Our future colleague Jennifer Hom has received a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.

In the words of a Sloan Foundation press release, "the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders," and "these outstanding men and women are responsible for some of the most exciting science being done today."

Graduate students Philip Benge and JD Walsh won CETL/BP teaching awards for Graduate Student Instructor and Graduate Student TA, respectively.

From the awards page "The CETL/BP Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award is the only institute-wide award for Teaching Assistants and symbolizes Georgia Tech's commitment to promoting exemplary teaching."

Professor Shui-Nee Chow will be recognized with a College of Sciences Faculty Mentor Award. He was nominated by junior faculty members who wrote a letter describing "his attention to their career path, the advice he offered based on his own experience, and the benefits that this mentoring has brought to their academic life so far." He will be honored at an upcoming CoS Advisory Board meeting and will receive an award of $500.

The following graduate student awards for this academic year are:

These students will be further recognized during the TA/Grad Student appreciation day on April 21 at 11:00.

Enid Steinbart. Director of Advising and Assessment for the School of Mathematics, was selected as a 2015 NACADA Outstanding Advising Certificate of Merit recipient in the Faculty Academic Advising category: "This award is presented to individuals who have demonstrated qualities associated with outstanding academic advising of students." She will receive the certificate during the NACADA Annual Conference in Las Vegas, NV later this year.

This category includes those individuals whose primary responsibility is teaching and who spend a portion of their time providing academic advising services to students. This award is given in recognition of her demonstrated abilities as an advisor in nationwide competition. In the judgement of the selection committee, she has consistent evidence of the qualities associated with the outstanding advising of students.

Press Release

The School of Mathematics is greatly saddened learning that our beloved colleague, George Cain, passed away the morning of Sunday, June 21, after battling pancreatic cancer for about a year. He is survived by his immediate family consisting of Marilyn Cain (spouse), Carolyn Naser (daughter), Charles Naser (son-in-law), and Alex Naser (grandson). The family indicated that they would be having a private cremation right away, and a wake in a month from now. Further information will be posted once those plans are made.

 

George Cain was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1934. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in 1956 from MIT, and Master's degree (1962) and Ph.D. (1965; advisor: Robert Kasriel) from Georgia Tech. George worked at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation during 1956-60; he also served as a Private in the U.S. Army in 1958, and started attending classes as a graduate student at Tech in the Fall of 1958, while a full-time Lockheed employee. His service to Georgia Tech began in 1960 as an instructor in mathematics and continued as a professor during the years, 1965-2001. The School of Mathematics is particularly grateful for his service as the assistant director of the school during 1973-1978.

George's favorite research topic was topology, in which he had many research publications as well as a book titled, "Introduction to General Topology" in 1994. After he retired from Georgia Tech, George enjoyed playing clarinet with the East Cobb New Horizons Band.

George was friendly, warm, wise and inspiring. He made everyone smile with his clever wit; a few of his quotes are fondly recalled below, in the midst of capturing the kind and giving soul that he was:

"I first met George in 1974 when I interviewed for a position at Tech. He was very helpful to me then and has been a kind friend for more than forty years since. I will miss his wit ("I have two questions, and I will ask the second one first.") and his wisdom ("Never do anything for the first time."), and of course his company. I also taught out of his topology book, for which I have a great deal of admiration. We are poorer today for the loss of him." -- Bill Green

"Several people in the school of mathematics now use versions of what I recall as being George Cain's (original) joke: he'd walk by my office around 5pm on a Friday and say, 'Dr. Tetali, please take the rest of the week off!'" -- Prasad Tetali

"George was a soul of the SOM. Fewer people attended faculty meetings after his retirement because George's jokes were always the best part of them. He also was the first Chairman of our first Faculty Advisory Committee. SOM would not be the same now without the legacy left by Professor Cain." -- Leonid Bunimovich

"George was an excellent but tough teacher and was known as killer Cain to his students. He was always friendly and had a way of disarming his critics with his wonderful southern drawl and booming laugh. He definitely was one of the people who made it fun to work in the department. I will miss his wit and humor." -- Jeff Geronimo

"I remember him so fondly for his dry wit and great Southern accent. Does anyone know the story about the young man who dared to sit in the back of his classroom and read a newspaper during George's lecture? I believe that Dr. Cain finally got his attention by incorporating all the student's ID numbers (tech ID, SS#, house number, phone number, etc) in the problem being worked on the board. Seems like there were gales of laughter when the tale was told in the faculty lounge. He will be greatly missed." -- Cathy Jacobson

"He taught me so much and his passing drives me to commit myself more to perform better and be a better mathematician. George's spirit, attitude, strong voice, and approach to mathematics live on as I tutor my sons and others. There's no doubt about it, I respected, admired and looked up to him in many ways." -- Ben Elkins (Master's student of George), VP Consulting Services, EBB Nielsen Marketing Analytics

"In my years as a graduate student at Georgia Tech, George was like a father to me. He was the very finest teacher I ever had, and I still treasure all of the "war stories" he shared with me in his office. He always added a good dose of humor to the most serious of subjects, and offered me a richer perspective on the world. He remains a tremendously positive influence on me in so many ways." -- Mark LaDue, Georgia Tech alum, and George Cain's bowling buddy!

"It would just be terrible if it wasn't true, seeing as how I just proved it." -- George Cain (as recalled by a student from one of George's classes).

"George Lee Cain was an icon in our department. A man of towering stature and personality, George was never one to mince words. One of my favorite quotes of his, always delivered in his quintessential Dixie baritone, combined both humor and insights about human behavior.

"I have always considered it a mathematical anomaly," he would say at exactly the right time, when everyone knew who he meant, "that there are more horses' asses on this planet than there are horses."

George was a raconteur extraordinaire, and enthralled us all with tales of his escapades, including his brief stint in the army as a Ninety-day Wonder. George was also a man of arts and an exquisite calligrapher, a yellowing 30-year old example of which is still posted in the Skiles corridor outside Leonid?s office. George was generous, and always had time to help students and colleagues alike clarify the logic in their mathematical proofs and expositions. He and Marilyn were also very generous socially, and their annual Christmas open house was a lavish spread complete with many more stories and free pinball.

However, what I remember most about him is his absolute and unwavering INTEGRITY. In faculty committees and departmental meetings, we could always count on George to speak up for what he thought was right, no matter the consequences. When he was elected chairman of the Institute Faculty and Status Grievance Committee, during a period of turmoil in the mid-90's, the entire campus, right up to the President, received the benefit of his sage and honest advice.

George, we miss you, but your strength and spirit remain an inspiration to us all." -- Ted Hill

Professor Matt Baker was featured on the American Mathematical Society's blog "On Teaching and Learning Mathematics." All articles published on this blog go through an editorial review/revision process prior to publication. See the entire article at Number Theory and Cryptography: A Distance Learning Course for High School Students.

Olivier Wittenberg of the Ecole Normale Superieure in France will give a series of three lectures at Emory on Tu/Wed/Th afternoon, October 20-22 at 4:00PM, entitled "Rational points of rationally connected varieties over number fields, an overview". The lectures will be aimed at graduate students.

And Friday October 23 through Sunday October 25 Emory will host the Georgia Algebraic Geometry symposium featuring the following invited speakers:

  • Valery Alexeev (University of Georgia)
  • Brian Conrad (Stanford University)
  • Brian Lehman (Boston College)
  • Max Lieblich (University of Washington)
  • Alexander Merkurjev (UCLA)
  • Alena Pirutka (Ecole Polytechnique)
  • Aaron Pixton (Harvard University)
  • Tony Varilly-Alvarado (Rice University)
  • Olivier Wittenberg (CNRS - Ecole Normale Superieure)

This symposium rotates between UGA, Emory and Georgia Tech. It is funded in part by Dr. Matt Baker's NSF grant DMS-1529573, "Collaborative Research: The Georgia Algebraic Geometry Symposium."

The purpose of this workshop is to promote communication among the many mathematical and engineering communities currently researching polytopal discretization methods for the numerical approximation of solutions of partial differential equations. A variety of distinct polytopal element methods (POEMs) have been designed to solve the same types of problems, but a workshop-type environment is required to foster a community-wide understanding of the comparative advantages of each technique and to develop a set of ‘best practices’ in regards to implementation.

Each member of the organizing committee is a specialist in a different kind of polytopal element method and will aid in attracting a diverse set of participants to the workshop. The workshop organizers are:

The workshop will be held from Monday October 26 - Wednesday October 28, 2015. For complete details, see the conference website.

The fifth annual Tech Topology Conference will be held December 4-6, 2015. It will bring together established and young researchers from around the country for a weekend of mathematics in beautiful Atlanta. We are pleased to announce this year's speakers will be:

  • Neil Fullarton (Rice University)
  • Allen Hatcher (Cornell University)
  • Jen Hom (Georgia Tech and IAS)
  • Ko Honda* (University of California, Los Angeles)n
  • Allison Moore (Rice University)
  • Dylan Thurston (Indiana University)
  • Karen Vogtmann (University of Warwick)

The organizers are John Etnyre and Dan Margalit.

Talks are scheduled to be given in the School of Mathematics, Skiles Building Room 006.

For registration information, please visit the conference website.

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