News and Announcements

May 10, 2013
Margaret Cheney To Give Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) have chosen Margaret Cheney to give the prestigious Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture at the 2013 SIAM Annual Meeting, which will be held in San Diego this summer. Dr. Cheney, a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University, participated in IPAM’s 2003 long program on Inverse Problems, and in 2012, helped organize a very successful workshop on Synthetic Aperture Radar. She is also a visiting research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

April 30, 2013
American Academy of Arts & Sciences Elects 2013 Class of Fellows

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects men and women of exceptional achievement, drawn from science, scholarship, business, public affairs, and the arts. It recently announced its Fellows and foreign honorary members for 2013. The following individuals affiliated with IPAM made the list. Bin Yu (UC Berkeley) serves on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board and has given talks at several workshops. Richard Tapia (Rice University) served on IPAM’s Board of Trustees from 2000-2004. Henri Berestycki (Ecoles des Hautes Études En Sciences Sociales) has spoken at IPAM workshops, and Nicholas Read (Yale University) helped organize the Random Shapes long program. Congratulations to all!

April 3, 2013
Class of 2013 SIAM Fellows Announced

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has announced the 2013 Class of SIAM Fellows. Fellows are chosen for their exemplary research and service to the community that advances the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. The list includes David Levermore (Kinetic Transport 2009, Plasma Physics 2012, Science Advisory Board), Shi Jin (Kinetic Transport 2009), Guillermo Sapiro (Random Shapes 2007), Qiang Du (Cells and Materials 2006, Materials Defects 2012), plus several others who have given talks at IPAM workshops. Congratulations to the new SIAM fellows!

February 26, 2013
Sloan Fellows include IPAM Alumni

Congratulations to the 2013 Sloan Research Fellows! Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders. Fellows receive $50,000 to be used to further their research. Fellows who have participated in IPAM long programs include Anastassia Alexandrova (Chemical Compound Space, 2011), Jacob Fox (Combinatorics, 2009), Ryan Hernandez (Proteomics, 2004), and Arthur Szlam (Search Engines, 2007 and Internet MRA, 2008). The list also includes several IPAM workshop and summer school participants and speakers.

February 12, 2013
IPAM Public Lecture on Brain-Computer Interfacing

Klaus-Robert Müller will give an IPAM public lecture on Monday, March 4, 2013 entitled “Toward Brain Computer Interfacing.” His talk will provide a brief overview of current Brain Computer Interface technology. In particular, it will show the wealth, complexity and difficulties of the data available. The talk will then report in more detail about the Berlin Brain Computer Interface that is based on Electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Klaus-Robert Müller is Professor of Computer Science at Technical University Berlin and Director of the Bernstein Focus on Neurotechnology Berlin. The lecture will begin at 4:30 pm in the CNSI auditorium at UCLA. It is free and open to the public.

January 23, 2013
RIPS 2012 Students Present Research at JMM

Twenty-two RIPS-LA and RIPS-Hong Kong (2012) students presented their research at the Joint Math Meetings on January 11, 2013. Ten teams represented RIPS at the MAA Undergraduate Poster Session, and four of them won Outstanding Presentation awards, including Austin Alleman and Arturo Fernandez, presenting the LAPD project, and Juan Ramirez who presented the IBM team’s work. Additionally, two RIPS-Hong Kong teams were recognized: Elizabeth Cangialosi and Aashish Gadani (BGI), and Skyler Seto and Karen Larson (Huawei). Two teams were selected to give oral presentations of their research at the AMS Session on Undergraduate Research in Applied Mathematics. Imanol Arrieta Ibarra, Christie Quaranta, Eric Schwartz, and Elena Sizikova presented the Shoah Foundation project, and Louis Bohorquez and Jason Xu represented the Aerospace Corporation team. Congratulations to all!

January 11, 2013
Bertozzi Appointed Chair

UCLA Mathematics Professor Andrea Bertozzi has been named the inaugural holder of the Betsy Wood Knapp Chair for Innovation and Creativity. The endowed chair was established through a gift to UCLA from Betsy Wood Knapp, an entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder and CEO of BigPicture Investors LLC. Dr. Bertozzi has been organizer, speaker and participant of numerous IPAM programs, most recently the Plasma Physics long program (2012). Press Release

January 9, 2013
2013 Dedicated to "Math for Planet Earth"

More than 100 scientific societies, universities, research institutes, and organizations all over the world (including IPAM) are dedicating 2013 as the year of Mathematics of Planet Earth (MPE). MPE2013 is an initiative to learn more about the challenges faced by our planet and the underlying mathematical problems, and to increase the research effort on these issues. As part of this initiative, IPAM will sponsor the program Materials for a Sustainable Energy Future which will include a series of workshops and a public lecture by Emily Carter, Founding Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided a grant of $467,549 to support the extension of the Mathematics of Planet Earth program into the future.

December 1, 2012
LeCun Cited in NYT Article on Machine Learning

The New York Times front-page article Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs” (November 23, 2012) cites Yann LeCun, Silver Professor of Computer Science, Neural Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Courant Institute, New York University. LeCun organized the 2012 IPAM summer school “Deep Learning, Feature Learning” and serves on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board. His co-organizers Geoffrey Hinton (University of Toronto) and Andrew Ng (Stanford) are also mentioned.

November 2, 2012
IMS Elects Bin Yu as President-Elect

IPAM's Science Advisory Board member Bin Yu has been elected President-Elect of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). The IMS is a leading international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. Bin Yu is Professor of Statistics, and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at University of California Berkeley.

October 2, 2012
IPAM Seeks Associate Director

IPAM is conducting a search for a new Associate Director (AD), to begin a two-year appointment on August 1, 2013. The AD is expected to be an active and established research mathematician or scientist in a related field, with experience in conference organization. The primary responsibility of the AD will be running individual programs in coordination with the organizing committees. The selected candidate will be encouraged to continue his or her personal research program within the context of the responsibilities to the institute. For the full job descriptions and application instructions, go to IPAM Job Openings

July 19, 2012
J.S. Chen Receives Award

Professor J. S. Chen (UCLA) received the Computational Mechanics Award given biannually by the International Association for Computational Mechanics for his seminal contribution in nonlinear finite element and meshfree methods, Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian finite element method for large deformation and contact mechanics, multiscale materials modeling, and the stabilized Galerkin and collocation meshfree methods. The awards ceremony took place at the World Congress on Computational Mechanics in July. Chen is the co-chair of the organizing committee for IPAM’s Materials Defects program this fall.

July 9, 2012
"Math 2025" Report Available

The Committee on the Mathematical Sciences in 2025 recently released the report, "Fueling Innovation and Discovery: The Mathematical Sciences in the 21st Century," which describes recent advances in the mathematical sciences and advances enabled by mathematical sciences research and presents a broad assessment of the current state of the mathematical sciences in the United States. Former IPAM Director Mark Green served as vice chair of the Math 2025 committee. The publication is available at The National Academies Press

June 29, 2012
Caflisch Accepts Second Term

IPAM’s Board of Trustees is pleased to announce that Dr. Russel Caflisch has accepted a second term as Director of IPAM. Caflisch’s achievements during his first term so far include a successful renewal proposal to NSF which guarantees IPAM’s funding through 2015, the launching of IPAM’s annual newsletter and Frontiers (membership) Society, sponsorship of a number of diversity programs, the debut of "RIPS-Hong Kong" in partnership with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and much more. The Board and the IPAM staff enthusiastically support his continued leadership.

June 27, 2012
Digital Humanities Program Leads to Publication

Timothy Tangherlini, lead organizer of the 2010 IPAM summer school "Networks and Network Analysis for the Humanities," along with co-authors Peter Broadwell and James Abello (also participants in the summer school), recently published the article “Computational Folkloristics” in Communications of the ACM, July 2012 (Volume 55, Issue 7). Dr. Tangherlini is UCLA professor and head of the Scandinavian Section in the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. The article is available through the ACM Digital Library.

May 17, 2012
Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn to visit IPAM May 29-31

Walter Kohn, Nobel Laureate and professor of physics at University of California Santa Barbara, will be the inaugural speaker in the Green Family Lecture Series, made possible by a generous endowment by former IPAM director and co-founder Mark Green and his family. Kohn has made major contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. He was the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and has received numerous awards including the Niels Bohr/Unesco Gold Medal, the United States National Medal of Science and the Richard Prange Prize. His role in creating Density Functional Theory, the most widely used theory of the electronic structure of matter, earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. Kohn currently works on Macular Degeneration, renewable energies and global warming. Dr. Kohn will give three lectures, which are open to the public.

May 1, 2012
Matthew Fisher Elected to National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences today announced the election of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Among the new members is Matthew Fisher, professor of physics at University of California Santa Barbara and Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics. Dr. Fisher served on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board from 2004-2008, and as a speaker for several IPAM workshops. Read the press release .

April 18, 2012
Caflisch Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently announced the election of 220 new members. The list includes IPAM Director Russel Caflisch plus five others who have served as IPAM program speakers or organizers: James Lake, Herbert Levine, Thomas Liggett, Judea Pearl, and Eli Yablonovitch. The Academy is one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. Each year, it recognizes some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 6, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

February 29, 2012
“Future Directions in Mathematics” Report Released

The Workshop on Future Directions in Mathematics was held at IPAM on October 12-14, 2011. It involved 23 invited scientists and 4 government observers, and was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)), Basic Science Office. The goals of the workshop were to provide input to the ASD(R&E) on the current state of mathematics research, the most promising directions for future research in mathematics, the infrastructure needed to support that future research, and a comparison of mathematics in the US and in the rest of the world. The resulting report is available to the public.

February 21, 2012
RIPS Students Recognized at JMM Poster Session

Twenty-four RIPS-LA and RIPS-Hong Kong students presented 13 posters of their summer research at the MAA Undergraduate Poster Session at the Joint Math Meetings held in Boston in early January. Two of the posters won Outstanding Presentation awards. The RIPS-LA Aerospace Corporation team were recognized for their project “Calculating Call Blocking, Preemption Probabilities and Bandwidth Utilization for Satellite Communication Systems,” presented by Leah Rosenbaum and Yacoub Kureh. The RIPS-Hong Kong BGI team won for their project “Application of a Hill Climbing Algorithm to Parallelize Graph-based Genome Assembly,” presented by Alexandra Gendreau. Additionally, RIPS2010 student Dana-Adriana Botesteanu was recognized for her poster featuring research she conducted at NIMBios.

February 17, 2012
Meza Elected Chair-Elect

Congratulations to Juan Meza, member of IPAM’s Board of Trustees since 2009, who was recently elected as Chair-Elect of the Section on Mathematics of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He will serve as Chair in 2013. Dr. Meza is the Dean of the School of Natural Sciences, University of California Merced.

January 25, 2012
Crafoord Prizes Awarded to Bourgain, Tao and Ghez

Congratulations to Terry Tao and Jean Bourgain, the 2012 recipients of the Crafoord Prize in Mathematics, and Andrea Ghez, one of the two recipients of The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy. Jean Bourgain (IAS) was a speaker for IPAM’s workshops on Expander Graphs (2008) and Combinatorics (2009). Tao (UCLA) is a member of IPAM’s Science Advisory Board and has been a speaker or organizer for several workshops since 2001. Andrea Ghez (UCLA) was a speaker in Estimation and Control Problems in Adaptive Optics (for which she was also an organizer) and Mathematical Challenges in Astronomical Imaging, both held in 2004.

December 9, 2011
Green, Tapia, and Neelin Elected AAAS Fellows

In November 2011, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Council elected 539 members as Fellows of AAAS. The list includes Mark Green, co-founder and former director of IPAM; David Neelin, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a speaker in IPAM’s Climate Modeling program; and Richard Tapia, former IPAM Trustee and co-founder of the Blackwell-Tapia Conference and Prize. They will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum to be held in February during the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting.

September 29, 2011
Richard Tapia Awarded National Medal of Science

The White House recently announced that Richard Tapia, Rice University professor of engineering, computing and applied mathematics, will receive the National Medal of Science, the highest honor for U.S. scientists. The award recognizes those "deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge” in physical, biological, mathematical, engineering, social and behavioral sciences. Professor Tapia was an original member of IPAM’s Board of Trustees (2000-2004) and founded, along with David Blackwell, the annual Blackwell-Tapia Conference, which IPAM hosted in 2004. Tapia and other recipients will be honored at a White House ceremony in October.

July 15, 2011
Tkatchenko Receives Award from European Research Council

Alexandre Tkatchenko (Fritz-Haber-Institut, Berlin) was recently awarded the European Research Council Starting Independent Researcher Grant, which will support his research for five years. This prestigious ERC grant supports promising researchers who have the proven potential of becoming independent research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship. Dr. Tkatchenko participated in IPAM’s Materials Science and Bio-physics program (2005) and in the Chemical Compound Space program (2011).

June 6, 2011
Juan Meza Appointed UC Merced Dean

The University of California, Merced, recently announced the appointment of Juan Meza as the new dean of its School of Natural Sciences. He will begin the position in the fall. Dr. Meza has been a member of IPAM’s Board of Trustees since 2009. He currently works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as head of the High Performance Computing Research Department and acting director of the Computational Research Division.

May 5, 2011
Congratulations to New NAS Members

The National Academy of Sciences recently announced the election of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The list includes several individuals who have been organizers and speakers at IPAM programs, including Stuart Geman, William Jorgensen, Jon Kleinberg, Herbert Levine, and Jean Borgain (foreign associate). Additionally, Josh Tenenbaum received the Troland research award in January.

May 3, 2011
Cleve Moler Receives Award from Caltech

Congratulations to Cleve Moler, member of IPAM’s Board of Trustees from 2006-2011, for receiving Caltech’s Distinguished Alumni Award. This award is in recognition of "a particular achievement of noteworthy value, a series of such achievements, or a career of noteworthy accomplishment." Since the award's inception in 1966, Caltech has recognized a total of 221 alumni as standouts in science, engineering, business and the arts. Dr. Moler was co-founder of MathWorks, and is currently chairman and chief scientist.

April 1, 2011
Congratulations to 2011 SIAM Fellows.

SIAM recently announced its Class of 2011 SIAM Fellows. The list includes Charles Doering (University of Michigan) who participated in IPAM’s Optimal Transport program, Jean-Pierre Fouque (UC Santa Barbara), a speaker in IPAM’s 2010 Financial Math workshop, Kenneth M. Golden (University of Utah), who gave a public lecture during the Kinetic Transport program, and Stephen J. Wright (University of Wisconsin Madison), currently serving on IPAM’s Science Advisory Board. SIAM Fellows are chosen for their outstanding contributions to fields served by SIAM.

February 4, 2011
RIPS Students Present at ION Technical meeting

The Institute of Navigation (ION) held its annual International Technical Meeting last month in San Diego. RIPS2010 students Aaron Mosher, Amber Richter, and David Puelz presented their summer research, “All-in-View Satellite Dilution of Precision Formulas for GNSS Coverage Analysis and Optimization.” (The authors also included UCLA postdoc Yanina Landa and RIPS student Matthew Kosko, as well as several researchers from The Aerospace Corporation.) The team’s industry mentor, James Gidney, said of their work: “The RIPS team delivered a presentation that was well received by the ION audience. It was clear that the team was in command of the subject matter and that they had taken ownership of their research. The team was equally adept at fielding questions from an audience that was passionate about the subject matter and thoroughly engaged throughout the presentation. I was very proud of the entire team, and their efforts and contribution to the GPS and GNSS community.”

February 3, 2011
Mac Hyman Elected as AAAS Fellow

In December 2010, the AAAS Council elected 503 members as Fellows of AAAS in all areas of science, including James (Mac) Hyman for mathematics. Hyman served on IPAM’s Board of Trustees from 2006-2010, and as chair starting in 2007. He currently holds the Evelyn and John G. Phillips Distinguished Chair in Mathematics at Tulane University. The Fellows will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. on February 19.

December 16, 2010
S.T. Yau to give IPAM Public Lecture

Shing-Tung Yau, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and the director of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, will give an IPAM public lecture on Friday, January 14, 2011 entitled “The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.” Yau’s book of the same name was published earlier this year with co-author Steve Nadis. Calabi-Yau manifolds are among the ‘standard toolkit’ for string theorists today. His proof of the Calabi conjecture allowed physicists—using Calabi-Yau compactification—to show that string theory is a viable candidate for a unified theory of nature. Yau has received a number of awards and prizes, including the Fields Medal (1982), a MacArthur Fellowship (1984) the Crafoord Prize (1994), the U.S. National Medal of Science (1997), and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (2010). The lecture will be held at 3:00 pm in Haines Hall, room 39, followed by a reception at IPAM. The lecture is co-sponsored by Departments of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

November 24, 2010
Yann LeCun is Helping Robots See

A recent Economist article entitled “Eye Robot” described the work of Yann LeCun on computer vision and its application to help a robot recognize objects, such as a person standing in its path. Yann is a professor of computer science at the Courant Institute of New York University, a member of IPAM’s Science Advisory Board and a frequent speaker in IPAM programs. Yann’s approach to computer vision is “convolutional neural networks” (ConvNets) that mimic the hierarchical structure of the human visual cortex. They also use the “deep learning” method from machine learning to construct the filters that are used at each level of the hierarchical structure. In addition to their use in robotics, ConNets have been used by Google’s Streetview software to recognize and blot out faces and license plates.

November 18, 2010
IPAM’s 10th Anniversary Celebrated

On November 2-4, 2010, IPAM celebrated its 10th year and recently renewed support from NSF with a 10th Anniversary Conference. The conference featured a dozen scientific talks given by former participants of IPAM programs, a panel discussion on the future of interdisciplinary research, and two public lectures given by Tony Chan and Claire Tomlin. A large number of former participants of IPAM long programs, workshops, summer school, and RIPS, as well as current and former directors and board members, filled IPAM’s lecture hall for three days. About 20 RIPS students, academic mentors, and sponsors from the last 10 years attended a RIPS reunion lunch as well. The conference schedule contains many of the speakers’ presentation files and the IPAM videos page provides links to videos of Tony Chan’s and Claire Tomlin’s talks. For anyone who missed the opportunity, IPAM 10th Anniversary T-shirts are still available with a donation of $50 or more to IPAM! IPAM wishes to sincerely thank everyone who joined us in this celebration, especially those who traveled a long distance and who became founding members of IPAM’s Frontier’s Society.

October 21, 2010
IPAM’s 10th Anniversary Conference to be held on Nov. 2-4, 2010

IPAM will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a conference assessing the current state and the future of interdisciplinary mathematics and science. Speakers from academia, government and industry will present research results related to programs from IPAM’s first ten years. Two public lectures featuring Tony Chan (Tuesday, Nov. 2) and Claire Tomlin (Wednesday, Nov. 3) and a panel discussion will provide an overview of interdisciplinary mathematics and science and IPAM’s role in this exciting endeavor. Go to www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/ann2010 for more information, a registration form, and a schedule of talks and activities. Please join us!

September 27, 2010
IPAM Mourns Loss of Jerry Marsden

Jerrold Marsden, Professor at Caltech and frequent IPAM participant, passed away on September 21, 2010 at age 68. Jerry was one of the founding members of IPAM’s Board of Trustees, and served as Chair from 2002 to 2005. His research was centered around mechanics, control and geometry with applications to differential equations, fluid mechanics, plasma physics, and other areas. In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in these fields, he received a number of prizes, among them the Norbert Weiner Prize from SIAM and AMS and the von Neumann Prize from SIAM. Jerry was an intellectual leader with a wide circle of colleagues and collaborators, and he was notably optimistic, articulate and gregarious. We will all miss him very much.

September 8, 2010
LA Times Article on Predictive Policing

A team of researchers at UCLA has been working with the Los Angeles Police Department on predictive policing, using computer analysis of information about previous crimes to predict where and when crimes will occur. Their work is featured in an LA Times article, "Stopping Crime Before It Starts,” printed August 21, 2010. The article includes quotes from UCLA Professor Jeff Brantingham (Anthropology) and math postdocs Martin Short and George Mohler, who work in collaboration with Professors Andrea Bertozzi (UCLA), Lincoln Chayes (UCLA) and George Tita (UC Irvine). The LAPD also enlisted the help of students in IPAM’s RIPS program in the summers of 2009 and 2010, with Short and UCLA postdoc Alethea Barbaro serving as their academic mentors. LAPD Lt. Sean Malinowski, who oversees the LAPD’s crime analysis unit, was the team’s industry mentor. Involvement of Bertozzi, Chayes and other mathematicians in this project was initiated during IPAM’s workshop on Crime Hot Spots in 2007.

September 1, 2010
Second Annual IPAM Newsletter Available

IPAM's second annual newsletter is now available in PDF or print. It includes a feature article on the research of cognitive scientist Josh Tenenbaum, who organized the IPAM summer school “Mathematics of the Mind;” another on IPAM’s first long program on Functional Genomics; as well as Alethea Barbaro’s personal testimony regarding the impact of IPAM on her career, an introduction to the new IPAM Science Advisory Board Chair Al Hales, news about IPAM “alumn,” and much more. To receive a printed copy, please complete this form: Annual Newsletter Form

August 16, 2010
RIPS Student Receives Fulbright

Dan Butler (RIPS 2008) received a Fulbright grant to perform research at Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 2010-2011. He will help develop mathematical image modeling techniques for art restoration, specifically restoration of Chinese calligraphy. Dan participated in RIPS as an undergraduate student; he was a member of the Arête team. After graduating from Brown University in 2009 with a degree in applied math and computer science, he spent a year at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

July 26, 2010
Google Awards Grant to Tim Tangherlini

Google awarded its first grants for the new Digital Humanities Research Program earlier this month, including an award to Tim Tangherlini (UCLA) and his partner, Peter Leonard (University of Washington) for their project "Northern Insights: Tools & Techniques for Automated Literary Analysis, Based on the Scandinavian Corpus in Google Books." Google will allow Tangherlini, Leonard and others to conduct text-mining research on its corpus of more than 12 million digitized books. Tangherlini is the lead organizer of the 2010 IPAM summer school “Networks and Network Analysis for the Humanities,” and was a core participant in the 2007 long program “Search Engines.”

The article is available at The Chronicle

July 15, 2010
Al Hales Chairs IPAM Board of Trustees

IPAM is proud to announce that Alfred W. Hales is the new chair of IPAM’s Board of Trustees. Dr. Hales is a distinguished mathematician – a recipient of the Polya Prize and a newly elected Fellow of the AAAS – who has a very broad perspective on pure and applied mathematics. He has served as Chair of the UCLA Mathematics Department, Director of the Center for Communications Research (CCR) - La Jolla and member of the Board of Trustees of MSRI. Recently, the Hales-Jewett Theorem, derived by Alfred Hales and Robert Jewett and concerning the degree to which high-dimensional objects must necessarily exhibit some combinatorial structure, has received a huge amount of attention due to its use in an alternative proof of the Green-Tao Prime Progression Theorem. IPAM welcomes his expertise and experience to the Board.

July 1, 2010
RIPS Goes to Berlin

IPAM’s successful summer program Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) has a new location in 2010. IPAM and its German partners MATHEON and the Berlin Mathematical School debuted RIPS-Berlin this summer, with undergraduate students from the U.S. and Europe participating in four industry-sponsored research projects, including proteomics fingerprinting, coarse graining complex biological networks, photogrammetric correction of microscopic images of photonic crystal fibers, and surface optimization using graphics cards.

RIPS-Beijing, in partnership with Microsoft Research Asia, is in its third year with four projects. The “original” RIPS program, held on the UCLA campus with eight projects and 32 students, is celebrating its tenth year.

May 10, 2010
Trenberth Gives Global Warming Talk

On May 5, Dr. Kevin Trenberth gave an IPAM public lecture entitled "Global Warming: Coming Ready or Not!" The talk highlighted the wealth of data that unequivocally demonstrates that global warming is happening and is caused by human activities. He presented results from climate models that show that the human influence on climate has exceeded the natural variability since 1970. Over 200 attended the talk, which was cosponsored by IoE CNSI, AOS, and JIFRESSE. This public lecture was part of IPAM's long program, "Model and Data Hierarchies for Simulating and Understanding Climate," which brought mathematicians and climate scientists together to work on problems related to climate modeling.

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He is listed among the top 20 authors in highest citations in all of geophysics.

A video of Trenberth's lecture is available here. RealPlayer is required to see the video and can be downloaded here.

April 28, 2010
Trachette Jackson Awarded Blackwell-Tapia Prize

The National Blackwell-Tapia Committee recently announced that Professor Trachette Jackson of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor was awarded the 2010 Blackwell-Tapia Prize. Dr. Jackson was an organizer and core participant of IPAM's Cells and Materials long program in spring 2006, and spoke at the 2004 Blackwell-Tapia Conference which was held at IPAM. Dr. Jackson will be the guest of honor at the Sixth Blackwell-Tapia Conference on November 5–6, 2010. Read the full announcement.

April 20, 2010
Congratulations to 2010 AAA&S Fellows

On April 19, 2010, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S) announced its 2010 Fellows. IPAM wishes to congratulate those fellows who have served as director, organizer, board member, and speaker at IPAM, as well as participated in IPAM long programs and workshops: Andrea Bertozzi (UCLA), William Goddard (Caltech), Mark Green (UCLA), Andrew Majda (NYU Courant Institute), Mary Wheeler (University of Texas at Austin), and Maciej Zworksi (UC Berkeley).

229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, the humanities, the arts, business and public affairs were elected by members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a center for independent policy research. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 9, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A complete list of the 2010 class is located at AAA&S List.

April 19, 2010
Congratulations to UCLA Math!

On April 15, U.S. News and World Report released their 2010 rankings of graduate programs in the U.S. UCLA's department of mathematics was ranked in the top 10 of math departments across the country (tied for #8 with the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor). This is up from 10th place in the 2008 rankings. UCLA also ranked in the top 10 in five specialty areas of mathematics. Highlights of the graduate school rankings are scheduled for publication in the May print issue of U.S.News & World Report and are currrently available online. Top Science Schools

April 14, 2010
Bertozzi and Brantingham's Crime Research in News

Congratulations to Andrea Bertozzi and Jeff Brantingham for several recent articles featuring their work. In the science section of U.S. News and World Report on March 2, an article entitled “Can Math and Science Help Solve Crimes?” explains how Bertozzi, Brantingham, and their collaborators are using sophisticated mathematical models to predict and prevent crime. The collaboration of Bertozzi and Brantingham was initiated at IPAM’s Crime Hotspots workshop in 2007. Their work was also highlighted in a recent article in Popular Mechanics, and their research paper was the cover article for the March 2, 2010 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

April 7, 2010
2010 SIAM Fellows Announced

On April 1, The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) announced its 2010 SIAM Fellows. Among them is Andrea Bertozzi, Susanne Brenner, Tony Chan, Bjorn Engquist, Ioannis Kevrekidis, and Fred Wan – all of whom have served on an IPAM board or as an organizer for an IPAM program. Many other SIAM fellows participated in IPAM programs as speakers or participants. The 2010 Fellows will be recognized at the Prizes and Awards Banquet at the annual SIAM meeting in July. The complete list of 2010 Fellows is available online at SIAM FELLOWS.

March 30, 2010
Infinite Possibilities Conference Held at IPAM

On March 19-20, in partnership with Building Diversity in Science, IPAM sponsored the 2010 Infinite Possibilities Conference, a national conference designed to promote, educate, encourage and support minority women interested in mathematics and statistics. The conference included several featured speaker presentations, panel discussions, research talks, a poster session, math activities for high school students, mentoring activities, and an awards banquet. College scholarships were also awarded to six students, with a grant from Oracle Corporation. Other supporters included NSA, UCLA Office of Faculty Diversity and Development, Symantec, and Toyota. Almost 200 high school, college, and graduate students, postdocs, professors and professionals attended. The next IPC will be held in 2012.

The Falconer Award for Mentoring and Commitment to Diversity recognizes someone who has demonstrated a professional commitment to mentoring and increasing diversity in mathematics; this year, the award went to Ivelisse Rubio, University of Puerto Rico.

Videos of some of the activities are available in Real Player format:

Suzanne Weekes: “Keeping It Real - Industrial Strength Mathematics” Play video
Ivelisse Rubio: “Latin and Frequency Squares” Play video
“If I Had To Do It All Over Again” panel session Play video

March 29, 2010
NSF Recommends IPAM for Renewal

On March 15, 2010,the NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences informed IPAM director Russ Caflisch that IPAM will be recommended for renewal for another 5 years with a substantially increased budget. This will enable us to continue IPAM’s current programs and to support some important additional activities.

Dr. Caflisch wishes to thank those who met with the NSF site visit evaluation team in October, which we believe made a significant difference in IPAM’s renewal. The site visit report was extremely positive with comments such as this: “IPAM is doing a terrific job of meeting its mission of impact in mathematics and its applications. Thoughtful configuration of programs has supported the development of new research networks and scientific breakthroughs.”

We will celebrate our continued NSF support with a 10th anniversary workshop on Nov. 2-4, 2010 at IPAM. More information will be available soon.

March 11, 2010
Physics Nobel Laureate David Gross Gives IPAM Public Lecture

On February 22, Dr. David Gross, Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave a stimulating talk entitled “The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics” to an audience of about 300.

Dr. Gross reviewed the present state of knowledge in elementary particle physics and discussed the experimental revolutions that might occur at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He gave a clear and compelling description of the state of string theory. In 2004, Gross was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for solving in 1973 the last great remaining problem of what has since come to be called "the Standard Model" of the quantum mechanical picture of reality. His research interests include High Energy Physics, Quantum Field Theory, and String Theory. IPAM sponsored this lecture in cooperation with California NanoSystems Institute and the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Video of the public lecture can be viewed online here. Some versions of RealPlayer may not properly play this video. We are working to bring this video in additional formats, so please try again in the near future.

February 18, 2010
RIPS students present research at Space Flight Mechanics Meeting

RIPS 2009 students Samuel Ivy, Ekaterina Merkurjev, Tavis Hall, and Paulina Rodriguez and academic mentor Jorge Balbas (Professor at CSU Northridge), along with representatives of the project’s sponsor, The Aerospace Corporation, presented their RIPS research at the 20th AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting in February, The title of their talk was “Relative Performance of Lambert Solvers 1: 0-Revolution Methods.” Lambert’s problem is a classic two-point boundary value problem to determine the spacecraft’s conic trajectory from position P1 on an initial orbit to position P2 on a second desired orbit in a specified time. The conference was organized by the AAS Space Flight Mechanics Committee and the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical Committee.

January 11, 2010
Pierre-Louis Lions Gives IPAM Public Lecture

Pierre-Louis Lions – a Fields medalist, member of the French Academy of Sciences, and Professor at the College de France – gave a public lecture for IPAM and UCLA’s Department of Mathematics on January 5, 2010, to an audience of about 200. The lecture was part of the IPAM workshop “New Directions in Financial Mathematics.” He spoke about Mean Field Games (MFG in short), a new class of mathematical models and problems introduced and studied in collaboration with Jean- Michel Lasry. In this talk he explained with a very simple example how MFG models are derived, and presented some overview of the theory and its connections with many other fields. In addition to the Fields medal, Professor Lions has received many prestigious awards, including the Doistau-Blutet Foundation Prize, the Ampère Prize, the IBM Prize and the Philip Morris Prize.

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

January 4, 2010
Juan Meza Among "Top 100 Influential Hispanics"

Congratulations to Dr. Juan Meza, a member of IPAM’s Board of Trustees, for being included in Hispanic Business magazine’s list of the 100 most influential Hispanics. Dr. Meza head of the High Performance Computing Research Department in the Computational Research Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is one of only two scientists on the list. He is a recognized leader in efforts to increase the diversity in science and mathematics. The article is in the October issue: http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/top100influentials/

December 7, 2009
Mark Green Elected to AMS Board

The members of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) have elected IPAM's Director Emeritus and UCLA mathematics professor Mark Green to its Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees conducts the business affairs of the Society; it sets fiscal policy and has the deciding voice on all financial affairs. Green begins his five-year term on February 1, 2010.

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.