Claremont Center for the Mathematical Sciences

The 3-year NSF/RUI grant of $328,283 is headquartered at HMC with lead PI, Professor De Pillis and Co-PIs, Professors Gu and Fister. This project, entitled "RUI: Mathematical Modeling of the Chemotherapy, Immunotherapy, and Vaccine Therapy of Cancer", draws on the on the expertise from the three PIs in the areas of computation, differential geometry, and optimal control to develop mathematical modeling and analysis tools applied to the creation and testing of new combination cancer chemoimmunotherapies. These mathematical tools have the potential to provide clinical guidance in the structuring of patient-specific treatment protocols. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity rests in the development of population models governing cancer growth with combination vaccine and chemotherapy treatments, application of optimal control to guide the investigation of new combination therapies, and the study of differential geometry to understand the effect of volume reduction of vascularized tumors responding to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Through simulations, geometric visualization, and optimal control techniques, an array of virtual experiments can be performed quickly with no risk to living persons. This is the first time that these three areas of mathematical expertise will be combined to explore the development of new optimally integrated chemo-immunotherapy cancer treatments.

Professor Francis Su (HMC) is the first recipient of the MAA's Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching. This award honors beginning college or university faculty whose teaching has been extraordinarily successful and whose effectiveness in teaching undergraduate mathematics is shown to have influence beyond their own classrooms. Professor Su received his award in Providence, Rhode Island, at the MAA MathFest, August 12–14, 2004.

Book Title: "Differential Equations: A Modeling Perspective"

The central themes of this text are the modeling of dynamically changing systems and the visualization of solutions of differential systems. The text uses qualitative, analytical and graphical approaches in the study of differential equations. Acompanying this text is a CD-ROM with the numerical differential equations solver ODE Architect which runs under Windows. [ read more ]

Ariel E. Barton '04 was awarded honorable mention for the Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman, awarded by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) at the AMS-MAA Winter Meetings in Phoenix, Arizona, in January, 2004.

The criteria for selection include, but are not limited to, the quality of the nominees' performance in mathematics courses and special programs, an exhibition of real interest in mathematics, the ability to do independent work, and, if applicable, performance in mathematical competitions.

Senior mathematics major Eric Malm took first prize at the National Problem-Solving Competition, sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America, held at MathFest in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday, August 14. Eric was the first student (among 25 participants, representing twenty institutions) to correctly solve seven challenging math problems on topics including geometry, number theory, combinatorics, probability, and differential equations. Richard Neal, director of the competition, said that Eric “finished the exam in record time”.

The results of the 2004 International Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) have just been announced, and HMC had another stellar performance, with three HMC teams earning top honors of “outstanding” and one team earning “meritorious”.

Twenty-one HMC students participated in this year's competition. The contest gives each team of three students 96 consecutive hours to develop a mathematical model and write a formal paper describing their work.

HMC Math student Joshua Greene '02 was awarded the 2002 AMS-MAA-SIAM The Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student at the Joint Math Meetings in Baltimore on January 16, 2003.

The City College of New York hosted a conference on March 1–2, 2002, in honor of one of its alumni, Mel Henriksen, professor emeritus of mathematics at HMC. Professor Henriksen is well known in the mathematics community for his work on the study of rings of continuous functions, which involves the interplay of algebra and topology. The conference was entitled “Melvin Henriksen at 75: His Research and Coworkers”, and featured talks by Leonard Gillman, Ed Beckenstein, Arkady Kitover, Ralph Kopperman, Ken Magill, John Mack, Prabudh Misra, Larry Narici, and Scott Williams.

Francis Su, assistant professor of mathematics, received the Merten M. Hasse Prize on August 3, 2001, at the Summer MathFest in Madison, Wisconsin.

Su received the award in recognition for his article “Rental Harmony: Sperner's Lemma in Fair Division”, which appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, in December, 1999.

The idea for a Center for Quantitative Life Sciences emerged from discussions among the Biology and mathematics faculty at HMC. In 2000, Professor Michael Moody, then the Chair of the HMC Math Department, submitted a proposal to the Keck Foundation seeking funding to establish the Center. The Foundation awarded a 5-year grant of $500,000 to Harvey Mudd College to establish the Center for Qualitative Life Sciences (QLS) in 2001.  Michael Moody was the first Director of the Center, and Professors Lisette DePillis (Mathematics) and Stephen Adolph (Biology) became co-Directors in 2002. The Center was formally approved by the college in late 2002. The first Center visitors came in 2002, and the first sponsored research projects began in 2003.

History

The idea for a Center for Quantitative Life Sciences emerged from discussions among the Mathematics and Biology faculty at Harvey Mudd. In 2000, Michael Moody, then the chair of the Math Department, wrote a proposal to the Keck Foundation seeking funding to establish a Center. The proposal was funded in early 2001, and Lisette de Pillis and Steve Adolph became co-directors of the Center. The Center was formally approved by the College in late 2002. The first Center visitors came in 2002, and the first sponsored research projects began in 2003.

Click here for more information.

In Professor Flapan's monograph entitled "When Topology meets Chemistry: A Topological Look at Molecular Chirality" readers learn about knot theory, 3-dimensional manifolds, and the topology of embedded graphs in order to understand their role in molecular structures. The topics in the monograph are motivated by questions asked by chemists and molecular biologists.

Mario Martelli, Southern California Section

Citation

Professor Mario Martelli came from a professorship at his native University of Florence, Italy, to the United States in 1980 and became a member of the Southern California Section of the MAA in 1987, when he was appointed to a position as Professor at California State University at Fullerton. He served the Section as Program Vice-Chair in 1993-94 and Program Chair in 1994-95, and in those positions was instrumental in obtaining outstanding speakers and programs. From 1996 through 1999, he served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Section, and he was an enabling force and organizer that kept everything running smoothly.

Professor Flapan is the Principal Investigator of the three-year grant NSF/CCLI grant of $238,911 entitled "Enhancing the Mathematical Understanding of Students in Chemistry". The co-PIs are Professors Adolfo Rumbos, Fred Grieman, Daniel O'Leary, and Shahriar Shahriari. The goal of the project is to increase chemistry students' knowledge of mathematics and its role in chemistry in order to enable students to use the tools and language of mathematics to solve scientific problems. Click here for more about the grant (http://www.math.pomona.edu/flapan_nsf/index.htm).

Nineteen-year-old prodigy one of only 32 in United States to receive honor

Elisha Peterson, a senior mathematics major at Harvey Mudd College, has received the 1999 Rhodes Scholarship for two to three years of study at Oxford University in England. He was one of only 32 to receive the honor, out of the 935 American students who applied for the scholarship.

The annual Wig Distinguished Professorship Awards, awarded mainly on the basis of student votes, were bestowed at the end of spring upon five faculty members: Martha Andresen (English), Eleanor Brown (Economics), Paul Hurley (Philosophy), John Seery (Politics), and Shahriar Shahriari (Math). It is the most prestigious award which Pomona College confers on faculty members and consists of a $5000 stipend. [more...]

The purpose of this textbook is to present the fundamental ideas on discrete dynamical systems and chaos to undergraduates who have completed the standard calculus sequence including functions of several variables and linear algebra.

Arthur Benjamin, associate professor of mathematics, has received the 2000 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The award is given each year to a currently active college or university professor of mathematics for exemplary teaching in an institution of higher education. Benjamin was one of only three professors in the United States to receive the award this year.

The Haimo Awards will be presented on January 20, 2000, at the annual meeting of the MAA in Washington, DC.

Lisette dePillis, associate professor of mathematics, has recently been named the Year 2000 Maria Goeppert-Mayer (MGM) Argonne Distinguished Scholar. She will be conducting research in parallel computational mathematics for the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois during 1999–2000.

The Maria Goeppert-Mayer award recognizes outstanding achievements by women scientists and engineers and provides them with opportunities to conduct research at the Argonne National Laboratory. DePillis is only the second MGM scholar to be selected to study in the mathematics and computer science division and the first in four years.

Other MGM scholars have come from Cornell University; UC Berkeley; Duke University; Rutgers; the Russian Academy of Sciences; and the Boris Kidric Institute of Nuclear Science, Belgrade, Yugoslavia. DePillis is the first researcher to come from an undergraduate institution.

The ODE Architect CD-ROM has been named one of “The Nine Best Digital Projects on the Planet” by NewMedia magazine in its December, 1998, issue. ODE Architect was one of 1,080 entries in 40 categories submitted to the New Media INVISION '98 Awards and one of only nine given an Award of Excellence. ODE Architect also won a gold medal in the category of Higher Education.

The project was headquatered at HMC by the co-PI's Professors Robert Borrelli and Courtney Coleman with support from the National Science Foundation, John Wiley & Sons, and INTELLIPRO, Inc..

HMC Math student Aaron Archer '98 was awarded second place for the 1998 Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize. This nationwide award is given to an undergraduate with outstanding research accomplishments in the mathematical sciences. The prize is offered by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), the American Mathematical Society, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Archer's award was based on the strength of research papers he wrote while a student at HMC. He is currently a Ph.D. student at Cornell University.

The Mathematical Association of America's Carl B. Allendoerfer Award for the Mathematics Magazine article ``Variations on an Irrational Theme-Geometry, Dynamics, Algebra'', 70 (1997), 93-104, co-authored with Dan Kalman, and Robert Mena.

The nationally recognized mathematics program at Harvey Mudd College will be further enhanced by new funds from the National Science Foundation. A $60,000 grant will be used to promote interdisciplinary learning, introduce students to exciting new mathematical fields, and provide more opportunities to apply math to open-ended projects, providing what the NSF describes as a national model for better integrating the mathematical sciences.

Prof. Adolfo Rumbos (Pomona College) awards WIG Teaching Award in 1998.

The most prestigious award that Pomona College confers on members of the faculty is the Wig Distinguished Professorship Award. It is very important and valuable to faculty who are chosen.

This award was established in 1955 through an endowment generously provided by the late R. J. Wig, a long-time Trustee of Pomona College and former Chairman of the Board, and the late Anna Wig. Each spring the Wig Fund for Teaching Committee makes recommendations to the Board of Trustees, normally for up to six professors, each of whom receives an award of $7,500. The selected professors are announced at Commencement.

Judith V. Grabiner received the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award on August 9, 1996 at the Summer Mathfest in Seattle. Established in 1976, the Carl B. Allendoerfer Awards, consisting of a citation and cash prize, are presented by the Mathematical Association of America for articles of expository excellence published in Mathematics Magazine. [more...]

Judith V. Grabiner receives the Lester R. Ford Award in 1995. The Lester R. Ford Awards were established in 1964 to recognize authors of articles of expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly or Mathematics Magazine. Beginning in 1976, a separate award (the Allendoerfer Award) was created for Mathematics Magazine. The awards are named for Lester R. Ford, Sr., a distinguished mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly, 1942-1946, and President of the Mathematical Association of America, 1947-1948. This is an award of $500. Up to five of these awards are given annually at the Summer Meeting of the Association. All awards given from 1976 on are for articles that appeared in The American Mathematical Monthly.

Prof. Shahriar Shahriari of Pomona College received a WIG Teaching Award, Pomona College in May 1993. 

Click here for more information about the WIG Award.

This workbook was designed for use with differential equation software on all machines, by Robert Borrelli and Courtney Coleman of Harvey Mudd College, and William Boyce of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The workbook was one of the recipients of the 1993 EDUCOM Higher Education Software and Curriculum Innovation Awards.

For more information, click HERE.