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Newsletters of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology


Dynamics Days organized by IPST faculty

January 20, 2012. Michelle Girvan and Wolfgang Losert, among others, organized Dynamic Days 2012, an annual conference on topics in nonlinear dynamics. The conference took place from January 4th to the 7th, and it included a celebration of Ed Ott's 70th birthday and his seminal contributions to the field of nonlinear dynamics.


Daniel P. Lathrop, new Associate Dean for Research in CMNS

January 3, 2012. Daniel P. Lathrop has been appointed Associate Dean for Research for the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS). The announcement was made by Dean Jayanth Banavar, "Dan will work on identifying new opportunities for funded faculty research through large scale grants and on encouraging and supporting the development of successful proposals for these; strengthening old and building new partnerships with federal labs and agencies, increasing program development with support from private foundations, and enhancing opportunities with the private sector; and encouraging new areas of interdisciplinary collaboration by college faculty."


Dionisios Margetis to speak at local SIAM chapter meeting

October 10, 2011. Dionisios Margetis will be the plenary speaker of the fall 2011 SIAM Washington-Baltimore Section meeting on November 16 at 8:30 p.m. in the Clipper Room in Shriver Hall on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Professor Margetis will present the lecture entitled "A Tale of Two Scales: From discrete schemes to Partial Differential Equations in epitaxial growth."


Frank Olver to receive USDOC Gold Medal

August 8, 2011. Frank Olver has been selected to receive the Gold Medal of the US Department of Commerce (USDOC) for his work on the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. The Gold Medal of the USDOC is the highest honorary award granted by USDOC's Secretary. "A Gold Medal is defined as distinguished performance characterized by extraordinary, notable, or prestigious contributions that impact the mission of the Department and/or one or more operating units, which reflects favorably on the Department", reads the criteria for this prestigious award.
The Digital Library of Mathematical Functions was chosen as one of 10 Government Computer News (GCN) Award Winners for "Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government" in 2011. This year's winning projects were selected from over 200 nominations submitted to GCN, based on the degree to which a given IT project improved an agency's ability to operate more efficiently or serve the public more effectively.


The 2011 Burgers Symposium on Nov. 16

July 18, 2011. Jim Wallace, Chair, Burgers Board invites you to the 2011 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 16th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Kim Engineering and Applied Science Building. The annual Burgers Lecture will be given by Marie Farge, Directrice de Recherche CNRS - Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. We will also be celebrating the 80th birth-year of Jan Sengers with lectures by Katepalli Sreenivasan, Gijs Ooms (Scientific Director of the J.M. Burgerscentrum in the Netherlands) and Jutta Luettmer-Strathmann (one of Jan's former students and a Physics Professor at the University of Akron). A gala reception will follow the symposium with opportunities to further wish Jan well.


The 2011 Shi-I Pai Lecture on Nov. 15

July 18, 2011. The Seventeenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture, in conjunction with the Physics Department, will be presented on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. A reception begins at 3:00 pm in the Math Rotunda, followed by the lecture at 4:00 pm in the Physics Lecture Hall, room 1410. We are delighted to announce that this year’s lecture will be presented by Dr. Andreas Acrivos, Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science and Engineering at the City College of New York, where he was formerly the Director of the Benjamin Levich Institute for Physicochemical Hydrodynamics. He is concurrently an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, where he was a Professor of Chemical Engineering for many years. Professor Acrivos is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and he was awarded the prestigious 2001 National Medal of Science, which was presented to him by the President of the United States, George W. Bush.


Interview with Michael E. Fisher in Europhysics News

May 24, 2011. In the January-February issue of Europhysics News (Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 14-16) José M. Ortiz de Zárate, a regular visitor to IPST, interviewed Michael Fisher during his visit to Spain on the occasion of the ceremony of the Frontiers of Knowledge Prizes, which Professor Fisher shared in the category of Basic Sciences with Richard N. Zare. In this interview, Fisher talks, among other things, about the work of his colleagues Jan Sengers, Mikhail Anisimov, and Chris Jarzynski. A copy of this article can be found in the About Us/History section.


Jie Chen receives inaugural University of Maryland Distinguished Dissertation Prize

Jie Chen April 22, 2011. Dr. Jie Chen, a former Chemical Physics student mentored by Devarajan Thirumalai, has received the inaugural University of Maryland Distinguished Dissertation Prize in the disciplinary area of Biological and Life Sciences. Her dissertation “Link Between Dynamics and Function in Single and Multi-subunit Enzymes” was nominated by the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences. A campus-level Award Committee, chaired by Distinguished University Professor Michael A’Hearn (Astronomy), selected Dr. Chen’s dissertation. The Prize carries with it an honorarium of $1,000.


Andrew Ballard awarded a 2011-2012 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship

Andrew Ballard April 22, 2011. Mr. Andrew Ballard, a Chemical Physics student under Christopher Jarzynski, was awarded a 2011-2012 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship. The fellowship is a one-semester award intended to support outstanding doctoral students who are in the final stages of writing their dissertation and whose primary source of support is unrelated to their dissertation. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships carry a stipend of $10,000 plus candidacy tuition remission and $800 toward the cost of health insurance. The Graduate School awards approximately 40 Wylie Dissertation Fellowships per year.


Davit Potoyan receives award from Biophysical Society

Davit Potoyan April 22, 2011. Mr. Davit Potoyan, a Chemical Physics student in the research group of Garegin Papoian, has been awarded a Biophysical Society 2011 Student Research Achievement Award. Three hundred and nine society student members participated in this competitive event held during the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting on March 6 in Baltimore, Maryland. Judges from the Society's subgroups selected twenty winners, who were recognized at the awards ceremony on March 7 and received a monetary award.


Michael Warehime receives a 2011 Graduate School Summer Fellowship

April 22, 2011. Michael Warehime, a Chemical Physics student, has been awarded a 2011 Graduate School Summer Fellowship. The fellowship provides support to outstanding doctoral students at "mid-career", that is, in the period approximately before, during, or after achievement of candidacy, and are intended to enable students to prepare for or complete a key benchmark in their program's requirements. Summer Research Fellowships carry stipends of $5,000. Mr. Warehime's advisor is Millard Alexander.


Jan V. Sengers receives the Clark School's Faculty Outstanding Commitment Award for 2011

April 4, 2011. Our colleague Jan V. Sengers has been honored by the A. James Clark School of Engineering with its prestigious Faculty Outstanding Commitment Award for 2011. A ceremony will take place at 2:30 pm on April 20 at the fountain gracing the Glenn L. Martin Engineering building immediately followed by a reception.


Eighth Monroe H. Martin Prize Lectures

March 31, 2011. It is our pleasure to announce that Adam Oberman, from Simon Fraser University, and Joel A. Tropp, from the California Institute of Technology, have been awarded the Eighth Monroe H. Martin Prize. Each winner will give a Monroe H. Martin Prize lecture on April 13, 2011. For those interested in attending, please visit our seminars section for more information. The event is sponsored by the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling, the Department of Mathematics, and the Institute for Physical Science & Technology, all at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Special Functions in the 21st Century: Theory & Applications / April 6 - 8, 2011 / Washington, DC
Frank W. J. Olver We proudly announce SF21, a conference dedicated to Professor Frank Olver, in light of his seminal contributions to the advancement of special functions, especially in the area of asymptotic analysis and as Mathematics Editor of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions and Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF).
The conference will provide a forum for the exchange of expertise, experience and insights among world leaders in the subject of special functions. Participants will include expert authors, editors and validators of the works mentioned above. It will also provide an opportunity for DLMF users to interact with its creators and to explore potential areas of fruitful future developments. For more information and details, please read the official conference flyer.

Alexander published in Science Magazine

January 31, 2011. Professor Millard H. Alexander, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, was published in the January 28, 2011 issue of Science. His article entitled "Chemical Kinetics Under Test" can be viewed at the Science website.


Stochastic Dynamics: Models, Analysis, and Numerics

January 25, 2011. A new Research Interaction Team (RIT) on "Stochastic Dynamics: Models, Analysis, and Numerics" is being organized by Maria Cameron, Sandra Cerrai, Leonid Koralov, and Dionisios Margetis, from the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. This RIT might be of interest to scientists and engineers alike. The first formal meeting will be held on February 9. For more information, please visit the RIT webpage.