PROMOTIONS Professor
Douglas Arnold gave an invited
one-hour address at the International
Congress of Mathematicians held
in Beijing in August 2002 .
His address dealt with computer
solutions Professor
Mark Keel was awarded the McKnight
Land Grant Professorship of
the University of Professor Tian-Jun Li has also been awarded the McKnight Land Grant Professorship of the University of Minnesota. As mentioned above, this is a major University-wide honor. Professor
Mitchell Luskin gave an Invited
Lecture at the International
Congress of Mathematicians held
in Beijing during August 2002
on Computational Methods for
Phase Transitions and Microstructure.
His talk described computational
methods and mathematical analysis
for structural phase transitions
in crystals such as the transformation
from a cubic to a tetragonal
phase. Computational and mathematical
challenges addressed included
Professor Luskin presented a numerical analysis of microstructure and used this theory to construct computational methods for the deformation of crystals that undergo a structural phase transformation. He presented computational methods and results obtained with Pavel Belik to numerically model the reversible deformation of a single crystal thin film that undergoes a structural phase transformation. Professor Zeitouni gave an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Beijing in August 2002. His talk dealt with recent progress in the study of random walks in random environments. Classical random walk can be described as the trajectory a walker takes in downtown Minneapolis, where
at each intersection she tosses
a (fair) coin in order to decide
at which direction to move next.
The walk becomes a random walk
in random environment (RWRE) if,
at each intersection, one direction
is more likely to be taken than
others, and the assignment of
this
preferred direction is made, once
and for all, randomly and independently
between intersections. RWRE’s
are used to model a variety of
physical motions in random media,
such as light scattering, and
have also been used in the modeling
of population growth in biology.
Professor Zeitouni’s talk
focused on new techniques based
on the notion of regeneration
times, that have played a major
role in recent advances in the
analysis of multidimensional RWRE’s.
BOCHER MEMORIAL PRIZE AWARDED TO ALUMNUS FANG HUA LIN Professor Fang Hua Lin, who received his Ph.D. from our department in 1985, was awarded the 2002 Bocher  Memorial
Prize of the American Mathematical
Society. The prize citation mentions
“his fundamental contributions
to our understanding of the Ginzburg-Landau
equations with a small parameter”
and “also recognizes his
many deep contributions to harmonic
maps and liquid crystals.”
He is currently a Professor of
Mathematics at New York University.
His other major awards and recognitions,
too numerous to list here, include
the Presidential Young Investigator
Award (1989-1994) as well as an
invited address at the 1990 International
Congress of Mathematicians in
Kyoto, Japan. Even as a graduate
student here Fang Hua was a legend
in the department and published
many papers before completing
his studies. His Ph.D. advisor
was Professor Robert Hardt. Over
the years he has visited the department
on many occasions, in particular
as a Distinguished Ordway Visiting
Professor in 1999. We congratulate
him on this great recognition. |
of partial differential equations
underlying the simulation of
a vast array of phenomena in
diverse fields such as
fluid dynamics, electro-magnetics,
and gravitational physics. The
effectiveness of such solutions
depends crucially on the development
of stable numerical algorithms.
In many cases the design of
stable algorithms turns out
to be subtly connected to geometric
structures underlying the partial
differential equations. This
new geometric viewpoint provides
a unifying understanding of
a variety of innovative numerical
methods developed over recent
decades, in particular for the
stable approximation of electro-magnetic
problems. Very recently it has
enabled the development of new
algorithms for elasticity problems
with properties previously unattainable.
And it seems likely to provide
an important element for the
solution of numerical problems
beyond current capabilities,
such as the simulation of gravitational
wave emission from colliding
black holes. 
Minnesota,
a major University-wide honor.
Mark has also been awarded a
Sloan Research Fellowship, a
highly prestigious nation-wide
award.
transformations
between metastable states (local
minima of the energy) and the
numerical approximation of complex
microstructure (the simplest
microstructure is a laminate
that oscillates on a fine scale
between symmetry-related states).