University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Letter from the Department Chair
It is a pleasure to write to you with greetings and good news about the Department of Mathematics. I was appointed as the new department chair on August 16. We have been slated for advancement and investment by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our new support will help us to attract talented faculty and to pursue excellence in all aspects of our mission. We will be vigorously pursuing strong faculty appointments at both the senior and junior levels. We are also implementing plans to give our faculty more dedicated research time. We are improving our instruction and course offerings, and would like to increase student scholarships and fellowships. Our facilities, including historic Altgeld Hall, are targeted for renovation. It is an exciting time for our department!
I took over as chair from Joseph Rosenblatt, who selflessly served as Interim Chair. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his service. Being chair is a busy job, but it's been made easier for me by Joe's assistance with the transition. Former chair Daniel Grayson has also been an immense help to me, as have numerous other members of the faculty and staff. Thanks to all!
We have hired many new personnel this fall and I'd like to introduce them here. Sergiy Merenkov is a new Assistant Professor who comes to us from a postdoctoral position at Michigan. He specializes in the geometric theory of conformal and quasiconformal maps and is particularly interested in applications to geometric group theory and analysis on fractals. We have also hired two new postdocs. Tao Mei received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Texas A&M and works in functional analysis and harmonic analysis. Julien Melleray received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Paris 6 and works on logic, functional analysis, and their interactions. Read more about these faculty on page 3.
We also have many new visiting faculty:
- Andrea Barreiro (Ph.D. New York University 2006)
- Ilgiz Kayumov (Ph.D. Kazan State University 1997, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Mech. and Math., Kazan State University)
- Maria Sabitova (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2005)
- Sonja Stimac (Ph.D. University of Zagreb 2002, TA with Ph.D. on tenure track licensed to lecture with Graduate School of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb)
- Zoran Vondracek (Ph.D. University of Florida 1990, Professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Zagreb).
In addition, Jing Li (Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley) has joined us as a new lecturer and Sue Purkayastha (M.Ed. in Math Education, University of Illinois) has arrived as a new instructor.
One of the more pleasant duties a department chair has is to advocate for and brag about the department. This is easy to do because of the many accomplishments of our faculty and students:
- Slawomir Solecki and Richard Sowers have been promoted to Full Professor, and Dirk Hundertmark, Ilya Kapovich, Rinat Kedem, and Charles Rezk have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
- 66% of our faculty are Principal Investigators on external grants. This is our largest percentage in recent decades.
- Twenty faculty have received new NSF grants in the last year.
- Associate Professor Robert Ghrist received a $7.98 million grant from DARPA for his research program entitled SToMP: Sensor Topology for Minimal Planning, the largest grant ever received by a member of our department.
- Our graduate students are engaging in research activities earlier through our REGS program (Research Experiences for Graduate Students) and our popular mini-courses. Eighteen students received Ph.D.’s last year and have been employed well.
- We have 798 undergraduate majors enrolled in our combined undergraduate degree programs. Our largest specialized major is Actuarial Science in which 275 students are enrolled.
The strength of our department originates in its people, and I have enjoyed getting better acquainted with faculty, staff, and students. I have had the pleasure of discussing departmental history with retired faculty and look forward to meeting more of our alumni, an important group of our stakeholders.
Whether you are on campus or reflecting back on your time at the Department of Mathematics at UIUC, I wish you a productive Fall semester as we work together to keep improving our department.
Sincerely,
Sheldon Katz
Chair, Department of Mathematics
In this issue:
- Letter from the Department Chair
- News
- Alumni Reception
- Give On-line
- Meet the Faculty and Staff
- Faculty News
- Undergraduate Activities
- News from the Graduate Program
- New IMU Logi
- Business Office News
- Ghrist receives DARPA Grant
- In memoriam
Meet the Faculty and Staff
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. 2003, Purdue University
Sergiy Merenkov came to the United States from the Ukraine in 1999 as a graduate student in Mathematics at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. from there in 2003 under the direction of Alexandre Eremenko. After that Merenkov held a three-year postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan, where he mainly worked with Mario Bonk. His research is on geometric theory of conformal and quasiconformal maps with applications to areas such as geometric group theory and analysis on fractals. In his spare time Professor Merenkov likes reading, both literature and news, listening to NPR, and exercising, such as weight lifting.
J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor
Ph.D. 2006, Texas A & M
Tao Mei, a native of China, received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M under the supervision of Dr. Gilles Pisier in 2006. Before he came to the U.S. in 2003, he spent one year in Besancon, France as a visiting scholar. His current research area concerns both functional analysis and harmonic analysis, especially in generalizations of classical results from harmonic analysis to operator valued (matrix valued) functions and related subjects, such as noncommutative martingales. He was married this past August. Mei enjoys playing tennis and badminton, and he likes playing "Go" very much.
J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor
Ph.D. 2005, University of Paris
Julien Melleray received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris in December 2005. His research interests are descriptive set theory, logic, functional analysis and their interactions. In the past few years, Melleray has mostly concerned himself with the study of the Urysohn universal space, a fascinating object that seemingly is at the "border" of these domains; its history is also fascinating, since it is the last mathematical work of Pavel Urysohn, who drowned while on a holiday in France a few weeks after his construction of this space, which was then almost forgotten for 60 years before again attracting the attention of mathematicians. Melleray enjoys spending time with his family (three brothers and a wonderful 1-year-old niece) in the southwest of France, and when he has some spare time, loves reading; he is especially fond of modern American crime fiction, and has recently developed an unavowable liking for (really) bad science fiction novels.
Director of Budget and Resource Planning
Wendy Harris joined the Department of Mathematics as the Director of Budget and Resource Planning in June. She has been on campus for 12 years, most recently in a similar position at Educational Psychology. Wendy has two Masters degrees, but fears the Ph.D. process, so don't expect any more. When off-campus, Wendy can be found working for the Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company (management and techie only; none of that on-stage stuff) or shopping for antiques and books. Born and raised in the Midwest, she has recently discovered the joy of overseas travel, so expect her to be gone a couple of weeks each year!
