Noon News

A compendium of U of I, local, State, National, and World News.

2011 Headlines from the UI News Services

Professor Seaman wins lifetime achievement award

from Iowa Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Walter Seaman, an associate professor in the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Education, received a lifetime achievement award from the Iowa Council of Teachers of Mathematics (ICTM) in appreciation of his many contributions to mathematics education. He was honored February 18 at the ICTM meeting in West Des Moines.
Seaman’s efforts in the field of math education include the design and implementation of two mathematics classes for pre-service teachers and serving as a principal investigator on two consecutive Mathematics and Science Partnership grants delivering mathematics content and pedagogy professional development to local school teachers. He has helped run the UI Annual High School Mathematics Tournament events since 1997, and has been active in mathematics education-focused activities of the Iowa Mathematics and Science Partnership. He speaks frequently at the ICTM meetings on these activities.

Differential geometry is the focus of Seaman’s pure mathematics research. He earned his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1982, joined the UI Department of Mathematics in 1983, and has held a joint appointment in the Department of Teaching and Learning since 2008. He visited Penn State University as an associate professor of mathematics education in 2000-02.

Two UI mathematicians named AAAS Fellows

Jan. 27, 2011 - Two University of Iowa faculty members from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Department of Mathematics have been awarded the distinction of 2010 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

The two new AAAS Fellows are:

> Raúl E. Curto, Ph.D., UI professor of mathematics from 1987 to present, CLAS Collegiate Fellow and CLAS executive associate dean.

> Philip C. Kutzko, Ph.D., UI professor of mathematics from 1979 to present, and CLAS Collegiate Fellow.

The two UI recipients are among 503 members awarded the honor by the AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. The new Fellows will be honored in February at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Curto was recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of multivariable operator theory, particularly in spectral theory, model theory, joint hyponormality and subnormality, and truncated moment problems. Curto, who received his doctorate in mathematics from SUNY at Stony Brook, N.Y., in 1978, joined the UI in 1981. His research focuses on branches of mathematics that seek to explain various concepts arising in quantum mechanics, geophysics, statistics, image recognition, spectral analysis, and economics. Curto places special emphasis on inverse problems, where the values of some model parameters are obtained from observed data.

Kutzko was recognized for outstanding contributions to representation theory and for leadership in establishing a national network of faculty and institutions promoting a simple premise: mathematics is for all. Kutzko, who received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1972, joined the UI in 1974. He is the recipient of a prestigious 2009 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. Kutzko’s research focuses the representation theory of p-adic groups with applications to number theory. 

The nonprofit AAAS (www.aaas.org) was founded in 1848 and includes 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Its journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org), has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. AAAS hosts a website, EurekAlert!, at http://www.eurekalert.org.

2010 Headlines from the UI News Services

CLAS names Collegiate Fellows

April 19, 2010 -The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) named Physics Professor Thomas F. Boggess Jr. and Mathematics Professor Weimin Han Collegiate Fellows in recognition of their distinguished teaching, research and service.

Han researches mathematical modeling and analysis of problems in the mechanics of solids, an area of importance in physical and engineering sciences. He has authored or co-authored five books and is heavily involved with mathematical analysis and numerical solutions of problems arising in medical imaging. Han served as associate chair and director of the undergraduate program in the Department of Mathematics, and he directs the interdisciplinary doctoral program in Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences.

Collegiate Fellow awards, supported by a gift from the late R.F. and Maryon E. Ladwig, recognize senior faculty whose distinction in teaching and scholarship is matched by exceptional leadership in service to the university, the college and their departments. Recipients receive funding to support their teaching and research. They are invited to meet annually with Linda Maxson, the UI Alumni Association Dean's Chair of the college, and the college's associate deans to discuss opportunities for improving faculty life and undergraduate education.

Read the entire article here.

UI mathematician wins prestigious 2010 Sloan Research Fellowship

Xiaoyi Zhang, assistant professor of mathematics in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been selected as a 2010 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. The award consists of a two-year, $50,000 grant.

The 2010 Sloan Research Fellowships were given to 118 researchers at 56 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada in the fields of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience. The annual grants "support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work."

Zhang, who joined the UI faculty in fall 2009, conducts research in the field of quantum mechanics, and she has made important contributions toward researching the nonlinear Schrödinger equation.

This is the second consecutive year the Department of Mathematics has garnered the honor, as assistant professor Julianna Tymoczko received a 2009 Sloan Fellowship.

The Sloan Research Fellowship program was initiated in 1955. Alfred P. Sloan, then-president and CEO of General Motors Corporation, established the non-profit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1934.

2009 Headlines from the UI News Services

President Barack Obama has named University of Iowa mathematics professor Philip Kutzko as a recipient of a prestigious 2009 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2009/july/071409presidentialaward.html .

The White House created a video of the event at

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/honoring-educators-math-and-science