From the Graduate Director

Our graduate students continue to have interesting off-campus mathematical adventures. In August 2007 Juhyung Lee attended the International Conference on Integral Geometry, Harmonic Analysis, and Representation Theory held in honor of the 80th birthday of Sigurdur Helgason in Reykjavik, Iceland. A bit closer to home, in March 2008 Jerod Michel attended the Oklahoma-Arkansas Sectional Meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Ft. Smith, Arkansas and gave a presentation on formal language theory and its applications to the development of biological systems. Netra Khanal co-authored a paper with his advisor Dr. Jiahong Wu and Dr. Juan-Ming Yuan of Providence University, Taiwan, entitled "The Kawahara equation in weighted Sobolev spaces" which was recently accepted for publication in the journal Nonlinearity. In November 2007 he gave a talk on this paper at the Prairie Analysis Seminar at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. In May 2008 he will give a talk entitled "The complex KdV-Burgers equation: a study on its series type solutions" at the International Conference on Dynamical Systems, Differential Equations, and Applications, which will be held at the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Arlington, Texas.

OSU and OU continue their two programs of joint seminars, one in automorphic forms and one in topology. Each seminar alternates talks at the two campuses, giving faculty and graduate students opportunities for mathematical interaction.

Recent special topics courses offered by the department include courses in financial mathematics by Dr. Lisa Mantini and by Dr. Weiping Li, a course on prehomogeneous vector spaces by Dr. Anthony Kable, and a course in hyperbolic geometry by Dr. Joseph Maher. In addition, there was a graduate student topology/geometry seminar in which the students lectured on diverse topics drawn from the areas of 3-manifold topology, hyperbolic geometry, and the theory of automata and formal grammars. In Summer 2008 Dr. Alan Noell will offer a topics course in functional analysis.

We continue to recognize our exceptional graduate students through various departmental awards.

In Spring 2007 we announced that the John and Caryl Jobe Fellowship would be awarded to incoming student Kenneth Ward, who joined us in Fall 2007.

In Spring 2008 Naomi Tanabe received the Jeanne Agnew Outstanding Teaching Award, Juhyung Lee was awarded the Jeanne LeCaine Agnew Endowed Fellowship, Bo-hyun Kwon received the O. H. Hamilton Award, Mei Xing was presented the E. K. McLachlan Award, Ben Wescoatt received the Hazel Bucy Award, and David Kighuradze was presented the Schiller J. Scroggs Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. The recipient of the next John and Caryl Jobe Fellowship will be incoming student Heather Stauffer, who will join us in Fall 2008.

Two of our graduate students received recognition during Spring 2008 from outside the mathematics department for the quality of their teaching. Amit Yavantikar was presented the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award. Juhyung Lee was chosen to receive the College of Engineering Outstanding Educator Award by the Minority Students Association.

These are but a few of the ways in which the graduate program and its students constitute a vital part of the life of our department.