News and Announcements

November 15, 2009
RIPS Students Wins Award at Minority Student Conference

The ninth annual Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) was recently held in Phoenix. RIPS 2009 participant Benjamin Sanchez-Lengeling (Placental Analytics team) was one of the two winners of the Oral Presentation Award in Physical Sciences and Mathematics category. He credits RIPS with helping him develop confidence and an accessible, professional style. The ABRCMS is the largest, professional conference for biomedical and behavior students, including mathematics.

November 12, 2009
Tenenbaum Receives Award from APA

Professor Josh Tenenbaum (MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, organizer of “Mathematics of the Mind” summer school 2007) has been recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA). Tenenbaum received the 2008 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology for cognition and human learning. In addition, Tenenbaum gave invited keynote or plenary talks at a number of major conferences on the topic of the summer school, including most recently the 2009 Computational and Neural Systems Conference and the 2009 Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.

October 12, 2009
Public Lecture on Voting Paradoxes

Tel Aviv University Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Noga Alon presented a stimulating public lecture entitled “The Combinatorics of Voting Paradoxes” on October 5. He described complex and interesting mathematical problems that arise in the theory of Social Choice which show that the simple process of voting leads to strikingly counter-intuitive paradoxes. Dr. Alon has published more than 400 research papers, mostly in combinatorics and in theoretical computer science, and has received numerous awards and recognition for his work. The lecture was part of the IPAM workshop “Probabilistic Techniques and Applications" and was co-sponsored by UCLA’s math and computer science departments. About 260 members of the UCLA/IPAM community attended the lecture and reception.

Video of the public lecture can be viewed online here. Real Audio player is required to see the video and can be downloaded here.

September 4, 2009
IPAM Welcomes Amber Puha, Associate Director

On September 1, 2009, CSU San Marcos mathematics professor Amber Puha began a two-year term as IPAM Associate Director. Professor Puha completed her PhD in mathematics at UCLA with Thomas Liggett as her advisor. Her research focuses on probability theory and stochastic processes, stochastic networks, and interacting particle systems. She was recently the recipient of a National Security Agency Young Investigators Grant and the Best Publication Award from the Applied Probability Society. She is also an avid surfer and serves as the advisor for the CSUSM surf team. Amber is excited for the opportunity to work and serve in IPAM’s research oriented environment.

September 2, 2009
First Annual IPAM Newsletter Available

IPAM's first annual newsletter is available in PDF or print. It includes feature articles on the research of mathematician Emmanual Candes and placental pathologist Carolyn Salafia, a story from Alexandre Tkatchenko on the impact of an IPAM program on his career, and information on exciting upcoming programs and activities. To receive a printed copy, please complete this form: Annual Newsletter Form

August 9, 2009
RIPS Student Recognized at MathFest

Former RIPS student Miklos Racz from Budapest University of Technology and Economics won an award from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for his presentation, "Competing Prices: Analyzing a Stochastic Interacting Particle System," at the 2009 MathFest in Portland, Oregon. Miklos was a member of the Amgen team during RIPS 2008.

June 19, 2009
NEH Grant for Digital Humanities

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently announced five new awards from their Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program. Timothy Tangherlini, UCLA professor and head of the Scandinavian Section in the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, is one of the recipients. He will direct the project “Network Analysis for the Humanities,” which includes support for a ten-day workshop and follow-up symposium for humanities faculty members and advanced graduate students on the use of large-scale network analysis for humanities topics and questions. IPAM will serve as host and cosponsor for the 10-day workshop, to be held in summer 2010.

May 28, 2009
Eight Postdocs Appointed through IPAM

Along with the other NSF Math Science Institutes, IPAM received a supplement from NSF to create postdoc positions for recent math PhDs struggling to find academic jobs in the weak economy. IPAM reviewed over 400 applications from new and recent PhDs for positions in a research group in academia, industry or a government laboratory, and received a huge response to its search for mentors. The topics and pairings cross disciplines and schools; for example, a math PhD will work with a medical doctor on analyzing placental geometry. UCLA Today covered the NSF Math Institutes’ postdoc program in its May 28, 2009 issue: http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/new-fellowships-cushion-math-s-93277.aspx. The national press release is available here.

A complete list of IPAM postdocs, mentors and projects follow:

May 14, 2009
Feature Article in The Notices Acknowledges IPAM

The May 2009 issue (Volume 56, Issue 05) of The Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) features an article by Walter Willinger, David Alderson and John Doyle entitled “Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential.” The authors describe graph theoretic models of the internet and how real data from the internet should be properly used in formulating these models. They provide a critical analysis of existing models and argue that the internet is not properly modeled by a scale-free network. Willinger and Doyle were organizers and senior participants of IPAM’s Internet Multi-Resolution Analysis Program in fall 2008; Alderson was an organizer for the third workshop in the series. They explicitly acknowledge the MRA program in their article.

May 11, 2009
2009 SIAM Fellows include Caflisch, Osher

On May 1, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) announced the SIAM Fellows Class of 2009 and the inauguration of the SIAM Fellows Program. The Fellowship is an honorific designation conferred on members distinguished for their outstanding contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. SIAM will recognize the 183 fellows during the 2009 SIAM Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. The 2009 SIAM fellows include Russ Caflisch, IPAM’s director since 2008, and Stan Osher, IPAM’s Director of Special Projects since 2001. Also honored are over 35 IPAM board members, workshop speakers and organizers, and long program participants. Congratulations to all!

May 10, 2009
Jerome Darbon Receives Chancellor’s Award

Jerome Darbon, organizer and speaker for the IPAM workshop “Graph Cuts” held in 2008, was among five UCLA postdocs selected to receive the Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research - a $4,000 prize - for his research accomplishments that show clear potential to have meaningful and enduring implications in mathematics. The award was funded by the Office of the Chancellor, the Graduate Division, The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, UCLA College of Letters & Science and the Office of Research. The nominees were honored at the 2009 Postdoctoral Scholars Reception on March 10, 2009. Congratulations!

May 5, 2009
IPAM Welcomes New Board Members
IPAM is pleased to announce the new members of both its Board of Trustees and its Science Advisory Board.                                                                      

New Science Advisory Board members include Richard Schwartz, Professor of Mathematics at Brown, Stephen Wright, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Elizabeth Thompson, Statistics Professor at the University of Washington, Claire Tomlin, Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley, Jill Mesirov from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Matt Hastings of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

All of us at IPAM greatly appreciate their willingness to serve as Board members and the time and energy that they will give to the Boards.

May 1, 2009
Ken Golden Gives Lecture on Mathematics and Sea Ice
On April 29, 2009, Utah professor of mathematics Kenneth Golden gave the lecture “Climate Change and the Mathematics of Sea Ice” to an audience of UCLA students, professors and members of the public. He presented the recent advances in using mathematics to understand sea ice as agents of climate change. Dr. Golden has journeyed on five Antarctic and five Arctic expeditions to study sea ice. His research has been presented several times to the US Congress and has been covered extensively by the media. Dr. Golden received his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the Courant Institute of NYU in 1984. This lecture, held during the IPAM workshop "Flows and Networks in Complex Media,” was cosponsored by IoE, JIFRESSE, IGPP, the Department of Mathematics, and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

Video of the public lecture can be seen online here. Real Audio player is required to see the video and can be downloaded here.

April 28, 2009
Tony Chan Appointed President of HKUST
Tony Chan has been appointed the next president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) for a five-year term, effective September 1, 2009. A UCLA professor of mathematics since 1986, Chan was co-founder of IPAM with Mark Green and Eitan Tadmor, IPAM Director from 2000-2001, and dean of the Division of Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Science from 2001 to 2006. In October 2006, Chan took a leave from his faculty position at UCLA to become the NSF assistant director in charge of its Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, the largest directorate at NSF.

April 15, 2009
Jones and Osher to give Plenary Addresses at ICM 2010
The Organizing Committee of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) has invited Stan Osher and Peter Jones to each give a one-hour Plenary Addresses at ICM 2010 to be held in Hyderabad, India on August 19-27, 2010. The ICM is held every four years. It is a major scientific event, bringing together mathematicians from all over the world and demonstrating the vital role that mathematics play in our society. Twenty plenary lectures will be offered at ICM 2010.

Peter Jones, mathematics professor at Yale, has served on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board since 2000 and has been an organizer and speaker for several IPAM programs. Stan Osher, UCLA professor of mathematics, is IPAM’s Director of Special Projects. Congratulations to them both for this well-deserved honor!

March 20, 2009
IPAM’s Jichun Li Receives Award
IPAM’s Associate Director Jichun Li, who is a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, recently was chosen to receive the UNLV Barrick Scholar Award. The prestigious Barrick Scholar Awards are designed to recognize faculty members who have established a record of distinguished research or have demonstrated excellence in the area of creative activity. It is awarded annually to just two or three faculty members with less than 10 years of service in an academic environment. Dr. Li joined the faculty of UNLV in 2000 as an assistant professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006. He has served as IPAM associate director since August 2008 while taking a leave of absence from his university.

March 1, 2009
Andrea Bertozzi to Give Sonia Kovalevsky lecture
Andrea Bertozzi, UCLA professor of mathematics and frequent IPAM organizer and speaker, was chosen to give the Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture at the 2009 annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

The Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM) and SIAM established the annual Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture to highlight significant contributions of women to applied or computational mathematics. The lectureship may be awarded to anyone in the scientific or engineering community whose work highlights the achievements of women in applied or computational mathematics.

Sonia Kovalevsky (1850-1891) was the most widely known Russian mathematician of the late 19th century. In 1874, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Gottingen and was appointed lecturer at the University of Stockholm in 1883. Kovalevsky did her most important work in the theory of differential equations.

March 1, 2009
Tangherlini (Search Engines) receives Digital Innovation Fellowship
Timothy Tangherlini, professor and head of the Scandinavian Section in the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, UCLA, has been selected by the American Council of Learned Societies for a Digital Innovation Fellowship. He will apply some of the analysis techniques he learned during IPAM’s Search Engines program (2007) to the giant Danish folklore corpus. His project focuses on the Evald Tang Kristensen collection, the world’s largest folklore collection produced by an individual. He provides a rich navigational interface that allows users to make use of advanced GIS, statistical learning and text corpus visualization tools. During the fellowship, he will incorporate more materials into the database, effectively covering the entire collection; and increase the number of study tools to include more advanced GIS functions; statistical learners; and text-corpus visualization.

February 20, 2009
Congratulations to PECASE Winners
Twenty young scientists from among those taking part in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) have received an additional distinction as winners of Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE program recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. This Presidential Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. Among the winners are several IPAM participants, speakers, and organizers:

Alex Gamburd (UC Santa Cruz) was a speaker for Automorphic Forms, Group Theory and Graph Expansion (2004) and an organizer for Expander Graphs (2008)

Michael Elowitz (Caltech) was a speaker for Sequence Analysis Toward System Biology (2006)

Nick Feamster (Georgia Tech) was a speaker at two Internet Multi-Resolution Analysis workshops (2008)

February 19, 2009
Friends of IPAM among 2009 Sloan Fellows
Congratulations to the following “friends of IPAM” who are among the 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Fellows:

James Lee (University of Washington) participated in Search Engines (2007) and was a speaker at Metric Geometry (2009)

Morley Mao (University of Michigan) was an organizer and speaker for Multiscale Representation, Analysis and Modeling of Internet Data and Measurements (2008)

Wotao Yin (Rice University) was a participant of Random Shapes (2007) and a speaker at the workshops Numerical Tools and Fast Algorithms for Massive Data Mining, Search Engines and Applications (2007) and Graph Cuts (2008)

Chiu-Yen Kao (Ohio State) served as a RIPS faculty mentor (2004) and speaker at Numerics and Dynamics for Optimal Transport (2008)

Two-year Sloan fellowships are awarded yearly to 118 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

February 8, 2009
Special Issue of NeuroImage results from IPAM Summer School
A special issue of NeuroImage, entitled “Mathematics in Brain Imaging,” was published in February 2009. The issue consists of 18 invited papers from some of the finest research groups in brain imaging today. This project grew out of the “Mathematics in Brain Imaging” summer school held at IPAM in July 2008, which was organized by the guest editors of this special issue, including Dr. Paul Thompson (UCLA, Neurology), Michael Miller (Johns Hopkins, CIS), Russell Poldrack (UCLA, Psychology), Thomas Nichols (Oxford, GSK Clinical Imaging Centre), Jonathan Taylor (Stanford, Statistics), and Keith Worsley (Chicago, Statistics). They selected a representative set of participants to contribute reviews of their work on mathematics in brain mapping.

The issue covers many of the mathematical techniques used in structural and functional neuroimaging studies, including diffusion tensor imaging, and highlight a diverse array of mathematical and statistical approaches: state-of-the-art algorithms for computational anatomy and algorithms for meta-analysis of functional images, and methods to relate imaging information to genetics. Also described are cutting-edge methods for image registration and segmentation—indispensable steps in all brain image analyses.

February 6, 2009
Estrin Receives Multiple Honors
Professor Deborah Estrin (joint appointments in computer science and electrical engineering, UCLA) recently received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for the pioneering design and application of heterogeneous wireless sensing systems for environmental monitoring. Estrin served on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board and was a speaker and organizer for several IPAM programs. She holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).

November 19, 2008
Terence Tao and Joseph Teran named among "50 Best Brains in Science" by DISCOVER
In the December 2008 Discover special issue "The Discover 50 Best Brains in Science 2008", Terence Tao and Joseph Teran (both UCLA math professors) were listed in the "20 Best Scientists Under 40". A member of IPAM's Science Advisory Board, Tao is well known for his contributions across mathematical fields and his breakthrough research in compressed sensing. Teran was a faculty mentor in IPAM's 2005 RIPS program before coming to UCLA, and he was the main organizer of the 2008 workshop "Scientific Computing Applications in Surgical Simulation of Soft Tissues".

More information can be found on the Discover special issue .

November 4, 2008
MIT’s David Clark Presents Lecture on Internet Design
On November 3, David Clark, Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, presented the IPAM public lecture "The Internets We Did Not Build" to an audience of over 300. The lecture was cosponsored by The Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) and the Computer Science Department. Dr. Clark identified a few of the alternate designs of the internet, described how the network they would induce would differ from what we see today, and illustrated both the nature of the design process and the variation in outcomes. Since the mid 70s, Dr. David Clark has been leading the development of the Internet; from 1981-1989 he acted as Chief Protocol Architect in this development, and chaired the Internet Activities Board.

September 23, 2008
IPAM speakers named MacArthur Fellows
The MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2008, including two individuals who have been speakers at IPAM workshops. Andrea Ghez is a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, and gave talks at IPAM during the 2004 workshops “Estimation and Control Problems in Adaptive Optics” and “Mathematical Challenges in Astronomical Imaging.” Alexei Kitaev is a professor of theoretical physics and computer science at Caltech. He spoke at the “IPAM/MSRI Workshop on Quantum Computing” in 2002, and the IPAM workshop “Topological Quantum Computing” in 2007. All fellows were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future. They will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

September 5, 2008
Article in Scientific American by IPAM participant
The article “Cryptography: How to Keep Your Secrets Safe,” written by Anna Lysyanskaya, appeared in the August 2008 issue of Scientific American. The article presents some mathematical tools available for protecting privacy, beyond encrypting messages. Anna Lysyanskaya is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, and was a core participant in IPAM’s long program “Securing Cyberspace” (fall 2006). The complete article is available on http://www.sciam.com/.

August 29, 2008
IPAM welcomes Jichun Li, Associate Director
IPAM is happy to introduce the newest member of its scientific staff. Jichun Li started on August 21, 2008 as one of IPAM’s associate directors. Dr. Li is taking a leave of absence from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), where he is an Associate Professor of Mathematics. Prior to UNLV, he held a postdoc position at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. As an associate director, Dr. Li will help organize IPAM’s many programs, as well as help set institute policy and direction, solicit and review proposals for future programs, recruit industry sponsors for the undergraduate summer program, and occasionally represent IPAM at conferences and meetings. His bio is available on our directors page. Please help us welcome Jichun to IPAM and UCLA!

August 26, 2008
Eight Years of RIPS!
The Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program enjoyed its eighth successful year as an innovative research program connecting undergraduate students with industrial problems involving mathematics. This summer, IPAM recruited eight sponsors, ten faculty mentors, and 32 students from around the world. Dr. Michael Raugh served as Program Director. Projects included “Representing Invariant Manifolds for Low-Energy Trajectory Design” (sponsored by Jet Propulsion Laboratories) and “Adding Secondary Dynamics to Animated Characters (sponsored by Pixar Animation Studies). New sponsors this year included Microsoft Research Asia and The Aerospace Corporation. Read about the RIPS2008 sponsors and projects online at http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/rips2008/sponsors.aspx.

July 1, 2008
Mark Green Steps Down, Russ Caflisch Appointed as IPAM Director
After seven years as director, Mark Green has relinquished his post to return to his full-time appointment in the UCLA department of mathematics. Prior to becoming director, Dr. Green was Founding Co-Director with Dr. Eitan Tadmor for one year.

Mark Green was personally invested in IPAM’s programs. A pure mathematician, Dr. Green took it upon himself to attend most lectures, learning as much as possible about a wide variety of topics. IPAM grew substantially during his tenure, both in terms of funding, the size of the staff and the amount and quality of programming. In 2004, Dr. Green led a successful application for renewal as a National Science Foundation math institute. Shortly before his departure on June 30, 2008, he also oversaw an NSF site visit that resulted in a highly favorable report by the evaluation team.

Dr. Russ Caflisch, UCLA professor of mathematics, was appointed as Director after a national search. Dr. Caflisch is an applied mathematician with interests in materials science, mathematical finance, Monte Carlo methods, kinetic theory, plasma dynamics, fluid dynamics, and PDEs. He has previously served on IPAM’s Board of Trustees and as an organizer of two IPAM long programs. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Caflisch!

June 5, 2008
RIPS student awarded Gates scholarship
RIPS 2006 student Marcelo Alvisio, who recently completed his bachelor’s degree at MIT, won a prestigious Gates Cambridge Trust international scholarship for 2008-2009. Mr. Alvisio plans to complete the Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics at Cambridge then return to the U.S. to begin a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Chicago. During his summer in RIPS, Marcelo served as project manager on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team.

April 29, 2008
Congratulations to new NAS Members
The National Academy of Sciences announced its new members on April 29, 2008. Among those elected to the NAS include several “friends of IPAM” – former participants, speakers, organizers and board members. The list includes Peter Jones, who has served as chair of IPAM’s Science Advisory Board and as organizer of several workshops and long programs, Terence Tao (foreign associate) who recently joined the Science Advisory Board, and other past workshop speakers and organizers: Steven Boxer, Emily Carter, Kenneth Dill, Thomas Liggett, and Peter Zoller (foreign associate). Congratulations to all!

March 5, 2008
Congratulations to Sloan Fellows, NSF CAREER Award Recipient
The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics wants to congratulate the 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Fellows with connections to IPAM, including Inwon Kim (Geometrically Based Motions, Optimal Transport); Xiole (Shirley) Liu (Sequence Analysis Toward System Biology, Search and Knowledge Building for Biological Datasets); Anna Lysyanskaya (Securing Cyberspace: Applications and Foundations of Cryptography and Computer Security); Mauro Maggioni (Multiscale Geometry and Analysis in High Dimensions, Internet Multi-Resolution Analysis); Ben Weinkove (Geometric Flows: Theory and Computation); and Eric Xing (Social Data Mining and Knowledge Building). Congratulations also to Selim Esedoglu (RIPS 2003 and 2004) for winning an NSF CAREER Award from the Division of Mathematical Sciences.

January 22, 2008
RIPS Mentor Matteo Pellegrini Recognized for New Tools for Genomic Research
Matteo Pellegrini, UCLA assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and IPAM-RIPS faculty mentor since 2002, was featured in the winter 2008 issue of UCLA College Report. Dr. Pellegrini has developed new software tools to help genomic researchers model and interpret large-scale genomic information. The article will be available on http://www.college.ucla.edu/report/.

January 21, 2008
UCLA Anthropologist Jeff Brantingham Finds Patterns in Crime with Mathematics
Professor Brantingham was also featured in the winter issue of UCLA College Report for his mathematical research into crime patterns, in partnership with UCLA mathematicians Andrea Bertozzi and Lincoln Chayes and several southern California police departments. With Assistant Professor Brantingham as the primary organizer, IPAM sponsored a one-week workshop “Crime Hot Spots” in January 2007. The article will be available on http://www.college.ucla.edu/report/.

January 10, 2008
Plastic Surgeon Court Cutting Presents Lecture on Virtual Surgery
On January 9, 2008, New York University Medical Center Surgeon Court Cutting gave a public lecture at UCLA on the use of three-dimensional surgical simulation to model and plan reconstructive surgery on patients with severe facial malformations. The lecture was cosponsored by the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).

January 3, 2008
SAGE Organizer/Graduate Student Craig Citro Featured in UCLA Graduate Quarterly
PhD Student Craig Citro (UCLA Mathematics) was the subject of a “student profile” in the UCLA Graduate Quarterly magazine, featuring his passion for rock climbing and number theory. Mr. Citro was co-organizer of two IPAM affiliate workshops, called “SAGE days.” Read the article: http://spotlight.ucla.edu/students/craig-citro-math/.

December 10, 2007
IPAM Organizer Joseph Teran Featured Speaker at IDF 2007
Joseph Teran, who joined the UCLA math faculty this summer and first became involved at IPAM as a RIPS faculty mentor, was a featured speaker at the Intel Developer Forum Fall 2007. As a response to Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner’s keynote address on the 3D Internet, Teran demonstrated the finite element cutter/simulator used in virtual surgery applications. Joseph Teran was chair of the organizing committee for the workshop “Scientific Computing Applications in Surgical Simulation of Soft Tissues,” held at IPAM in January 2008. Dr. Teran and his work were also featured in a UCLA Today article on November 28, 2007: http://www.today.ucla.edu/campus/071128_virtual-surgery/.

November 30, 2007
Heinz Engl Receives ICIAM Pioneer Prize
Heinz Engl of Johannes Kepler Universität Linz and the Austrian Academy of Sciences received the joint Pioneer Prize awarded at ICIAM 2007. The prize honored his contributions to inverse problems, especially in the solution of a wide range of industrial problems. He was also commended for his promotion of mathematics in industrial problems solving worldwide and the founding of RICAM (Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics). Dr. Engl was the chair of the organizing committee for IPAM’s long program Inverse Problems: Computational Methods and Emerging Applications,” held in 2003.

August 22, 2007
IPAM Takes “RIPS” to China
In addition to our annual Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program held on the UCLA campus, IPAM partnered with Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) to offer RIPS-Beijing in 2007. Ten U.S. and ten Chinese undergraduate students worked on cross-cultural teams on five projects sponsored by MSRA research groups, including “Semi-supervised Support Vector Machine for Relation Extraction,” “Maximum Mutual Information Partition for Confidence Measures in Speech Recognition,” “Stochastic Modeling and Analysis of Broadcast Algorithms,” “The Disktop: A Hyperbolic Task Manager,” and “Analysis of PageRank Computation Methods and Induced Webpage Ordering for Google Matrices.” The students spent eight weeks in Beijing and presented the results of their research on Projects Day, held on August 23, 2007. IPAM and MSRA hope to offer this industrial mathematics undergraduate program again in the future.

August 11, 2007
Webcast of “Mathematics of the Mind” Summer School Lectures Available
In July 2007, over 200 graduate students, postdocs, professors, and others met at UCLA for a three-week summer school entitled “Probabilistic Models of Cognition: The Mathematics of Mind.” The path-breaking program brought together mathematicians, psychologist, cognitive scientists, and statisticians working on the common problem of how to explain empirical phenomena in the major areas of cognitive science. The lectures are currently available online as video files in Real Player format.