Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

School of Mathematics Professor Haomin Zhou has been named one of two recipients of the 2019 Feng Kang Prize. The prize is awarded every two years to Chinese mathematicians working in computational mathematics.

The award recognizes Zhou's contributions in two areas: the development of computational method based on wavelets and partial differential equations for signal/image procesing and the theory of optimal transport on graphs and its applications to engineering.

Winners are selected by the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. The prize is named after Feng Kang, the famous mathematician and physicist who pioneered Chinese computational mathematics.

Zhou shares the 2019 prize with Jun Hu, a mathematics professor in Peking University, in Beijing.  

College of Sciences faculty raised a historic amount of external research funding in fiscal year 2019. At $70.5 million, the FY2019 total continues the College’s steady gains in external grants for the past several years. The ability to attract research funds bodes well for the College’s research productivity, ability to train students, and opportunities for new discoveries in fundamental science for many years to come, says Associate Dean for Research Julia Kubanek.

Scientific research to discover new knowledge and solve problems is hard and costs money, says M.G. Finn, professor and chair in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Results are not guaranteed. “How do we support an endeavor that has many more ‘failures’ than successes?”

External funding is essential. “It helps connect our faculty to the most important fundamental and applied problems among a limitless set of possible projects,” Finn says. “It also provides the resources to give our students the chance to fail repeatedly, and thereby learn how to succeed.  Increasing funding is a good sign that we are selecting good topics to research, failing in productive ways, and ultimately succeeding in uncovering new knowledge and valued applications of that knowledge.”  

The College of Sciences’ success can be attributed to two other factors. Faculty are applying for grant dollars at increasing rates, says Kubanek, who is also a professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and of Chemistry and Biochemistry. And “we are continuing to submit to federal funding agencies high-quality proposals, despite the increase in reporting, compliance, and other requirements, thanks to staff who support principal investigators in preparing proposals and managing grants.”

 “External funding is essential for our mission of providing students with an outstanding training and fostering a vibrant environment of transformative research,” says Pablo Laguna, professor and chair in the School of Physics. The school saw a dramatic rise in external funding, almost doubling from FY2018. “The rise in external funding in FY2019 reflects the commitment of my colleagues to ensure that we accomplish this mission. New awards in the areas of Astrophysics, Physics of Living Systems, and Atomic and Molecular and Optical Physics were largely responsible for this increase.”

The awards support a wide range of research activities, from exploration of Jupiter’s moon Europa (Britney Schmidt, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), to algebraic geometry and extremal combinatorics (Greg Blekherman, School of Mathematics), to wearable hydration technologies (Mindy Millard-Stafford, School of Biological Sciences).

Support came mostly from public sources. For example, Nepomuk Otte received NASA funding for the project “Development of a Photon Detection Module for the Detection of Cosmogenic Neutrinos.” The project aims to develop instrumentation to detect ultra-relativistic neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

 Neutrinos are elementary particles that help us understand the origin and composition of the highest energy cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are charged particles, which bombard the Earth from all directions. “Where they come from, what their composition is, and how they acquire their relativistic energies is a century-old mystery,” says Otte, who is an associate professor in the School of Physics. “One way to find out is by measuring neutrinos, which are produced by these cosmic rays. With the instrumentation developed in this project it will be possible to build new experiments that have the sensitivity to detect ultra-relativisitic neutrinos for the first time.”  

Meanwhile, Vinayak Agarwal received ongoing National Institutes of Health funding for the project “Understanding Natural Production of Polybrominated Toxins and Pollutants.” Molecules bearing several bromine atoms produced naturally in marine ecosystems can harm human health and the environment. “We do not know how these molecules are made, nor the identities of their producers,” says Agarwal, who is an assistant professor in the Schools of Chemistry and Biochemistry and of Biological Sciences. This research aims to bridge these knowledge gaps and could affect public health policies to mitigate human exposure to natural harmful compounds.

From the Guardian News Story:

Ultimately, though, where you are sat on a flight can dictate what lurgies you end up with. Howard Weiss, a biomathematician at the Georgia Institute of Technology, modelled behaviour on flights and calculated the risks of becoming ill with airborne diseases. “Direct transmission of diseases such as flu is very unlikely beyond passengers seated about a metre away from the infected passenger,” says Weiss. “For flu, I think the worst case was overall there would be two additional infections in the entire economy cabin.”

Weiss and his team also took swabs from planes. “What we found was the bacteria that you find in an airplane looks a lot like in your home or office. If you are not immune-compromised, then as long as you keep your hands away from your face, you’re probably going to be fine. People have this impression that airplanes are like sewers, but we’ve shown that’s not the case.”

For those who were around at the time, it was history forever burned into their memories, with the roar from a rocket as tall as a skyscraper and 11 scratchy-sounding words uttered from the surface of the Moon.

For those people, as well as those born after July 20, 1969, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing is a chance to loudly celebrate the advances in science and technology created by the space program.

“The money was well spent, and we should do it again,” says Bob McDonald, a Georgia Tech alumnus who, as a young engineer for a NASA contractor, worked on the engines in that Saturn V rocket that lifted astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into space on July 16,1969.

Armstrong and Aldrin piloted their lunar lander to the Moon’s surface on July 20, 1969. Later that day, Armstrong became the first man on the Moon. As he stepped off the lander, he told an estimated TV audience of a half-billion, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Those memories will flood back on Saturday, July 20, 50 years to the day since that moment in history. We asked some Georgia Tech College of Sciences researchers – and an alumnus with a special connection to that day – their thoughts on how Apollo 11 and the space program impacted the cause of science and technology in the U.S.

Bob McDonald

He’s 83 years old and enrolled in the Online Master of Science in Analytics program, making him Georgia Tech’s oldest graduate student, according to Georgia Tech Professional Education. This will be his fourth degree from Tech. He already has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (’57) and a Masters (’61) and Ph.D. (’66) in Nuclear Engineering. McDonald had a unique front-row seat for the Apollo program.

 “I was a brand new engineer working for Rocketdyne, who had a contract to manufacture the J2 engines for the Saturn rocket.  There were five J2s on the Saturn second stage to get into Earth orbit.  A single J2 powered the third stage to the Moon and back. 

“The J2 was a new, liquid hydrogen- and liquid oxygen-fueled engine. To prevent the rocket exhaust from melting the engine, liquid hydrogen was pumped through small tubes down to the end of the engine bell, then back up to the combustion chamber for burning.  My job was to do the heat transfer and flow calculations for the hydrogen in those tubes to make sure temperatures would be within design limits. This was prior to engine testing when the temperatures could be measured directly. When the engine was tested and performed correctly, my job was finished.

“One interesting thing about the [Apollo] project was that we already knew all the science and math needed for success. We knew where the Moon was, how far we had to travel, how long it would take, and how much energy was required.  What we did not have was any of the hardware, the machinery, or equipment necessary to make the trip.  Developing, testing, and learning to use the necessary equipment was a job for the engineers.  Engineering and science are like one pair of gloves, and both benefitted. At the end of the project the United States was stronger, more prosperous, and wiser than when it began. The money was well spent, and we should do it again.”

"The money was well spent, and we should do it again."

Jennifer Glass

An associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Glass was a NASA Astrobiology Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 2011 to 2013. Her research area is biogeochemistry.

“The Moon gives the Earth tides and stabilizes our climate by preventing the planet’s tilt from changing more than a few degrees. But until the Apollo program, we didn’t know exactly how old the Moon was or what it was made of. A major achievement of the Apollo program was reconstruction of the timeline of the Moon's formation. These data came from measurements of the isotopic composition of rock samples that Apollo 11 astronauts collected on the Moon 50 years ago this month. One of these scientists was my academic grandfather (my Ph.D. advisor’s Ph.D. advisor), the late Gerald Wasserburg, who ran a lab at Caltech called the ‘Lunatic Asylum’. 

“Perhaps the most important emblem of the Apollo program was the iconic photo of Earth rising over the lunar horizon, captured by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders. The Earthrise photo profoundly changed human consciousness. That image made people realize how special our own planet is – a pale blue dot against the vastness of space. It ushered in the environmental awareness of the 1970s.”

Rafael de la Llave

A professor in the School of Mathematics, de la Llave researches dynamical systems, including the study of orbits. In 2015, de la Llave and two other scientists received a $100,000 NASA grant to research how math could help make space travel less costly and more efficient.

“When the Moon landing happened, I was a kid in Spain. Like everybody else in the world, I was deeply moved and full of admiration.

"The Moon landing changed the vision we had of our planet and of our species. It was technology impacting on religion and philosophy, not just on everyday life, from GPS, and mobile cameras to wireless technology.

The Moon landing also changed politics; it showed that big democratic and united organizations, where ideas percolate up and down, are more efficient than rigid ones. It was an accomplishment that made the whole world reflect.”

"The Moon landing...showed that democratic and united organizations, where ideas percolate up and down, are more efficient than rigid ones."

John Wise

Wise is the Dunn Family Associate Professor in the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics in the School of Physics. Wise uses supercomputers to create simulations of the Big Bang, along with the birth of stars and the lifespan of black holes.

“The Apollo program accelerated rocket technology and space science for years to come, not only in the U.S. but around the globe. The feats achieved by the whole team inspired a generation of young people into STEM fields, fascinated by the depths of space. The advancements in rockets led to many space telescopes and planetary probes in decades to come.

“The discoveries by NASA telescopes and probes partly motivated me to pursue astrophysics as a career. As an 80's kid, I lingered over pictures of the gas giant planets sent back by the Voyager spacecraft.

“A decade later, the Hubble Space Telescope gave us images of galaxies across the universe. Many other scientists have told me that they had similar formative memories of NASA missions. Without the Apollo program pushing the limits of humankind, these space science missions might have not been possible in the 20th century.”

Rachel Walker wants her future research to live at the intersection of mathematics and computer science. In Walker’s view, that made Georgia Tech’s Summer 2019 REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program in the School of Mathematics the perfect choice for the rising senior from Central Washington University.

When she saw that she was accepted, “I was really excited because Georgia Tech is a really good school and they have a really strong math and computer science department,” Walker says. “I knew it would be a great opportunity to meet faculty, to see how they approach research from a bigger school. And I get to work with people from around the country as well. I think that’s been really cool.”

Walker was one of 27 students showing their work during the July 10 Skiles Classroom Building poster session that signaled the end of the Summer REU program. She’s part of the largest group to take part in the 18 years that the School of Mathematics has been offering the National Science Foundation-funded program. (The College of Sciences also contributes funding.)

Igor Belegradek and Dan Margalit, professors in the School of Mathematics, co-managed this summer’s REU program along with Michael Lacey, who served as principal investigator for the NSF grant. Belegradek says the program has grown substantially since the first six students took part in 2001. This year, students across Georgia and the U.S. sent in more than 300 applications for the program.

Belegradek says the growing interest from undergraduates is due to the high quality of research that’s expected from them. “We’re always aiming for research that’s actually publishable. It doesn’t always work like that, but that’s the goal. A lot of other REU programs are focused on training students in how to do research. We’re more focused on producing actual research.

“I think the best way to learn how to do research is to actually do it. How else can you learn?” Belegradek says.

From algebra and geometry to braids

Belegradek and Margalit wandered throughout the poster session to hear the students talk about their research and to make suggestions on their presentations. Although one of this summer’s research themes involved braids – visual tools that help scientists get a handle on large, unwieldy blocks of data – the students tackled other branches of mathematics such as algebra, geometry, and topology (the study of objects that can be bent, twisted, or deformed, but not broken or torn.)

“What I’m really proud of with this poster session is that all the projects are really fitting into the research of the mentors and with the greater world of math,” Margalit says. “So you’re not only getting a chance to do math, but you’re doing real math, math that matters in the world.”

Summer REU students still get help with how to make a poster, nail a presentation, deal with ethical issues, and apply to graduate schools. But Margalit stressed that some of the areas of math students worked on this summer, namely machine learning and big data, are getting the attention of more experienced researchers. And the students are proving to be up to the challenge.

“I’m still surprised and impressed with how much they are able to understand and learn and take their own control of the problems. I get reminded every year of how talented the students are, and what they can do if you give them the chance.”

A chance to do timely research

Emily Zhang, a rising junior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teamed with Walker on their summer research. Zhang is a double major in mathematics and computer science; she was attracted by one of the program’s research topics, optimization algorithms, which help scientists wrangle large groups of data.

“It was like math but also with applications in theoretical computer science, so I thought it was the perfect intersection of math and computer science to work on,” Zhang says.

After she applied to several REUs across the country, Zhang says, “I got into the Georgia Tech one first. They were really fast with their response rate. They got back to me in less than a week. The other programs I applied to probably weren’t going to get back to me soon enough.”

“There’s not much that stops you from getting into really meaningful and really deep research, as long as you have the right mentors around you, and they are plentiful,” says Sidhanth Raman, a Georgia Tech rising senior. This is the mathematics major’s first time to take part in the REU program.

“If you really want to, you can get the information you need and can hit the ground running. We have a very strong geometry and topology program here," he says. "I can’t really speak to other schools, but I know there are phenomenal professors here and they’re doing the best work they can possibly do, and they’re letting students into it. You’re allowing people to come into this community and partake."

Prof Michael Lacey and Dr. Robert Kesler have been awarded the Best Paper Award by Collectanea Mathematica for 2018. 

The award, created in 2017, is granted to an article published in Collectanea Mathematica which demonstrates outstanding achievement in any branch of mathematics. The award comes with a cash prize of 2,000€ as well as a diploma and an invitation to give a lecture addressed to a wide audience at the award ceremony at the Facultat de Matemàtiques i Informàtica of Universitat de Barcelona that will take place next October at the Universitat de Barcelona.

Robert Kesler was a Postdoc in the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech since 2016, holding positions of an IMPACT Fellow in Analysis plus Electrical & Compute Engineering and a Visiting Assitant Professor in the School of Math. Dr. Kesler received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Cornell University in 2016. He is currently working in Industry in the Los Angeles area.

Michael Lacey is a prolific mathematician and a gifted teacher and mentor. His work has touched on the areas of probability, ergodic theory, and he is a leading expert in harmonic analysis - or as Prof. Lacey puts it, the fine behaviour of Fourier series. Prof. Lacey has recieved support for his reserach from the National Science Foundation as well as from the award of the Salem Prize, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Simons Foundation.

Prof. Rachel Kuske to give a plenary lecture in the international conference EQUADIFF 2019, which takes place in Lieden, The Netherlands, from July 8-12.

The Equadiff conferences are a series of international meetings devoted to the field of differential equations in the broadest sense. Differential equations have been an important tool to model physical phenomena for many years. As examples, ordinary differential equations describe vibrations or epidemics, partial differential equations describe fluid motions or electromagnetic fields, stochastic differential equations describe the effect of noise in mechanical systems or the fluctuations of markets. The Equadiff series of conferences was started in the late 1960's in Czechoslovakia. In the intervening years, it has moved around Europe and has become one of the main conferences in the world in the area.  It regularly attracts several hundred of experts an students in the field from all over the world. In 2019, the Equadiff conference will be held in Leiden, at the Universiteit Leiden.

To accommodate the large number of participants and varied specialities in the field of differential equations, the meeting breaks into parallel specialized sessions except for the plenary lectures that are attended by the whole conference. The plenary lecturers are rigorously selected by a distinguished scientific committee.

Prof. Kuske, who in addition to maintaining her status as a distinguished research mathematician also serves as the Chair of the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, developed asymptotic and semi-analytic approximation techniques to analyze mathematical models that include stochasticity and/or nonlinear dynamics. She has applied her work in a large variety of settings, including biophysics, epidemiology, ecology, applied mechanics, optics and finance. She was awarded the 2011 Krieger-Nelson prize by the Canadian Mathematical Society and was named a Simons Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge in 2016.

The two winners of this years Herman K. Fulmer Award, Professors Dan Margalit and Joe Rabinoff, are worthy recipients of the Fulmer prize: not only have they taught Math 1553 and Math 1554 regularly since their inception as part of the 2015 first year curriculum upgrades, but they have also played major roles in development of curriculum and resources for the students. Perhaps the most impactful achievements have been to lead the development of online materials and an online textbook - the appropriately named Interactive Linear Algebra  https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/ila.pdf which includes interactive material and exercises, as well as examples from engineering and applications that help the students put the material in context.

In terms of the delivery of this material, they have worked with faculty in the School and across Georgia Tech to continue to improve how faculty interacts with the undergraduates they teach, leading by example by being themselves highly acclaimed instructors who are adired and sought after by the undergraduates taking the lower level classes that they teach.

As the landscape for offering these courses within a demanding engineering curriculum continues to evolve, Georgia Tech improves its support for students. There is increased demand for linear algebra as a foundation in today’s leading fields such as data analytics, computer engineering, and artificial intelligence. Within this landscape Profs. Margalit and Rabinoff have continued to work with faculty and colleagues at different levels of the university, so that SoM can provide this critical basis for the large number of undergraduates at Georgia Tech.

The School of Mathematics is very grateful to the late Howard Woodham (Georgia Tech alumnus, Engineering ’48) for the establishment of the Herman K. Fulmer Faculty Teaching Fund Endowment for the School of Mathematics (SoM), in memory of Professor Herman Fulmer, his former mathematics professor. This award allows us every year to recognize our instructors who exhibit genuine regard for undergraduate students. The courses mentioned above are a core part of Engineering studies at Georgia Tech.  

Editor's Note: This story by Camryn Burke first appeared on the Center for Teaching and Learning website on May 10, 2019.

A chance to interact with undergraduate students — that’s why Khaled Al Kurdi decided to become a teaching assistant (TA). 

“When you’re working on a Ph.D., you don’t typically get to connect with undergraduate students, because you’re always doing research,” said Al Kurdi, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biochemistry. “I became a TA because I wanted to interact with students and challenge myself to be a better teacher.” 

Al Kurdi took home both a Thank A Teacher award and the Graduate TA of the Year award for Chemistry and Biochemistry at the 2019 TA and Future Faculty Awards Day, which was held in April.  

The annual event is sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning, and celebrates students and postdoctoral scholars who have contributed to the learning environment at Georgia Tech. 

This year, 51 students received school-level TA Awards, and 91 students received Thank A Teacher awards. Also, 34 Tech to Teaching participants and 48 Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) members received teaching certificates. 

“It was exciting to win these awards, because it shows my work is paying off and that my students care enough to take the time to express that they appreciate my teaching,” Al Kurdi added. 

During the event, the following individuals also received institutewide TA of the Year awards, which include $500 prizes sponsored by the Georgia Tech alumni classes of 1957 and 1972:

Undergraduate TA of the Year

• Adrianna Brown, Computer Science
• Martin Fernandez, Mathematics
• Talha Khawaja, Physics

Graduate TA of the Year

• Jessica Fisch, City and Regional Planning
• Rafael Marin, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Tuo Zhao, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Graduate Student Instructor of the Year

• Evan Mallen, City and Regional Planning 
• Pedro Jose Arias Monje, Materials Science and Engineering
• Sophie Kay, Psychology