Dear Friends of the
Department of Mathematics:
GREETINGS and Best Wishes
from the faculty, students, and staff of the Mathematics
Department. We are confident that this
annual letter finds you doing well in all aspects of your life. I am writing
you, a member of the extended mathematics department, to provide an update of
recent and upcoming activities.
The Fiscal Year 2004 is
turning out to be an outstanding year for the Department of Mathematics in its
academic missions. Our Department underwent, in Fall,
the 7-year review (for accreditation). The Review Committee just submitted an
extremely positive report and we are understandably very happy about the report.
This is a clear barometer of the excellent job the faculty, students, and staff are doing in fulfilling the missions of the department.
Let me begin by offering you just a few highlights from the department's
instructional and research activities.
Instruction: In keeping up with our
instructional mission, the department teaches over 10,000 students per year
covering the full range of undergraduate and graduate courses. Last year we
graduated 33 undergraduate
mathematics majors, 4 Masters, and
6 PhDs. The department prides itself
in a learning-centered approach to the instruction of individual students in
small classes. The development of an innovative curriculum that serves the needs
of students is the department's utmost goal. We are currently revising the
Calculus course to meet the needs and challenges of the 21st century.
Several interdisciplinary courses are being taught, for example, Mathematics of
Option Pricing, and Mathematics of Cardiology (seminar course). We hired a faculty member jointly with
the Engineering Faculty, and another one with specialty in image processing. Our
commitment to teaching is reflected in the awards our faculty members and TAs
have won:
Professor David Benson won,
in 2003, a Special Sandy Beaver Award for Excellence in
Teaching.
Instructor Maurice Hendon
won the 2003 departmental award of Outstanding
Instructor.
Each of the Teaching
Assistants Mr. Kenny Little and Mr. Jie Zhou, has won an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
for 2002-2003.
The graduate student Mr.
Moustapha Pemy was awarded
the fourth William Armour Wills Memorial
Scholarship.
The graduate student Mr.
Chad Mullikin was awarded the third B. J. Ball
Memorial Scholarship.
The undergraduate students
Zachary Cochran, Zachary Michaels, and Dean Tolla
won the
2003 Charles M. Strahan Award for the Outstanding
Junior Mathematics Major.
The John Hollingsworth
Award was presented to the undergraduates Jonathan Sauls, Qixing Zheng, Josh Weddle, Idris Woday, and Kara Mussatt.
The recent and upcoming
activities of the mathematics club are presented on the club's web page at
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~mathclub/. The club's President and student members
extend a warm invitation for you to join in their monthly activities. As in the
past, we would appreciate hearing from you concerning any co-op opportunities,
internships, or summer job prospects for our undergraduates. We are blessed with
many talented undergraduate and graduate students who continue to be a great
source of pride; they offer us comfort about the future of mathematics.
Research: The department enjoyed a
year of robust research activities. Twenty-seven faculty members received
external research grant funding totaling $1,097,880 during the 2002-2003 academic
year. The research awards garnered by 27 out of a total of 38 faculty members
are evidence of the research prominence of the department in several areas
including algebra, algebraic geometry, applied mathematics, number theory, and
representation theory. The presentation of invited lectures by several of our
research active faculty in conferences around the globe clearly indicates the
international recognition of our faculty members. The faculty members,
postdoctoral associates, and students of the department published over 54
research articles in various international mathematics journals during
2002-2003. Our department is one of the fortunate and deserving mathematics
departments in the country to receive the NSF's VIGRE (Vertical Integration of
Research and Education) in the amount of $509,667 per year for five years. This grant supports around 20
undergraduate students for summer research projects in addition to four regular
postdoctoral associates and ten graduate students per year for five years. To
these, I add the following awards and recognitions:
Professor Valery Alexeev becomes our new and the second
Distinguished Research Professor in the Department. [One of the other two
Distinguished Research Professors retired last summer and the other left for a
position in
Professor Dave Benson
received the 2004 Lamar Dodd Research Award from the UGA Research
Foundation.
Professors Ming-jun Lai and Paul Wenston each won a 2003 Creative
Research Medal presented by the UGA Research
Foundation.
Professor Dino Lorenzini has
won a 2004 Creative Research Medal awarded by the UGA Research
Foundation.
The graduate students Daniele Arcara and Graham Mathews
have won the Graduate School’s Final Year Awards.
The success of the
department's postdoctoral program can be gauged by the fact that 4 of the
current eleven postdoctoral fellows received external research grants during the
past year. We can keep on bragging; but, you get the picture of how proud we are
of our faculty members, the postdoctoral associates, and the graduate and
undergraduate students.
We also involve our
undergraduates in research. We successfully ran two Research
Experience for Undergraduates programs last summer (and two are planned
for this year also). These
Promotions and
appointments: Professor Dan Nakano was
promoted to Full Professor rank. Professor Shuzhou Wang who was promoted last
year to the rank of Associate Professor, was given
tenure this year. We have two new faculty members, Professors Alex Petukhov and
Andrew Sornborger who joined us in Fall 2003. We are actively hiring six new postdoctoral
associates for 2004 Fall.
Professor Tom Gard retired at the end of May 2003 and Professor Frank
Lether retired at the end of summer 2003. Both of them
were given the Emeritus status in the department. It was very nice to see many
of you, in April 2003, at the 9th Annual Cantrell Lectures delivered
by Professor Joan Birman of
The economic woes affecting
our nation and the state budget cuts are hurting our department in many ways. We
lost (for ever) 6.5 faculty positions to the state budget cuts in the last two
years. The Department of Mathematics was the hardest hit among 33 departments
and institutes in the
We are always eager to see
you in the department; please visit us as often as you can. We are just an
Internet connection away (http://www.math.uga.edu) from you. Also please
register as alumni on our home page at http://www.math.uga.edu/~curr/alum.html.
On behalf of the faculty members, students, and staff of the Department of
Mathematics I wish you the best until our curves intersect.
Best regards,
Dan Kannan, Head