Greetings from West Lafayette, where the spring semester has been like none other. With the solar eclipse and the men’s basketball team’s success, there has been extra excitement and energy on campus.
Despite these extraordinary circumstances, the academic mission of the university is ongoing and evident. That’s why I want to highlight our undergraduate teaching and mentoring missions.
The Department of Mathematics interacts with nearly 100% of Purdue undergraduate students on the West Lafayette campus during their programs of study. There are nearly 40,000 undergraduates enrolled for the 2023-24 academic year, and 23,000 were enrolled undergraduate mathematics courses this year: 13000 in the fall and 10000 in the spring. The biggest enrollments were in calculus courses followed by algebra courses with strong enrollments in the actuarial courses that we share with the Department of Statistics.
The full list of course offerings is expansive and covers many levels and interests. All are delivered by our excellent teaching faculty. I want to highlight faculty who have received teaching awards this year.
• Joe Chen, Lead Operations Administrator and Senior Lecturer, has a large following of students who watch his "Chenflix" calculus videos; he recently won Thumbs Up and #2 Best UGR teacher by Exponent.
• Professor Birgit Kaufmann, who last summer took over the position of the Associate Head of Graduate Studies, is now in Purdue's Book of Great Teachers.
• Professor Johnny Brown won a 2023 Special Boilermaker Award in September honoring his significant contributions to the improvement of the quality of life and the betterment of the educational experience for a substantial number of Purdue students.
Our instructors inspire and enrich the lives of many students not just in classrooms, but through office hours, research supervision, our mentoring program, and the long-standing program Feasting with Faculty.
The value of our teaching mission to the university cannot be understated. Purdue’s reputation as a top STEM university is due in large part to a strong foundation in mathematics. Our teaching faculty make a lasting impression on thousands of students and, like a total solar eclipse or a basketball championship, they should be celebrated.
With best wishes,
Irena
Irena Swanson, Professor and Department Head
FACULTY NEWS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING AWARD
Congratulations to Birgit Kaufmann on her induction to The Book of Great Teachers. The book bears the names of 467 Purdue University faculty members, past and present, who have devoted their lives to excellence in teaching and scholarship. They were chosen by their students and their peers as Purdue's finest educators.
NEW PROGRAM DIRECTOR NAMED
Gregery Buzzard has been named the new Director of The Center for Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM). He stared in the role on February 1, 2024. CCAM offers a comprehensive graduate educational and research program in applied and computational mathematics and promotes both fundamental research and scientific and engineering applications. Buzzard said, “I'm happy to take up this role and look forward to building on Purdue's long-standing strength in applied math.”
LIN LEADS $3.6M NIH GRANT
Advanced imaging and machine learning may improve the way doctors detect and treat cardiomyopathy, the leading cause of death for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD). Purdue mathematics and mechanical engineering professor Guang Lin is co-principal investigator of a $3.6M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change the grim outlook for these patients.
BERND ULRICH DELIVERS CHERN LECTURE
Bernd Ulrich, professor of mathematics, was chosen to present the 2023-24 Chern Lecture at the University of California Berkeley. He delivered a series of three lectures over three days, November 7, 8, and 9, 2023. The lecture honors UC-Berkely professor emeritus Shiing-Shen Chern (1911-2004), who is widely regarded as the greatest geometer of his generation.
Professor Ulrich is a Fellow of the AMS, spent three semesters at MSRI, where he held a Research Professorship in 2012/13, was a Simons Foundation Fellow in 2013, and will spend the Spring of 2024 at SLMath as a Clay Senior Scholar
ACTUARIAL SCIENCE PROGRAM COMMENDED BY CAS
The Actuarial Science program has received a 2024 Silver Level award from the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) as an academic institution with a demonstrated commitment to preparing property and casualty actuaries. In 2022 the Society of Actuaries (SOA) designated Purdue University as a Center of Actuarial Excellence.
RECENT BOOK PUBLICATIONS
Professor Jaroslaw Wlodarczyk is co-author of "New Techniques in Resolution of Singularities."
Assistant professor Matthew Novak has co-authored “Intermittent Convex Integration for the 3D Euler Equations.”
LIN JOINS ARGONNE-PURDUE PARTNERSHIP
Guang Lin, associate dean of research and innovation and professor of both mathematics and mechanical engineering was the first joint appointment in the Argonne-Purdue partnership. Lin's research focuses on big data analysis and statistical machine learning, predictive modeling and uncertainty quantification, scientific computing and computational fluid dynamos and stochastic multi scale modeling. At Argonne, Lin will work in the mathematics and computer science division.
PURDUE DAY OF GIVING
Every gift adds up to excellence at scale! On April 24, let's rally once more around mathematics at Purdue! Visit our website to learn how you can get involved and how you can give. Support scholarships, the departmental excellence fund and more.
ALUMNI UPDATES
Mathematics alumna Lynn Schreyer has been honored as a 2024 Distinguished Purdue Alumni Scholar. She received her PhD in Applied Mathematics from Purdue in 1994 followed by a post doc in the Agronomy department. Now a professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at Washington State University, Lynn has been President of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Activity Group on Geosciences, and worked on modeling a wide variety of problems including smart materials, movement of contaminants in groundwater, drug delivery, cheese, and refugee movement.
MATHEMATICS ALUMMUS HONORED BY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE
Undergraduate Accomplishments
STUDENT RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS SCHAFER AWARD
Congratulations to Meenakshi McNamara, who was named a recipient of the 2024 Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics. The award is given annually to an undergraduate woman who exhibits excellence in mathematics. Meenakshi, a double major in mathematics and physics, received the award during the Joint Prize Session on Wednesday, January 3, 2024 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco.
PURDUE EXCELS IN PUTNAM EXAM
Mathematics students Sukrith Raman, Lingjie Fang and William Lin put Purdue in the top 10% of universities participating in the 84th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition®. Associate professor Victor Lie is the Purdue University coordinator for the Putnam exam. The preeminent mathematics competition for undergraduate students in the US and Canada included more than 5000 students from more than 500 colleges and universities.