Archive News 2012 Karen Rhea has been selected one of three inaugural Collegiate Lecturers at U-M's Ann Arbor campus, in recognition of her achievements and many contributions to the education of U-M students. To honor a much-loved emeritus faculty member, Karen's new title will be the Patricia Shure Collegiate Lecturer. 2011 Jeffrey Lagarias was appointed a George Polya Lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013. The Polya lectureships were established to uphold the high expository standards set by George Polya. The lectureship entails giving invited talks at selected MAA Section meetings over the two year appointment period. Michael Zieve gave a plenary talk at the 2011 Fall Central Section Meeting of the American Mathematical Society. His talk, "The happy marriage between arithmetic geometry and dynamical systems," described results he proved jointly with Michigan undergraduates Alex Carney, Geoff Iyer, and Feiqi Jiang, former Michigan undergraduate Ruthi Hortsch, and former Michigan graduate student Ben Weiss. Each of the four sections of the American Mathematical Society has two meetings per year, with four plenary speakers per meeting. Matthew Elsey has been named the 2011 Sumner Myers prize recipient for best Ph.D. thesis in Mathematics. His thesis, entitled "Algorithms for Multiphase Motion with Applications to Materials Science," was written under the direction of Selim Esedolgu (Mathematics) and Wei Lu (Mechanical Engineering). His Sumner Myers Lecture will be presented on March 27, 2012. Volker Elling is the recipient of a 2011 NSF CAREER award for his project "Non-Uniqueness in Inviscid Flow and Algebraic Vortex Spirals." The CAREER awards provide early career development for faculty with outstanding potential. Robert L. Griess has been awarded a Collegiate Professorship. His professorship will be named in honor of Richard Brauer, a member of the U-M Mathematics faculty from 1948-1952. A Collegiate Professorship is one of the highest honors the College and the University can bestow upon an eminent member of the faculty. Gavin LaRose has received the 2011 Matthews Underclass Teaching Award from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The award recognizes his accomplishments in both the quality of teaching and the design and implementation of web-based learning tools. Kristen Moore is the recipient of the 2011 Excellence in Concentration Advising Award, recognizing her work as a mentor and advisor to undergraduate and graduate students in the Department. Hyman Bass, the Samuel Eilenberg Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics and Mathematics Education, has been appointed by President Obama to the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science. Trachette Jackson has been selected to receive the 2011 Imes and Moore Faculty Award from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The award recognizes her for serving as a role model for mathematical scientists and making exceptional contributions to students from under-represented minority groups. Charles Doering has been named a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Fellows are SIAM members who are recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the discipline. Erhan Bayraktar, Susan Meredith Smith Professor of Actuarial Sciences, presented an Inaugural Lecture, Valuation Equations for Stochastic Volatility Models on March 22, 2011. Stephen DeBacker has been named a 2011 Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, recognizing his outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. Thurnau Professorships honor those tenured faculty whose commitment to and investment in undergraduate teaching has had a demonstrable impact on the intellectual development and lives of their students. Volker Elling, Assistant Professor, has been selected a 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. These extraordinarily competitive awards are selected from nominations of the best young scientists from the U.S. and Canada. Karen Rhea, Lecturer IV and Director of the Introductory Mathematics Program, received a Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, January 2011. The award honors college or university teachers who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions. In addition to her outstanding work in teaching, Rhea is cited for her contributions to changes in the calculus curriculum nationally, and her work inspiring and developing other outstanding teachers. Additional information is available here. Sijue Wu, the Robert W. and Lynne H. Browne Professor of Mathematics, was awarded the Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics at the Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, hosted in December by Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Morningside Group. The Morningside Medal is considered the most prestigious award for Chinese experts in Mathematics. Wu is the first woman recipient in the medal's history. Curtis Huntington has been appointed Chairperson of the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline effective January 1, 2011. Established and supported by the American Academy of Actuaries, the Board responds to actuaries' requests for guidance on professional issues and considers complaints about possible violations of the actuarial Code(s) of Professional Conduct Richard Yamada has been named the 2011-12 American Mathematical Society Congressional Fellow. The fellowship is administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and provides a unique public policy learning experience that demonstrates the value of science-government interaction, and brings a technical background to the congressional decision-making process. 2010 Associate Professor Danny Forger was recently interviewed for a television piece by the American Institute of Physics. The piece highlights Forger’s research on circadian rhythms, and was aired around the country. See it here. Professor of Mathematics, Curtis E. Huntington, is the 2010 recipient of the Harry T. Eidson Founders Award from the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA). The award was established in 1995 to honor ASPPA's founder, Harry T. Eidson. The award acknowledges individuals who have made significant contributions of ASPPA and/or to the private pension system. Irina Arakelian, Lecturer IV and Director of the Michigan Mathematics Laboratory, has received an Excellence in Education Award from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Associate Professor Erhan Bayraktar has been selected to receive the first award of the SIAG/FME (SIAM Activity Group on Financial Mathematics and Engineering) Junior Scientist Prize. The Junior Scientist Prize is awarded to an outstanding junior researcher in the field of financial mathematics for distinguished contributions to the field in the three calendar years prior to the year of the award. The selection committee recognized Bayraktar's varied, deep and original contributions to financial mathematics, covering important problems in derivative pricing, credit risk, portfolio choice and insurance. More about the prize is available at http://www.siam.org/prizes/sponsored/siagfmejr.php Karen Rhea, Lecturer IV and Director of the Introductory Calculus program, has received the Matthews Underclass Teaching Award from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. The award recognizes a faculty member who has made a distinctive contribution to teaching in courses at the first- or second-year level in the fields of Mathematics, History, and Modern Languages, and who demonstrates enthusiasm and dedication to undergraduate education. Assistant Professor Erhan Bayraktar received a 2010 NSF CAREER award for his project "Topics in Optimal Stopping and Control." Assistant Professor Juan Souto also received a 2010 NSF CAREER award for his project "Kleinian, Arithmetic and Mapping Class Groups." The CAREER awards provide early career development for faculty with outstanding potential. Graduate Student, Daniel Hernandez won a 2010 Outstanding GSI Award which recognizes outstanding teaching achievements and is given out by the Rackham Graduate School. The Michigan Actuarial Program in the Department of Mathematics has been designated a Center of Actuarial Excellence by the Society of Actuaries (SOA). Michigan is now one of 17 such designated programs in the U.S. and Canada. The 5-year designation allows the program to be eligible for grants from the SOA for education or research. The program was developed to strengthen the position of the academic branch of the profession by supporting research that expands the boundaries of actuarial science, while promoting the development of intellectual capital and identifying opportunities for its application. MORE Trachette Jackson was the recipient of the 2010 Blackwell-Tapia prize in Mathematics for her mathematical contributions and her efforts to address the problem of the under-representation of minorities in mathematics. More William Fulton, the Oscar Zariski Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics, received the 2010 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Presented annually by the American Mathematical Society, the Steele Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. More Robert L. Griess Jr. received the 2010 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research. Presented annually by the American Mathematical Society, the Steele Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. More   2009 Mathematics Graduate Student Beth Chen has again devised a formula for densely packing tetrahedra that surpasses previous results. She and her adviser, Jeffrey Lagarias, are highlighted in a recent New York Times article. Chen’s latest research is available here . Professor of Mathematics and LSA Associate Dean Robert Megginson has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Members are chosen because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. At their annual meeting in Boston, the Society of Actuaries recognized our Actuarial and Financial Mathematics Program Director, Curtis Huntington, for his tremendous contributions to the profession by presenting him with a Presidential Award. Daniel Forger has recently had his research on the biological clock and circadian rhythms highlighted in Science Daily and Science News. The Mathematical Sciences Research institute has named Professor & Associate Dean Robert Megginson a lifetime member of their Human Resources Advisory Committee. The appointment recognizes meritorious service to the profession in recruiting and retaining minorities in mathematics. He is only the second person to receive such an honor. A story in Seed Magazine looks at a solution co-authored by Joel Smoller that seeks to explain how the observable universe can be expanding without employing the controversial and mysterious concept of "dark energy." We are sad to announce the passing of Professor Emeritus George Piranian (pdf) on August 31, 2009. A memorial service was held on October 5, 2009 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Ann Arbor. Karen Smith has been named the new M.S. Keeler Professor in the Department of Mathematics. The Keeler Professorship was established in 1995 through a gift from Mike Keeler, a mathematics alumnus from Grand Rapids, MI. Math Grad Student Formulates Tetrahedra Packing Breakthrough. U-M Mathematics graduate student, Elizabeth Chen, found a method of densely packing regular tetrahedra, one of the five Platonic solids, in space. Read More.(pdf) Hyman Bass, Roger Lyndon Collegiate Professor of Mathematics Education at the School of Education and of Mathematics at the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts, was recently elected to the National Academy of Education. He is one of ten education leaders elected to membership this year for their pioneering efforts in educational research and policy development. The National Academy of Education is an honorary society that currently has 174 members. Members are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education. Professor Jeffrey Lagarias gave the 2009 Erdös Memorial Lecture at the March 28 Spring Central Section Meeting of the American Mathematical Society. His talk, From Apollonian circle packings to Fibonacci numbers, described results in number theory and group theory that arise from Apollonian circle packings, and contrasted some of the properties relating to the circles' curvatures with those of Fibonacci and Lucas numbers. The Erdös Memorial Lecture is an annual invited address named for the prolific mathematician Paul Erdös. Professor Joel Smoller has received the George David Birkhoff Prize (2009). The prize is awarded jointly by AMS and SIAM once every three years for an outstanding contribution to “applied mathematics in the highest and broadest sense.” More detailed information is available at http://www.ams.org/prizes/birkhoff-prize.html 2008 Thurnau Professor of Mathematics and LSA Associate Dean Robert Megginson received the Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America. The award is intended to be the most prestigious for service offered by the Association, and honors distinguished contributions to mathematics and mathematical education. Actuarial Program Director, Curtis Huntington, is featured in an article in the Fall 2008 issue of the LSA Magazine. The full article is available on the LSA website. Professor Gopal Prasad has been awarded a Collegiate Professorship. His professorship will be named in honor of Raoul Bott, a member of the U-M Mathematics faculty from 1951-1959. A Collegiate Professorship is one of the highest honors the College and the University can bestow upon an eminent member of the faculty. Associate Professor Stephen DeBacker has received an Excellence in Concentration Advising Award from the College of LSA. Assistant Professor Daniel Forger has received a Young Investigator Research award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Forger will study physiology modeling of circadian timekeeping. The Young Investigator awards support recent PhD recipients (<5 years) who show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. The program aims to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering. Assistant Professor Selim Esedoglu received a 2008 NSF CAREER award for his project “Analysis and modeling for image processing problems.” The CAREER awards provide early career development for faculty with outstanding potential. Professor of Mathematics and LSA Associate Dean Robert Megginson has been named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. The Thurnau Professorships recognize outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. Megginson is the winner of numerous campus and national awards for excellence in mathematics education. He is credited with reforming introductory math courses to emphasize real-world problem solving and cooperative learning. He also re-designed the Mathematics Learning Center to focus on mastery of basic skills, leaving classroom time for learning the higher order thinking that is at the heart of mathematics education. Anna Gilbert is the recipient of the 2008 National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research. The award recognizes innovative young scientists and encourages research likely to lead to new capabilities for human benefit. She is being recognized for her work with innovative algorithms using wavelets and sampling techniques and their impact on data analysis and sparse approximation. Trachette Jackson has been named one of the Emerging Scholars of the Year by Diverse Issues In Higher Education magazine. She will be profiled in one of the magazine’s 2008 issues. The scholars are nationally recognized for their research, educational background, publishing record, teaching record, competitiveness and uniqueness of field of study, and recommendations from other faculty members, department chairs and students. Diverse: Issues In Higher Education is America's preeminent newsmagazine that covers news and information about the ever-changing world of higher education. Mel Hochster Conference was held July 31- Aug 5, 2008 Juha Heinonen Memoriam Quasiconformal Mappings and Analysis on Metric Spaces Memorial Conference was held May 12-16, 2008 Robert Krasny has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Fluid Dynamics.  Election to fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one half of one percent of its membership each year. Associate Professor Kristen Moore has been awarded the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. The award recognizes her outstanding teaching abilities and innovative classroom techniques. Jeffrey Lagarias is one of the recipients of the Lester R. Ford Award from the Mathematical Association of America, awarded at the August Summer MathFest in San Jose, CA. Established in 1964, the award, which includes a citation and cash prize, is presented for articles of expository excellence published in the American Mathematical Monthly. Lagarias received the recognition for his article "Wild and Wooley Numbers," vol. 113, No. 2, 2006. Hyman Bass has been awarded the National Medal of Science. The medal is a Presidential Award given to individuals "deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, or engineering sciences." The formal citation for reads: "For his fundamental contributions to pure mathematics, especially in the creation of algebraic K-theory, his profound influence on mathematics education, and his service to the mathematics research and education communities. With his unique combination of gifts he has had enormous impact over the course of a half century." 2006-7 Mathematics Department Undergraduate Student Services Team has been selected a finalist for the 2007 Workplace Exemplary Team Award. Bob Griess has been elected a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy honors distinguished scientists, scholars, and leaders in public affairs, business and the arts. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large. The AAAS citation notes that Griess is best-known for the construction of the Monster sporadic finite simple group. Construction was accomplished by Griess, not only for the first time, but also entirely by hand without the aid of a computer. Discovery of this group has touched science and mathematics very deeply. Connections have emerged with areas as diverse as string theory in physics and, within mathematics itself, in very sophisticated number theory. The University of Michigan Program in Applied Mathematics has been ranked Number 1 in the country on the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (pdf), produced by Academic Analytics. The rankings, published in a recent issue (pdf) of the Chronicle of Higher Education, are a new and somewhat controversial measurement of a program's success. The University of Michigan is now a branch member of ICAM (The Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter) .  This is a joint membership between the Departments of Physics and Mathematics, the Biophysics Research Division, the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the College of Engineering, the Medical School, and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Professor John Stembridge has been recognized for his joint work on mapping the Lie group E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics. Additional information is available in this article: http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0607/Mar19_07/04.shtml Selim Esedoglu has been awarded an 2006 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an extraordinarily competitive award involving nominations of the very best young scientists from around the country. Associate Professor Mircea Mustata received a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. These extremely competitive Fellowships, awarded annually by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, recognize and support outstanding young scientists early in their careers. Mustata, who is one of 20 recipients for 2006, will be working on a project using techniques such as spaces of arcs, D-modules or positive characteristic techniques to understand questions on invariants of singularities coming from the classification theory of higher dimensional varieties Newly appointed Assistant Professor Erhan Bayraktar received his PhD from Princeton University in 2004. He came to Michigan after graduation as a Hildebrandt Assistant Professor, and was hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in September 2006. Bayraktar is part of the Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics program, and his research is in the areas of mathematical finance, applied probability, and stochastic processes. Professor Jerrold Marsden from Caltech presented the 2006 Ziwet Lectures in September, 2006.  The Ziwet Lectures are one of the Department’s oldest and most distinguished lecture series. See list of past speakers (pdf). Professor Philip Holmes from Princeton University presented the 2006 Rainich Lectures in November, 2006.  The Rainich Lectures (pdf) are one of the Department’s most distinguished lecture series. Assistant Professor Daniel Forger’s joint research on the sleep gene has recently received national recognition. Information on his research can be found here . The story has been publicized by Fox News, MSNBC/Newsweek, the L.A. Times, and other national and international print and broadcast media. Anna Gilbert and Divakar Viswanath were invited speakers at the 2006 Abel Symposium in May. Gopal Prasad has been awarded Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. This award is given to researchers with internationally recognized academic qualifications and honors the academic achievements of the award winner's lifetime. Award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in Germany in cooperation with colleagues. A conference honoring Jeffrey Rauch was held at the University of Bordeaux, May 18-20, 2006. http://www.math.u-bordeaux.fr/collrauch/ Patrick Nelson has been elected to the board of directors of the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB), effective July/August 2007. Carl P. Simon, Professor of Mathematics, Economics, and Public Policy, has been named the 2007 Distinguished Senior Lecturer for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Rob Lazarsfeld has been elected a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy honors distinguished scientists, scholars, and leaders in public affairs, business and the arts. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large. A conference honoring the 70th birthday of Joel Smoller was held at Stanford University, April 29-May 6, 2006. Assistant Professor Anna Gilbert received a 2006 NSF CAREER award for her project “Modeling and Analysis of Data from Massive Graphs.” The CAREER awards provide early career development for faculty with outstanding potential. Anna previously received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an extraordinarily competitive award involving nominations of the very best young scientists from around the country. 2005 Professor Jeffrey Lagarias received an award for the Best Paper of the Year for 2005 in the area of Difference Equations from the International Society of Difference Equations. The award recognizes a series of 3 papers written jointly with Eric Rains entitled “Dynamics of a family of piecewise-linear area-preserving plane maps” that were published in Volume 11 of the Journal of Difference Equations and Applications. Kannan Soundararajan has been awarded the First SASTRA Ramanujan Prize. The prize is given to mathematicians not exceeding the age of 32 for outstanding contributions in areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan. The prize will be given during the International Conference on Number Theory and Mathematical Physics in December 2005, at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, the hometown of Ramanujan. Professor Sijue Wu has been appointed the Robert W. and Lynn H. Browne Professor in Science for a five-year renewable term.  The Browne Professorship recognizes the recipient’s outstanding contributions to science and teaching. Professor and Chair Anthony Bloch has been awarded a Collegiate Professorship from the College of Literature, Science and the Art.  He will hold the Alexander Ziwet Collegiate Professorship in Mathematics for a five year term. Trachette Jackson has received a James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Research Award for her project "Combining continuous and discrete approaches to study sustained angiogenesis associated with vascular tumor growth."  The 21st Century Research Awards are designed to support research projects with a high probability of generating new knowledge and insights.  The Complex Systems program supports scholarship and research directed toward the development of theories and models that can be applied to the study of complex, nonlinear systems.  Trace's project will combine mathematical modeling, numerical simulation and in vivo tumor vascularization experiment to gain deeper understanding of angiogenesis, tumor growth and vascular structure.  More information is available at http://www.jsmf.org/grants/cs/essays/2005/jackson.htm. Jinho Baik has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an extraordinarily competitive award involving nominations of the very best young scientists from around the country. Congratulations to Sasha Barvinok, Chris Skinner and Mario Bonk on receiving invitations to present 45 minute talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians next year. This is a singular achievement to be sure. William Fulton has been named the 2005 Henry Russel Lecturer, one of the most prestigious awards given to UM faculty. Recipients are chosen for their outstanding achievements in research and teaching. Joel Smoller has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. This award is given to researchers with internationally recognized academic qualifications and honors the academic achievements of the award winner's lifetime. Award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in Germany in cooperation with colleagues. David Kausch has successfully completed his Fellowship Admissions Course and has received the designation of Fellow, Society of Actuaries. Gopal Prasad has been appointed an Associate Editor of the Annals of Mathematics for a period of three years. Congratulations to Bob Megginson for his appointment as LS&A Associate Dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Education (2004-2007). Abel Prize is awarded to U of M graduate, Isadore M. Singer. (Two of Singer's former graduate students include our colleagues Dan Burns and John Lott.) Joel Smoller was invited to give The Morningside Lecture at the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians in Hong Kong in December 2004. Jinho Baik has been awarded an American Mathematical Society Centennial Research Fellowship. "The primary selection criterion for the Centennial Fellowship is the excellence of the candidate's research." In recent years, the number of Centennial Fellowships awarded has been between 2 and 4 each year, and so this award marks the very high esteem in which Jinho's work is regarded in the mathematical community. Divakar Viswanath has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an extraordinarily competitive award involving nominations of the very best scientists from around the country. Associate Professor Brian Conrad has been selected to receive from the Rackham Graduate School, a Henry Russel Award for the year 2004. This award is conferred annually to recognize distinguished scholarship or authorship (including creativity in the arts) and conspicuous ability as a teacher. Assistant Professor Harm Derksen has been awarded an NSF CAREER Award for Science and Engineering. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a highly competitive Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. Charles Doering has been awarded Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. This award is given to researchers with internationally recognized academic qualifications and honors the academic achievements of the award winner's lifetime. Award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in Germany in cooperation with colleagues. Robert L. Griess, Jr., received the University's Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, recognizing his commitment to the development of a more culturally and ethnically diverse campus community. For 10 years, Griess has led the department's annual effort in the King/Chavez/Parks College Day visitation program. He displays his commitment to diversity through taking personal and direct interest in students from under-represented minorities who enter the mathematics program. Mel Hochster has been appointed the Jack E. McLaughlin Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics. Appointment to this Distinguished University Professorship recognizes Hochster's many outstanding contributions as a scholar, gifted teacher and mentor of students, and generous contributor to the life and mission of the department and the university. The Professorship is named in honor of his colleague, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Jack E. McLaughlin (1923-2001). McLaughlin served on the Mathematics faculty from 1958-1994. Trachette Jackson was chosen by LSA as the recipient of the Robert D. and Janet E. Neary Faculty Award. This award was established by the LSA Dean's Office to be used for faculty research support. In addition she received the Amoco Faculty Teaching Award for 2002-2003 for exceptional contributions to undergraduate teaching. This year she also received the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, an extraordinarily competitive award with Fellows selected from the very best scientists of their generation, and the 2003 Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation, intended to "assist talented junior faculty to pursue scholarly research and writing so that they attain tenure more easily by providing support for a year's sabbatical". Jackson will use the fellowships to further her research in mathematical modeling in biomathematics, in particular, mathematical models for cancer growth and treatment. Assistant Professor Kristen Moore has been awarded an LSA Excellence in Education Award from the College of Literature, Science & the Arts. This award acknowledges Moore's dedication and special contributions to undergraduate education. Karen Rhea has been awarded an LSA Excellence in Education Award from the College of Literature, Science & the Arts. This award acknowledges Rhea's dedication and special contributions to undergraduate education. Karen Smith has been awarded a Faculty Recognition Award for outstanding contributions as a teacher, scholar and member of the University Community. Kannan Soundararajan has been awarded this year's Salem Prize.The Salem Prize is awarded every year to a young mathematician judged to have done outstanding work in the field of interest of Raphael Salem, primarily the theory of Fourier Series. The Mathematics Department here at Michigan now has no fewer than 3 Salem prize winners on its faculty, all of whom won the prize as "junior" faculty members here at UM. Sijue Wu was chosen by LSA as the recipient of the Phyllis and William Wolff III Faculty Award. This award was established by the LSA Dean's Office to be used for faculty support. The funds from this award are intended to support research, and may be used for travel, research assistance or other expenses. Mathematics Department Alumna, Karen Uhlenbeck (BS 1964) received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Michigan at Spring Commencement Activities. The Mathematics Department hosted a reception for Professor Uhlenbeck on Thursday, April 29th in the Mathematics Department Atrium. Professor Anthony Bloch has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers effective 1 January 2003. He has been elected on the basis of contributions to nonlinear dynamics and geometric control of physical systems. The IEEE Fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of the IEEE, and is bestowed upon a very limited number of Senior Members who have made outstanding contributions to the electrical and information technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the profession. The number of IEEE Fellows elected in a year is no more than one-tenth percent of the total IEEE voting membership. This year 260 new Fellows were elected. Associate Professor Trachette Jacksonhas recently been awarded two prestigious fellowships. The Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship is an extraordinarily competitive award with Fellows selected from the very best scientists of their generation. The 2003 Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation is intended to "assist talented junior faculty to pursue scholarly research and writing so that they attain tenure more easily by providing support for a year's sabbatical". Jackson will use the fellowships to further her research in mathematical modeling in biomathematics, in particular, mathematical models for cancer growth and treatment. Associate Professor Brian Conrad has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest award bestowed by the United States government on young scientists. The PECASE program recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge.