NEWSLETTER
Volume 1, Issue 2 - Spring, 2005


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Contents

• Message from the Head
• Name the Newsletter finalists
• News from the Math + Stats Club
• Alumni News
• Scholarship Winners 2005-06
• Graduate Student News
• Conferences and Events
• Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications Conference
• Grant News
• Publications
• Department News
• New Furniture Update
• Poster Sponsored by Faculty of Science
• Math Challenge Solutions
• Bits and Pieces

My congratulations to Dr. Frank Lemire and Dr. Sudhir Paul, on achieving the rank of University Professor, effective July 1, 2005.

I’d like to wish everyone a safe, happy and productive summer!

S.E. Ahmed, Head

The finalists are:

In addition to the lectures we hosted over the course of the semester, many of you probably remember our Pi(e) Day Meet and Greet. We even drew up a pie graph to see if we would end up with an even distribution of the types of pie over the long term. (For those of you who are curious, though, apparently unlike pi's even distribution of digits, our pie had a statistically significant increase in the occurrence of blueberry pie slices taken.) Next year we also hope to be able to sponsor a pi(e) recitation contest, a pi(e) decorating contest and a pi(e) eating contest as a part of our Pi(e) Day festivities. I can also say for sure that the “First year Math and Stats cheat-shirts” will be making an appearance in the foreseeable future and will be made available to anyone interested in purchasing some.

In other news, we are currently holding our nominations for all executive positions for the Math + Stats Club and so, while there are a lot of great ideas in the works for future Math + Stats Club events, I will leave them to the incoming President to share with everyone. For myself, I am heartened to see the interest from students and staff in our activities and to hear the discussions of some of the interesting mathematical questions that our lecturers and members have brought up.

As a final note, I would like to bid a fond farewell to Samid Hoda on behalf of the Math + Stats Club, which he has been so instrumental in helping us to create. Thank you all again for the support you have shown so far and we look forward to seeing everyone again in the fall.

Allison Oldfield, President

Alumni News

Sakin Emmanuel (M.Sc. Mathematics, 2003, Drs Z. Hu and T. Traynor supervisors), was appointed as a faculty in the Department of Continuing Education, Humber College, Toronto, January 2005.

Paul Fabris,  (B.A. Mathematics, 1987), went on to get a B. Ed and M. Ed. (2001). He is currently teaching at Belle River District High School.

Dr. Xing Jiang (Ph.D. Statistics, 2004, Dr. S. Paul supervisor), has been hired in a tenure-track position at King’s College at the University of Western Ontario.

Kristen Palmer (B.Sc. Mathematics, 1992) is currently employed by Canadian Tire Bank as an Associate Manager in Scoring & Modeling.

Dan Reaume (B.Sc. Mathematics, 1992) is currently employed as a Staff Research Engineer at General Motors.  He will be one of the speakers at the 5th Annual MOPTA Conference.

Shafiu Jibrin (M.Sc. Mathematics, 1993, supervisor Dr. R. Caron), is currently an Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ.

Shahedul Khan, (M.Sc. Statistics, 2005, supervisor Dr. K. Fung), will continue to pursue his Ph.D. degree in Statistics at the University of Waterloo this fall.

Dr. Krishna Saha (Ph.D. Statistics, 2004, Dr. S. Paul supervisor), has been hired at the University of Minnesota in a tenure-track position.

Chris Wills, (M.Sc. Statistics, 2004, Dr. K. Fung, supervisor) just finished his B.Ed. degree program from the University of Western Ontario.  Chris will be teaching at a secondary school in Gravesend, in the U.K.

Scholarship Winners 2005-06

Congratulations to the following students who won scholarships for the 2005-06 ac academic year:

Ontario Graduate Scholarships in Science and Technology (OGSST)
Mohanad Al-Khasawneh
Fuhua Chen
Jianhua Hu

Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS)
Fuhua Chen
Justin Lariviere
Dawei Zheng

Internal Graduate Scholarships (1st round)
Al-Khasawneh, Mohanad
An, Lihua
Aziz, Mohammad
Cao, Haiping
Chang, Dongfang
Chen, Baojiang
Ghori, Razi
He, Andong
Hossain, Md. Shakhawat
Liu, Hongtao
Shen, Qifeng
Tang, Jing
Xu, Linan
Zheng, Dawei
Zogheib, Bashar

Internal Graduate Scholarships (2nd round)
Alam, S. M. Khurshid
Cao, Hui
Liu, Jian Lin
Ma, Wenguo
Mengash, Nahid
Ramasundarahettige, C.
Ruvinova, Margarita
Tavolieri, Christopher
Tomal, Jabed
Wang, Qing
Xue, Dan
Yang, Ye
Zhang, Xuemao

2005 NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award
Debbie Loach

Congratulations to the following students who successfully defended their dissertation, theses, or major papers this semester.

Student		Supervisor(s)	Title
Battaglia, John	M.Sc.	Dr. R. Caron	The Eigenstep Method: A new Iterative Method for Unconstrained Quadratic Optimization
Casey, John	M.Sc.	Dr. R. Caron, Dr. L. Buchanan	The Mathematics Structure of Semantic Distances in Language Analysis
Ke, Xiaowu	Ph.D.	Dr. R. Caron, Dr. Y. Aneja	School Bus Selection, Routing and Scheduling
Khan, Shahedul	M.Sc.	Dr. K. Fung	Analysis of Recurrent Event Data with Environmental    Covariates
Min, Wen	M.Sc.	Dr. M. Hlynka	Exploratory Statistical Study of eBay Textbook Auctions
Shen, Qifeng	M.Sc.	Dr. Z. Hu	Haagerup Tensor Products of Operator Spaces
Zhang, Xuemao	M.Sc.	Drs. Z. Hu & M.S. Monfared	Fourier Analysis and Operator Space Theory

Annual Conference of the Society for Investigative Dermatology May 4-7, 2005, St. Louis, Missouri

Jerry Tan and Karen Fung presented "Demographics and descriptive epidemiology of acne patients: the Canadian acne epidemiological survey".

Canadian Mathematics Education Forum May 6 - 8 Toronto

Rick Caron attended with Alumni Rick Schell and Bruce White.  Dr. Caron was a member of the program committee.

CORS 2005 National Conference of the Canadian Operational Research Society May 16-18 Halifax

Rick Caron was a member of the organizing committee responsible for the Mathematical Programming Sessions.

Some of the talks were:

Y. P Aneja (Cross Appointment) and K. P. Nair,  "On the Most Vital Arc Problem".

R.J.Caron, L.Buchanan, K. Durda, and J. Casey, "The Mathematical Structure of Semantic Distances in Language Analysis".

2005 Canadian Symposium on Abstract Harmonic Analysis, June 2-3, Waterloo, ON

Zhiguo Hu and Mehdi S. Monfared will attend this conference.

Canadian Mathemtical Society June 4 - 6 Waterloo

Rick Caron will attend as a member of the Board of Directors and the CMS Development Committee.

Zhiguo Hu and Mehdi S. Monfared will also attend this conference.

Southern Ontario Matrices and Statistics Days (SOMSD), June 9-10, 2005, University of Windsor

http://www.uwindsor.ca/somsd

S. Ejaz Ahmed and Abdul Hussein are among the members of the     organizing committee.

CFD 2005, the 13th Annual Conference of the CFD Society of Canada, July 31- Aug 3, 2005, St. John's, NFLD.

R.M. Barron, Z. Zhang and C.-F. An:  "Computational Aero-Acoustic Study of Airflow over a Cavity".

Z. Zhang, R.M. Barron and C.-F. An:  "Post-Processing in Computational Aero-Acoustic Studies".

Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications (MOPTA) July 25-27, 2005 University of Windsor

http://www.uwindsor.ca/mopta

See below for an article about this conference, hosted by the University of Windsor Operational Research Group.

A volume with the abstracts of the invited and contributed talks will be distributed to all conference attendants.  Authors wishing to speak should submit an abstract by May 20, 2005 using the On-Line Abstract Submission Form available from  the conference website.

The members of the Organizing Committee are:  Dr. Richard J. Caron (Conference Chair), Dr. Tamas Terlaky (Program Chair), Dr. Mohammed Fazle Baki, Dr. GuoQing Zhang, and Dr. Abdo Alfakih.

Drs. Karen Fung (Math. & Stats), Emma Bartfay (Psychology) and Kevin Gorey, P.I. (Social Work), received approval from the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) for their project, titled “Social, prognostic and therapeutic factors associated with colon cancer survival on Canada and the United States: Health care access and effectiveness in diverse urban and rural contexts, 1983 to 2008” for $293,050 from 2005 to 2008.

(from the Report from the Dean, Faculty of Science, 4/22/05)

Dr. Guoqing Zhang, Industrial Engineering, and Dr. Richard Caron, Mathematics and Statistics, are new investigators on the project titled "New Interior Point Methods and Software for Convex Convic-Linear Optimization and their Application to solve VLSI Circuit Layout Problems" led by Dr. Tamas Terlaky at McMaster University. Both Dr. Zhang and Caron were allocated an award for the year 2004/2005.  The University of Windsor will soon become a member of MITACS. The Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) is one of the 21 federally funded Networks of Centres of Excellence. Currently, MITACS researchers are active at 36 Canadian Universities.

(from the Report from the Dean, Faculty of Science, 2/17/05)

Publications

Karen Fung, Isaac Luginaah, Kevin Gorey, Greg Webster "Air pollution and daily hospitalizaion for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in London, Ontario", accepted for publication in International Journal of Environmental Studies.

Isaac Luginaah, Karen Fung, Kevin Gorey, Greg Webster, Chris Wills "Association of ambient air pollution with respiratory hospitalization in a Government designated 'Area of concern': the case of Windsor, Ontario". Environmental Health Perspectives, 113:290-296, (2005).

Duggal, K.L.,  Bejan, C.L. Global Lightlike Manifolds and Harmonicity, Kodai Math. J. 28 (2005), 131-145.

K. L. Duggal and B. Sahin (Turkey). Screen Cauchy Riemann lightlike submanifolds, Acta Math. Hungar. 106(1-2) (2005), 137-165.

Z. Hu, "Maximally decomposable von Neumann algebras on locally compact groups and duality", the Houston Journal of Mathematics, 31(2005), 857-881.

Madhan Balagurusamy won the Winter, 2005 Intramural Table Tennis Tournament, held January 28, 2005.  This was his second win in a row.

To celebrate this achievement, Madhan received a plaque at the Championship dinner, which was held April 15, 2005.

Putnam Mathematical Competition

Three University of Windsor students participated in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition, held December 4, 2004. 

Ricky Bundritt, Laura Hurajt, and Emmanuel Okwunwa all received $25 gift certificates from the University Bookstore in recognition of their participation in this prestigious event.

Pi Day

The Math + Stats Club celebrated Pi Day (March 14, 2005), by serving slices of pie to the Department’s Faculty and staff.

Actuarial Exams

The latest set of Actuarial Exams were written  May 18 and 19, 2005.  The next  set of exams will be written in November.  See Dr. Myron Hlynka for details.

University Professors
Dr. Frank Lemire and Dr. Sudhir Paul have been promoted to the rank of University Professor, effective July 1, 2005.  Congratulations!!!

Senate Representative for the Department

Dr. Karen Fung will serve as a Senate Representative from 2005 to 2007.

Faculty Phone Campaign

Thanks to Drs Ahmed, Gold, Hussein, and Paul for participating in this year’s Faculty Phone Campaign.  This event is a great recruiting tool.  Faculty contact students that have been admitted into the University, but have not yet made up their minds.  Students appreciate that faculty from the program to which they have been accepted contact them to answer questions about our programs.

A New Arrival

Departures

Mandy Dumouchelle’ s last day with the Department was April 29th.  Mandy was replacing Marija Argoselo, the Department’s nine-month secretary, who returns from maternity leave on August 1.

Samid Hoda, the Department’s Math Technician will be leaving the Department on July 31 to start his Ph.D. studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Chairs in the Father Faught Conference Room have recently been replaced.  A large number of the old chairs, purchased in the mid-80’s, were broken, and the rest were definitely on the road to disrepair.  A big thank you goes out to Alumni donors and the Faculty of Science for providing funds for these updates.

Funding has also been provided by the Faculty of Science to replace the computers in the graduate student lab.

Please see http://www.abelprisen.no/en/ for more details on the Abel prize.

Postage stamps honor scientists

Included in this group is John von Neumann, who was one of the top mathematicians of the 20th century.