University of Pittsburgh: Department of Mathematics

Past Issues

Spring 2003

	Undergraduate News
	Pitt Math Major Awarded Marshall Scholarship Cynthia Kinnan, a double major in mathematics and economics, has been named as one of 40 Marshall Scholarship winners nationwide for 2003, beating off competition from 950 candidates nominated by over 50 univesrities across the US. The scholarship funds study at a British university for 2 or 3 years. Cynthia plans to use her scholarship to get a masters degree at the London School of Economics. Ms Kinnan is president of Pitt's chapter of Amnesty International. She is also Debate All-American for 2002. Last Summer she visited Shanghai and Nanjing to resaerch into the state of the local economy. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has More
	COMAP Modeling Competition This spring the University of Pittsburgh entered its first ever team in the COMAP (Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications) Mathematical Contest in Modelling. Three undergraduates Jasun Gong, Romeo Ahohe and Sevak Mkrtchyan worked for four days to produce their paper "Shoot to Kill: Sphere Packing Algorithms for Gamma-Knife Treatments". Their entry was one of 639 from over 11 countries. The University of Pittsburgh team received an Honorable Mention, placing it in the top third of all teams. The team was coached by Andrew Marsh and Jon Rubin. More
	Integration Bee The Third Annual Integration Bee was held on Thursday, March 13th, at 8PM in room 343 of Alumni Hall. In a closely contested competition, 27 Pitt undergrad students competed for $200 of Pitt Bookstore gift certificates, donated by the University of Pittsburgh Honors College. Their efforts were cheered by a crowd of over 100 students (grad and undergrad), faculty, and parents. Congratulations to Integration Champ, Pedram Roushan, to first runner-up Dorian Croitoru, and to prize-winners Romeo Ahohe and Sevak Mkrtchyan. The organizers (Jon Rubin, Carson Chow and Bill Troy) thank all who helped out: Jyotsna Diwadkar, Qi Mi, Dan Radelet (math grad students), Traci Mills, LaVerne Lally (math staff), Karen Billingsley (Honors College), Jim Stango, Xianyi Tang (physics).
	Putnam Prize Success The 63rd annual Putnam Prize was held December 7, 2002. Designed to `stimulate a healthful rivalry in mathematical studies', the competition is `open only to regularly enrolled undergraduates, in colleges and universities of the United States and Canada, who have not yet received a college degree'. The Pitt Math team of Dorian Croitoru, Sevak Mkrtchyan and Rupert Venzke (coached and directed by Greg Constantine and George Sparling), spent 6 hours tackling the fiendish Putnam problems. They were competing against over 3000 participants in teams from 450 colleges. Continuing the tradition of previous years, the team did very well coming 17th overall - one place better than last year. Sevak Mkrtchyan won an Honorable Mention with a splendid performance. Greg Constantine writes: `this is one more step toward our goal of a top ten place. Aside from Sevak, Rupert Venzke and Dorian Croitoru continued their extraordinary input in tearing down at the ever so clever and challenging Putnam problem sets. Congratulations!'
	Graduate News
	Fellowships, Fellowships, Fellowships In a highly successful year, three graduate students from the Math Department were awarded Mellon Fellowships in a university wide competition. Congratulations to: Adrian Dunca, Andras Domokos and Songul Kaya. One of the 5 hotly contested FAS-PBC fellowships was won by incoming math student Aushra Abouzeid.
	Faculty
	ESP: Enhancing Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation It is said that our education system is in crisis - especially the teaching of math and science. But in fact some schools, some teachers have exceptional success. What is this `best practise'? How can it be brought to all schools and all teachers? Drs Beverly Michael and Paul Gartside of the Math Department, and Peg Smith and Ellen Ansell from the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh have been awarded just under $1 million by the NSF to fund a three year project called ESP. The goal of the ESP project is to address the challenges currently faced in mathematics teacher education. The planned action is three-fold: the creation of two new math courses to make the link between modern mathematics and the mathematics needed for teaching, this will include the participation of students in supervising High School students working on math research projects; improving existing programs in the School of Education to take account of best practise; and to develop a cadre of mentor teachers to carry best practise into our local schools. More
	`Spring Flowers' Party The Math Department's much loved `Spring Flowers' (aka `Snow Angels') Maria Yotov and Ellen Rubin are back in action. Maria writes: `The long cold winter...OVER. Spring has arrived... BEAUTIFUL and SUNNY (except today)! And it is the end of the semester! LET'S HAVE A PARTY!!!'. ... And so we will :-) April 18th.

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