Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Congratulations go to Klara Grodzinsky, Enid Steinhart, and Lutz Warnke, who are all winners of the 2018 Class of 1940 Course Survey Effectiveness Award. These awards recognize faculty members with exceptional scores and response rates in CIOS.   Further details about the award are below. Congratulations!

About the Awards

A few years ago, funds were identified to further recognize excellence in teaching at Georgia Tech. Some of these funds are used to reward faculty members with exceptional scores and response rates on the Course-Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS). A maximum of 40 awards are given out each year. The proportion of “small” classes and “large” classes that qualify are based on the proportion of those classes in the GT catalog for the past three years. 

Courses under consideration for this award were taught during Fall 2017and Spring 2018. The criteria for selection for the award included a CIOS response rate of 85% and above for Fall and/or Spring semesters and: The top 12 rankings (ties broken by response rate) of a class size of at least 40 students with a CIOS score for the question which reads “Overall, this instructor is an effective teacher” of at least 4.9; and The top 28 rankings (ties broken by response rate) of a class size of at least 15 students and a CIOS score for the same question of at least 4.9, or a 5 (or greater) credit course with a size of at least 10 and a CIOS score for the same question of at least 4.9. 

In the Fall of 2003 — not long after retiring from her 28-year career as a mathematics professor at Kennesaw State University — Elaine M. Hubbard, MATH 1972, MS MATH 1974, Ph.D. MATH 1980, felt compelled to take action that would have a lasting impact on her alma mater.

That September, Hubbard signed an endowment agreement whose income would one day establish the Elaine M. Hubbard Endowed Chair in the School of Mathematics — the School’s first endowed faculty chair. 

By establishing an endowment fund through her Will, Hubbard knew she would never meet any of the distinguished academics who would ultimately hold the Hubbard Chair. She did know, however, that her estate gift would one day play a vital role in developing and strengthening Georgia Tech’s mathematics faculty, which had long ago helped lay the foundation for her own success as a scholar and teacher. 

Following the Board of Regents’ approval of the Hubbard Chair earlier this year, the School of Mathematics is now embarking on an international search to fill this pivotal position of academic leadership. 

Continue here for the full story from the Office of Development

The 2019 AMS Short Course on “Sum of Squares: Theory and Applications” will take place January 14-15 at the Hilton Baltimore in Baltimore, MD, just prior to the Joint Mathematics Meetings. Please see the link below for more information.

http://www.ams.org/meetings/short-courses/short-course-general

A 2006 result of SoM Professor Matt Baker was mentioned in a recent online news article.

See the full article here:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/tinkertoy-models-produce-new-geometric-insights-20180905/

Data, data, and more data.

The rapid growth of data seems wild and limitless. But various Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) institutes have been making theoretical sense of it.

TRIPODS institutes receive funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Among them is Georgia Tech’s TRIAD – the Transdisciplinary Research Institute for Advancing Data Science. TRIAD researchers are poised to share data science insights with the Atlanta higher education community.

Meanwhile, NSF aims to expand the scope of TRIPODS institutes. Today the agency awarded 19 collaborative projects at 23 universities. The awards are called TRIPODS+X grants. X is the scope-expanding activity; it could be research, visioning, or education.

Among the award recipients is Georgia Tech’s project: TRIPODS+X:EDU Collaborative Education: Data-driven Discovery and Alliance, led by Prasad Tetali, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Georgia Tech.

The award to Georgia Tech and its alliance partners – Agnes Scott, Morehouse, and Spelman Colleges – aims to train a diverse workforce for the inevitable data-driven future. The project will also engage faculty at the minority-serving institutions to help them teach data science and develop related curricula.

"TRIPODS+X is exciting not only for its near-term impact addressing some of society's most important scientific challenges, but [also] because of its potential for developing tools for future applications," says Anne Kinney, NSF assistant director Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 

With the $200,000 TRIPODS+X:EDU grant, the alliance partners will develop undergraduate data-science-focused courses. Through boot camps, workshops, and other joint activities, they will prepare data science modules to integrate into science curricula at the partner institutions. The goal is to prepare students who can address the emerging challenges in data science.

“The NSF-supported educational alliance is exciting in many ways,” says Prasad Tetali.

“It gives an opportunity to infuse the foundational data science curriculum with real-world applications from the physical and life sciences,” Tetali says. “It will also likely catalyze collaborative research in data science and related fields between Georgia Tech and Atlanta area colleges.”  

Following are the individuals involved in the TRIPODS+X: EDU project:

Principal Investigators

• Chris DePree, Agnes Scott College
• Alan Koch, Agnes Scott College
• Wenjing Liao, Georgia Tech School of Mathematics
• Brandeis Marshall, Spelman College       
• Chuang Peng, Morehouse College
• David Sherrill, Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Prasad Tetali, Georgia Tech School of Mathematics and School of Computer Science
• Joshua Weitz, Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences

Senior Personnel

• Thinh Doan, Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Flavio Fenton, Georgia Tech School of Physics
• Xiaoming Huo, Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Renata Rawlings-Goss, Georgia Tech Institute for Data Engineering and Science
• Justin Romberg, Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Photo Caption

From left to right, top row: Joshua Weitz, Justin Romberg, and David Sherrill; middle row: Alan Koch, Brandeis Marshall, Chris DePree, and Wenjing Liao; bottom row: Thinh Doan, Prasad Tetali, and Chuang Peng

On Sept. 13, starting at 11 A.M., mathematicians, musicians, and dancers will breathe life into the classic problem known as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg (7BK). The interactive exposition and performance celebrates this problem’s journey from 18th-century Prussia, in the small town of Königsberg, to 21st-century Atlanta.

On the Georgia Tech campus is a representation of Königsberg and the seven bridges that connect its four land masses, which are divided by a river. The rendition – along the Atlantic Drive Promenade, on a site called the Seven Bridges Plaza – affirms that art, science, and mathematics are but different ways to grasp the world.

The Sept. 13 music and dance performance – The Seven Bridges of Königsberg – especially hopes to demystify and humanize mathematics, says Evans Harrell, an emeritus professor in the School of Mathematics.

The event begins with an interactive exposition by members of the Georgia Tech student organization Club Math. On each of the four land masses representing Königsberg, Club Math members will be at stations to discuss the 7BK problem; the life and times of Leonhard Euler, whose solution to the 7BK problem gave birth to graph theory; the role of graph theory in the modern world, and a special aspect of graph theory called the four-color theorem.

“Our project is also an experiment about how scientific stories can be told and about how the sciences can inspire original art.”

Euler, the Seven Bridges, and Graph Theory

The 7BK problem asks: Can one walk around Königsberg, crossing each of the seven bridges exactly once?

The Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler proved that it is impossible to cross each of the seven bridges of Königsberg only once. The proof considered not only the case of Königsberg, but all possible ways a city could be connected by bridges and when it is possible to cross each bridge only once. In developing the proof, Euler invented a new field of mathematics, now called graph theory.

Euler’s insight was to simplify the problem, says Georgia Tech mathematics professor Dan Margalit. Graph theory reduces the problem to one about points – called vertices – and the lines – called edges – connecting them. The vertices correspond to the land masses and the edges are the bridges. The 7BK problem thus rendered, it is not hard to see  the answer.

Margalit explains: Any attempted solution has two variations. In the first case, the journey starts and ends at the same land mass. Here, the number of bridges – or edges – associated with each land mass – or vertex – is even. Because every arrival at a land mass comes with a departure, every vertex has an even number of edges. Therefore any continuous path uses an even number of edges at each vertex. This is impossible in Königsberg because each land mass has an odd number of bridges.

In the second case, the journey ends in another place from where it started. Again the number of edges at each vertex must be even except at the start and end. Because to leave the start requires only one bridge, as does arriving at the end. Therefore, at the start and end vertices, the total number of edges will be an odd number. But at all other vertices, the number of edges would be even, as before. 

Again this is impossible in Königsberg, because all the land masses have an odd number of bridges.

Graph theory permeates the modern world. “Facebook is a graph: vertices are people and edges are friendships," Margalit says. "Graph theory has many other applications all over science and mathematics."

“Facebook is a graph: vertices are people and edges are friendships.”

Math in Motion

For the Sept. 13 performance, Harrell partnered with the Georgia Tech School of Music’s Chaowen Ting. She will conduct the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra in performing original music by composer Marshall Coats. The music will accompany dances choreographed by artistic director Kristel Tedesco.

In a behind-the-scenes video, Tedesco says she recognized the similar struggles of mathematicians and artists working in imaginary worlds “and trying to find truth within them.” The resulting performance, she adds, aims to spark and stimulate the public’s curiosity about mathematics.

“We wish to engage the public in the wonder of mathematics and science, of music and dance, and the surprising ways that they can work together,” Harrell says. “Our project is also an experiment about how scientific stories can be told and about how the sciences can inspire original art.”

Support for the event came from Science in Vivo and Georgia Tech's College of Design, College of Sciences, and Office of the Arts.