-of-semester talk to ageneral audience from the depart-ment. After 3 years, the programhas proven to be a winner. About adozen graduate students and equallymany undergrads apply each termfor the five available pairings, andthe program now has an official fac-ulty advisor in Rothrock LecturerVladimir Eiderman.

Vladimir Eiderman

Eiderman credits Corrin Clarksonfor getting the program off to astrong start. She moved on whenher postdoc ended, but her work hasbeen ably continued by graduate stu-dent Josh Edge under Eiderman’sguidance. Next semester, Josh willbe aided by fellow grad student Dy-lan Spence.Edge emcee’d the most recentevening of final presentations, whichtook place on April 23, 2018, andmade full use of the 50-seat class-room where it opened with free pizzaand breadsticks.The room was buzzing with conver-sation before the first of the fivespeakers took the podium. The talksthemselves ranged from pure num-ber theory to the financial math,

and the presenters had all clearly ex-plored deeply into their topic. Eachspoke with obvious enthusiasm forwhat they had learned, and all thetalks seemed well-organized, well-rehearsed, and made their pointswithout going overtime, which—asanyone who has given a short mathtalk knows—is tough to do. Whenthe evening ended, it had made itsown point very clear: the DirectedReading Program is a great idea and,for students with initiative and am-bition, an elective gem of our under-grad program.

DIRECTEDREADING PROGRAM PRESENTATIONS WHEN

Monday April 23 6:30pm – 8:00pm

WHERE

Swain East 240

INTERESTED FOR NEXT YEAR? GO TO THE DIRECTED READING PROGRAM WEBSITE:

http://www.indiana.edu/~mathdrp/

SPEAKERS

ALEXANDRA EMBRY Introduction to Ciphers

XUAN LI Some Theorems in

Elementary Number

Theory

NATHANIAL LOWRY A Tour of Algebraic

Geometry

ELIO SENI An Interpretation of

Black-Scholes Formula

by Change of Measure

DEREK WENNING Having FUN with

FUNctional Analysis

FOOD AND DRINK WILL BE PROVIDED.

This year’s DRP Program Flyer

AwardsOn April 27, we held our annualawards ceremony, followed by a re-ception for the recipients and theirfamilies. We’re proud to list the win-ners here:

Undergraduate Awards

Thelma Abell Prize (Recognizingstudents interested in teaching who


https://careers.college.indiana.edu/career-outcomes/



have high scholastic merit and finan-cial need)

• Laekin Allen

• Seth Lehman

• Marissa Moon

• Trenton Moorhead

• Jacquelyn Parkes

Abell winners Lehman, Allen, andMoorhead

Gail Homan Adele Scholarship(Supports women and other under-represented groups)

• Kelli Michaels

• Hannah Sakaluk

• Elizabeth Saunders

Ciprian Foias Prize (Givento an outstanding math major):

Gavin Whelan

Ruth E. Gilliatt ScholarshipAlexandra Embry and Leah Schiefer

Trula Sidwell Hardy Scholar-ship

Bharat Gummalla

Cora B. Hennel Scholarship(For worthy students demonstratinghigh ability)

• Matthew Denney

• Thomas Frye

• Nathanial Lowry

• Thomas Sweeney

Jeffrey & Deborah KingScholarship

Chase Abram and Julian Gass

Rainard Benton Robbins Prize(For a student who shows promise)

Baptiste Dejean

Shabani Book Fellowship (Sup-ports Africans, African-Americans,or International math majors)

Marc Enokou

Donald Otto Koehler Schol-arship

Gavin Whelan

Gavin Whelan

Marie S. Wilcox Scholarship

• Nanjie Chen

• Anthony Coniglio

• Baptiste Dejean

• Miriam Mingyue Hu

• Xuan Li

• Emma McCardwell

• Yanting Wan

Willam P. Ziemer FundTimothy Vincent

M118 Undergraduate InternAward

Andrew Henderson

Graduate Awards

Hazel King Thompson Fellow-ship:Hayley Bertrand, Montana Earle,Joshua Edge, Patrick Haggerty,Zachery Lindsey, Didac Martinez-Granado, Michael Novack, RobertRose, Maxime Scott, Kursat Sozer,Raghavendra Venkatraman, CalvinWoo, Chen Xu, Zhao Yang

College of Arts and SciencesFellowship:Hayley Bertrand, Christopher Bon-nesen, Christian Cofoid, MontanaEarle, Daniel Freese, Akash Jena,Hongki Jung, Somi Kang, NoahKaufmann, Pavel Kovalev, PeterLamm, Nguyet Le, Aolong Li, PeterMarek, Vinh Nguyen, Noah Riggen-bach, Mark Ronnenberg, SamanwitaSamal, Kai Smith, Aric Wheeler,Zuyi Zhang

Robert E. Weber Award:Zuyi Zhang

James P. Williams Award:Daniel Freese, Sean Sanford, AricWheeler, Zuyi Zhang


Robert K. Meyer Fellowship(For a student in logic demonstratingthe potential to make major break-throughs):

Praveen Narayanan

Joseph & Frances Swain Fel-lowship:

Samantha Allen

William B. Wilcox Award (Foran outstanding student):

Shizhuo Zhang

Glenn Schober Travel Awards:Sanjana Agarwal, Seok Hyun Byun,Ji Hoon Chun, Aranya Lahiri, DamiLee, Geunho Lim, Michael Novack,Emily Rudman, Brady Thompson,Chen Xu, Shizhuo Zhang

College of Arts and SciencesTravel Award

Hongming Nie

Rothrock Teaching Award:Vinicius Ambrosi, Yining Cao,Patrick Chu, Daniel Condon, Ge-unho Lim, Dylan Spence, Ryan Stees

Outstanding Thesis AwardRaghavendra Venkatraman

President’s Diversity Disserta-tion Fellowship

Calvin Woo

College of Arts and SciencesDissertation Research Fellow-ship

Raghavendra Venkatraman

Faculty Awards

Rothrock Faculty TeachingAward

Kent Orr

Gordon Faculty Award (Givenby the Dean of Students)

Linda McKinley

IU Trustee’s Teaching Awards

Nam Le, Linda McKinley, PeterSternberg

Distinguished DepartmentalService Award

Will Orrick

Zorn Postdoc Teaching AwardCarmen Rovi

Acknowledgements

This newsletter is a department-wideeffort. Thanks to all the colleagueswho supplied ideas, facts, and evenwrote articles for it—and to Eliza-beth Smith for some of the photos.

—Bruce Solomon, Associate Chair

m Do you prefer to read thisNewsletter on a computer, tablet,or smartphone? You can viewor download it in PDF for-mat at https://math.indiana.edu/documents/newsletters/AlumniNewsletter2018.pdf m


https://math.indiana.edu/documents/newsletters/AlumniNewsletter2018.pdf



The Department of Mathematics is grateful for all of the support it receives from its generousdonors. The Department has several funds to which you can give. Donations may be made using theattached Indiana University Foundation Donation Form or through About -> Alumni+Giving atm http://www.math.indiana.edu/

• Mathematics Enrichment Fund (I380008688): Gifts to this fund will be used for the generalsupport of the Mathematics Department, in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• William P. Ziemer Student Assistance Fund (P370013557): Gifts to this endowment are used tosupport both undergraduate and graduate students in the department.

• Glenn Schober Memorial Fellowship Fund (I380008692): Gifts to this fund support outstandingadvanced graduate students, including travel and registration fees for national meetings.

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