We want to extend a warm invitation to this year’s Cantrell lecture series. We are excited that Professor Jerrold Marsden of Cal Tech will be giving the lectures this year. We are well aware of Jerry’s abilities as a stimulating and entertaining speaker a

September 24, 2001

Dear Friends and Graduates of UGA’s Mathematics Department:

GREETINGS from the Department of Mathematics. It is our sincere hope that this annual letter finds you doing well in all aspects of your life. I am writing you, the members of the extended mathematics department, to provide an update of recent and upcoming activities. The 2000-2001 year was an outstanding year for the Department of Mathematics. It was the 50th anniversary of graduating the first mathematics PhD by our department. It was a year of great productivity in instruction, research, external grants, and hiring. Let me offer you just a few highlights from the department’s instructional and research activities.

Instruction: In keeping up with our instructional mission, the department taught 9,836 students in a total of 358 sections covering the full range of undergraduate and graduate curriculum. This year we graduated 17 undergraduate mathematics majors, 4 Masters, and 2 Ph.Ds. The department prides itself in a conscientious approach to instruction of the individual student in small classes. The development of an innovative curriculum serving the needs of students is the department’s utmost goal. While we continue to develop the department’s new major Mathematics with Computer Science, we offered the course MATH 3610, Theoretical Computer Science, for the first time in 2000-2001. More computational courses such as signal processing, control theory, dynamic systems, etc, and interdisciplinary courses such as mathematical ecology, mathematical physiology, etc, are under development. The Discrete Mathematics course, MATH 2600, developed to support the Fungal Genomics degree certificate program, will be offered in 2001-2002 academic year. An undergraduate Functional Analysis course was developed in 2000-2001 and will be offered in 2001-2002. Our commitment to teaching is reflected in the awards our faculty members and TAs have won:

Dr. Ed Azoff won a Meigs Award, the granddaddy of all teaching awards at UGA.
Dr. Malcolm Adams, won a Special Sandy Beaver Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Sybilla Beckmann Kazez won a Sandy Beaver Teaching Professorship.
Dr. John Gosselin received a Learning Technology grant.
Gerard Awanou, a graduate student, was awarded the third William Armour Wills Memorial Scholarship.
Steve Donnelly, another graduate student, was awarded the second Ball Memorial Scholarship.
The graduate assistants Daniele Arcara and Tanya Cofer each won the university’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.
Paul Pollack was the 2001 winner of the Charles M. Strahan Award for the outstanding junior mathematics major. As a freshman, he was placed in the top 5% on the Putnam exam.
Ms. Catalina Afanador won the Kossack Calculus Prize.

The recent and upcoming activities of the mathematics club are presented on the club’s web page at http://www.arches.uga.edu/~mathclub/. The club’s President and student members extend a warm invitation for you to join in their monthly activities. As in the past, we would appreciate hearing from you concerning any co-op opportunities or summer job prospects for our undergraduates. We are blessed with many talented undergraduate and graduate students who continue to be a great source of pride and offer us comfort about the future of mathematics.

Research: The department enjoyed a year of robust research activities. External funding reached an all time high with $1,306,409 awarded or recommended for an award during the period July 1, 2000– June 30, 2001. The research awards garnered by 23 faculty members are evidence of the emerging research prominence of the department in several areas including algebra, algebraic geometry, applied mathematics, number theory, and representation theory. The faculty members, postdoctoral associates, and students of the department published a total of 101 research articles in various international mathematics journals during 2000-2001. Our department is one of the fortunate and deserving mathematics departments in the country to receive the NSF’s VIGRE (Verticl Integration of Research and Education) in the amount of $481,667 per year for the next five years. This grant supports 12 undergraduate students for summer research projects in addition to four regular postdoctoral associates and ten graduate students per year for five years. To these, I add the following awards and recognitions:

Dr. Dhandapani Kannan was elected as an Academician member of the Russian Academy of Nonlinear Sciences, an international recognition.
Dr. Valery Alexeev, won a Creative Research Medal.
The graduate students Gerard Awanou, Steve Donnelly, and Vitali Vologodski won the Graduate School’s Final Year Award.

The success of the department’s postdoctoral program can be gauged by the fact that 4 of the current eleven postdoctoral fellows received NSF grants during the past year. We could keep on bragging but you get the picture of how proud we are of our faculty and students.

Promotions and appointments: Dr. Elham Izadi was promoted to Associate Professor and Dr. Qing Zhang was promoted to full Professor. We have hired Matt Baker (number theory) and Akos Magyar (harmonic analysis) at the assistant professor rank, and Dan Nakano (representation theory) at the associate professor rank. Including the four VIGRE postdocs, we now have eleven postdoctoral associates in our department. In 2001-02, we will hire two faculty members, one in connection with The Board of Regents’ teacher-preparation initiative, and the other in applied mathematics.

Dr. Kevin Clancey retired on May 9, 2001. He has been an exemplary Head of the Department. The University of Louisville is fortunate to have him as their current Head.

We are happy to inform you that Professor Jon Alperin of The University of Chicago will deliver the 8th James C. Cantrell Lectures during the Spring 2002 semester. As soon as the dates are confirmed, we will announce the specifics of this year’s lectures on our web page. It was very nice to see many of you at the Cantrell lectures delivered by Karen Uhlenbeck this past April.

The department gratefully acknowledges the following generous donations: $18,000 from NTRU Cryptosystems for Hollingsworth Scholarship Fund; $7,000 from our former colleague Dr. Carl Pomerance and $7,000 from Lucent Technology matching Carl’s donation, both for the Cantrell Lecture Fund. Also, the department has benefited in many ways from your generosity during the past several years. Donations, big and small, always help to further the missions of the department. Here on campus, we are able to see the direct impact of gifts to the department, which support scholarships, research and lecture visitors, awards recognizing students, etc. These enhancements in the lives of students and the department have a very visible and long-lasting effect. This year, the department would like to especially encourage gifts to honor Carol and David Penney’s many contributions to undergraduate instruction at The University of Georgia. Funds given to our general departmental account (University of Georgia Foundation account #50-9400) in Carol and David’s honor will be used to recognize undergraduate achievement in mathematics.

We are always eager to see you in the department; please visit us as often as you can. We are also only an internet connection away at http://www.math.uga.edu. Also please register as alumni on our home page at http://www.math.uga.edu/~curr/alum.html. On behalf of the faculty, students, and staff of the Department of Mathematics I wish you the best until our curves intersect.

Best regards,

Dan Kannan, Head