Faculty Achievements

Congratulations are due to several faculty for promotions and awards:

Sybilla Beckmann-Kazez:

Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship and the Regents’ Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr. Beckmann-Kazez has won the two most prestigious teaching awards in the state of Georgia this past year. The Josiah Meigs Professorship is the University of Georgia’s highest teaching honor and the Regents’ Award for Excellence in Teaching is the statewide University System of Georgia’s recognition of teaching excellence. She has shown exceptional leadership in enhancing the teaching and learning of Mathematics. Her devotion to and contribution to revolutionizing the mathematical education of young minds is nothing short of astounding. Her involvement in mathematics education reform is broad and meaningful, ranging from membership on national mathematical education advisory committees, to her nationally acclaimed textbook, to her involvement in the local school system. One thing that truly stands out about Sybilla as an educator is the number of people’s lives she has touched. In her classes, she manages to convey the joy of understanding that mathematics, even at the elementary level, is not a random compilation of arcane manipulations of numbers, but in fact makes simple, common sense. She teaches this understanding and appreciation to future and practicing teachers, and more recently she has extended her instruction to future teachers of teachers through the Mathematicians Educating Future Teachers program (see the article in this newsletter). Each one of these disciples then takes up the charge of conveying her message to his/her students and colleagues. These teachers are laying the foundation in the young minds of their students for future success in mathematics and science.

Professor Joseph Fu:

Creative Research Medal

Dr. Fu was awarded the University of Georgia’s Creative Research Medal last spring for his recent work in Hermitian Integral Geometry. By combining recent progress in the theory of convex valuations with his extensive background in geometric measure theory and the differential geometry of singular spaces, Joe was able to finally reach an explicit description of the coefficients of the general kinematic formulas in the unitary setting. Kinematic formulas have been a focus of integral geometry since its inception in the late 19th century but the details of the coefficients of the formulas have often proven to be surprisingly elusive. Joe’s work is considered foundational in the new area of “algebraic integral geometry”.

Dr. Pete Clark was promoted to associate professor in the summer of 2011. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and came to UGA in 2006 after spending a few years as a post doc at McGill University. Pete is a creative and prolific researcher in number theory and arithmetic geometry. He is known for his elegant approaches to longstanding problems as well as his ability to ask probing questions. Dr. Clark is also a prolific writer and a highly respected teacher. On his web site (http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/) you can find hundreds of pages of notes he has written for his classes. He is also well known for his contributions to mathoverflow.net, a web resource for sharing questions and ideas from mathematical research.

Dr. Caner Kazanci was promoted to the rank of associate professor in the summer of 2011. He has been at UGA since receiving his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. Dr. Kazanci holds a joint appointment with the Faculty of Engineering. His research focuses on the modeling and analysis of complex systems in biology and ecology. His software, EcoNet, (see http://eco.engr.uga.edu/ ) is used by researchers modeling ecological networks around the world. He has also developed particle tracking methods for analyzing complex systems by following the individual paths of a multitude of “particles” that make up the system. On the teaching side, Dr. Kazanci is key in helping to build our applied math mathematics offerings and in building bridges to UGA’s growing engineering program. He has developed a course in mathematical biology, split between our department and Engineering, which has been very successful. He has also led several VIGRE Research Groups that have attracted students from Mathematics, Ecology, and Engineering.