Dear colleagues,

Yesterday Leticia and I met with Associate Dean Laura Belmonte to discuss our search process and obtain permission to interview. The search committee did an excellent job screening candidates, and we will have six strong candidates on campus in late January and February. I am currently working with the candidates on scheduling.

For the Wang line, with a preference for numerical analysis/computational PDE, we will interview:

Deniz Bilman (postdoc at University of Michigan, Ph.D. from UIC--still waiting on confirmation from him)

Yakov "Yasha" Berchenko-Kogan (postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis, Ph.D. from MIT)

Xu Zhang (Assistant Professor at Mississippi State, postdoc at Purdue, Ph.D. from Virginia Tech)

The Gallagher line was open to any area of math, but we focused primarily on analysis because of our departmental need in that area. We narrowed the short list to candidates in complex analysis and in PDE. Based both on faculty feedback and my own assessment of our needs, I decided that we should interview three candidates in complex analysis. The candidates in both areas were very strong, and it was hard to differentiate among them. We will interview:

Sean Curry (postdoc at UC-San Diego, Ph.D. from the University of Auckland)

Luke Edholm (postdoc at Michigan, Ph.D. from Ohio State)

Vyron Vellis (postdoc at UConn, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (Urbana))

I appreciate the work everyone has done so far in evaluating and providing feedback on files, and I hope we have great participation in the forthcoming interviews.

Best wishes, Chris

-- Chris Francisco Professor and Head Department of Mathematics Oklahoma State University Office: 401 MSCS Phone: (405) 744-8225 E-mail: chris.francisco@okstate.edu