E-News | CMPS

Vol. 11, No. 2 February 2009
The College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences
Steve Halperin, Dean. Mary Kearney, Editor
mkearney@umd.edu

HONORS AND AWARDS:

Rita Colwell, UMIACS, gave the National Academy of Sciences' 2009 Gilbert F. White Lecture in the Geographical Sciences, February 18. The lecture series was named in honor of the scientist who identified major water management strategies and examined how the United States could make sound decisions in this area.

Computer Science graduate students Darya Filippova, 2007 B.S. Computer Science, Andreaa Olea, Michael VanDaniker, 2006 B.S. Computer Science and Krist Wongsuphasawat won the Greg Herrington Award from the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board for Excellence in Visualization Research for their paper entitled "Visual Analytics for Transportation Incident Datasets."

Ricardo Nochetto, Mathematics, delivered the 6-lecture 2009 Lipschitz Lectures, at the University of Bonn, Germany. Supported by the Haussdorff Research Institute for Mathematics, the lectures took place from January 20 to February 5, and were entitled "Adapative FEM: Theory and Applications to Geometric PDE."

Louiqa Raschid, UMIACS and BMGT, has been named one of 39 Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Scientists, 2008. The members, 18 of whom are within academia, are being recognized for their individual contributions to both the practical and theoretical aspects of computing and information technology.

Richard Walker, Geology, was one of nine scientists named a 2009 Geochemistry Fellow by the Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry. Established in 1996, this title is bestowed upon outstanding scientists who have, over some years, made a major contribution to the field of geochemistry.

Physical Review Letters presented a series of "Milestone Letters" to celebrate 50 years of the journal (1958-2000), selecting Letters published each year that "made long-lived contributions to physics." Letters by the following faculty members were listed:

Chris Jarzynski, IPST, 1997, "Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Difference." Ed Ott, Physics, IREAP and ECE, Celso Grebogi and James Yorke, Mathematics, Physics and IPST, 1990, "Controlling Chaos." Paul Lett, Physics and JQI, Bill Phillips, Physics, IPST and JQI, et al., 1988, "Observation of Atoms Laser Cooled Below the Doppler Limit." Michael Fisher, Physics and IPST, et al., 1972, "Critical Exponents in 3.99 Dimensions."

CONTRACTS/GRANTS:

John Benedetto, Mathematics, Office of Naval Research, $133,333, "Nonlinear Frame Optimization for A/D Quantization, Dimension Reduction, and Fusion Frames."

Andrew Campbell, Geology, NSF, $255,478, "Career: High Pressure Melting and Phase Transitions in Model Compositions of Earth's Core."

James Carton, AOSC, NASA-GSFC, $100,303, "Use of GHRSST Observations to Constrain Ocean Models and Data Assimilation."

Wojciech Czaja, Mathematics, NSF, $384,925, "Multispectral Retinal Imaging and Mapping of Naturally Occurring Fluorophore and Chromophore Distributions in Health and Early Pathology."

Jonathan Katz, Computer Science and UMIACS, DARPA, $100,000, "Cryptographic Primitives and Protocols for Security in Complex Systems."

Judit Pap, Astronomy, NASA, $111,682, "The Fine Structure of Active Regions and Weak Magnetic Fields from MDI Images."

Donald Perlis, Computer Science and UMIACS, Office of Naval Research, $112,500, "Metacognition and Real-Time Natural Language Understanding."

Rachel Pinker, AOSC, Princeton University, $135,000, "Developing Consistent Earth System Data Records for the Global Terrestrial Water Cycle."

Mihai Pop, Computer Science and UMIACS, NSF, $379,919, "Algorithms for the Analysis of Data from Massively-Parallel Genome Sequencing."

WHAT'S NEW:

Professor Emeritus J. Robert Dorfman, Physics and IPST, who now spends a semester each year at the Technion, Haifa, Israel gave invited lectures at the International Symposium on Complex Systems in Brussels, Belgium, September 3-6, in Honor of the Award of the 2006 Francqui Prize to Professor Pierre Gaspard and the Symposium: Statistical Physics Out of Equilibrium, November 28, 2008, in honor of the retirement of Professor Henk van Beijeren. He was an invited lecturer at the Physics Seminar, Weizmann Institute for Science, Rehovot, Israel, December 22, 2008, the Physics Colloquium, Ben Gurion University, Be'er Sheva, Israel, December 25, 2008 and the Physics Colloquium, The Technion, January 1, 2009. Dorfman also taught a course on Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics at the Technion, Fall 2008 and worked as an assistant at the Nursery School for Immigrant Ethiopian Children in Haifa, Israel.

Ted Jacobson, Physics, gave a talk entitled "Introduction To Black Holes, Hawking Radiation, And The Gravitational Analogy" at the workshop "Towards the Observation of Hawking Radiation in Condensed Matter Systems," Valencia, Spain, February 1-7. The workshop gathered leading experts in gravitational and both theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics to discuss possible routes to observe the analog of the Hawking effect in condensed matter systems, with special emphasis to Bose-Einstein condensates.

IN THE NEWS:

Michael A'Hearn, Astronomy. Research conducted by A'’Hearn, Deep Impact, was mentioned in an article in the Baltimore Sun, February 20, on Comet Lulin—the first comet visible from Maryland with the naked eye since Comet Holmes appeared in October and November 2007. The UM Observatory held two special observing sessions to observe Lulin.

Alberto Bolatto, Astronomy, was quoted in Nature News, February 26, in an article on the stimulus bill’s increases in funding for science agencies.

Tony Busalacchi, AOSC and ESSIC, was quoted in the Washington Post, February 25, in an article on the effects of the crash of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Busalacchi was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered, February 25, on the same subject.

James Gates, Physics, was quoted in The Cornell Daily Sun, February 11, in an article on his lecture entitled "Maxwell's Equations and Darwin's Finches," the second Annual Beggs lecture on Science, Spirituality and Society. The Cornell Chronicle, February 11, quoted Gates in an article on the Darwin Days panel discussion on evolution and race.

Jordan Goodman, Physics, was quoted in ScienceNews, February 13, in an article on the recent detection of unusual patterns in cosmic rays pouring into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Tilak Hewagama, Astronomy, published an article in Science, February 20, on the results from using high-dispersion infrared spectrometers at three ground-based telescopes to measure methane and water vapor simultaneously on Mars over several longitude intervals in northern early and late summer in 2003.

Alan Kaufman, Geology, published an article in Science, February 20, on research data implying that nitrifying and denitrifying microbes had already evolved by the Late Archean and were present before oxygen first began to accumulate in the atmosphere. Science Centric, February 19, mentioned Kaufman in an article on this research.

Albert Marino, Physics and JQI, Raphael Pooser, JQI, Vincent Boyer, JQI and Paul Lett, Physics and JQI, published an article in Nature, February 12, showing that a four-wave mixing process based on a double-lambda scheme in hot 85Rb vapour allows them to obtain an optically tunable delay for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entangled beams of light. A separate article in the News and Views section of the same edition commented on their research. A follow-up article appeared in Physics World, February 12.

Chris Monroe, Physics and JQI, was quoted in The New York Times, February 3, in a follow-up article on his research published in Science on January 23, on teleporting the quantum identify of one atom to another a few feet away. The research was also the subject of articles in FastCompany, WUSA9, and The Times of India.

Robert Park, Physics, was the subject of an article in The Dartmouth, February 20, on his lecture discussing the Malthusian theory, which argues that starvation is inevitable because population grows exponentially, but resources grow linearly.

Ross Salawitch, AOSC, ESSIC and BioChem, was quoted in the New York Times, February 25, in an article on the crash of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

Eun-Suk Seo, Physics and IPST. Research conducted by Seo was mentioned in Popular Mechanics, February 10 in an article on NASA’s balloon program. The balloons allow scientific instruments to be lifted high into the atmosphere, collecting data from the suborbital zone. Seo's balloon detected cosmic rays from the explosions of distant supernovas.

Ian Spielman and Yu-Ju Lin, both Physics and JQI, were mentioned in PhysOrg, February 25, in an article on "dressing up" neutral atoms with light.

V.S. Subrahmanian, Computer Science and UMIACS, was mentioned in The Washington Post, February 16, in an article on computational models.

Ann Wylie, Geology, was quoted in the Gazette Newspapers, February 26, in an article on the East Campus Redevelopment Initiative.

ALUMNI NEWS:

Michael Barker, 2001 B.S. Astronomy and Physics, is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh. After graduating, Mike went on to receive a 2003 M.S. and 2007 Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Florida. His research experience and interests center around stellar archeology in the nearby universe. In particular, he is involved with tracing the structure and evolution of galaxies by mapping the formation history, chemical composition, and spatial distribution of their stellar populations.

Sergey Brin, 1993 B.S. Mathematics and Computer Science, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web. The Academy elected 65 new members and nine foreign associates, bringing the total U.S. membership to 2,246 and the number of foreign associates to 197. Brin, and co-founder Larry Page, were number 18 in Forbes Magazine's "World’s Most Powerful Billionaires," February 13, "…When people look for information, they're likely to turn to Page and Brin's creation: Google."

Rob Kniaz, 2001 B.S. Computer Science, is currently in London working on the investments team of Fidelity Ventures, a European technology-focused venture capital firm. Previously, Rob was at Google in various product management roles from early 2004 to 2008. Rob, who was a member of the QUEST program and a College Park Scholar, particularly focuses on investments in consumer internet, online advertising and enterprise software-as-a-service businesses.

Peter Serlemitsos, 1964 M.S. and 1965 Ph.D. Physics, was the recipient of the Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation by the American Astronomical Society. Serlemitsos, who is an astrophysicist for the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, was recognized for his innovative contributions to X-ray detector and telescope designs that have enabled decades of scientific advances in high energy astrophysics.

Lisa Winter, 2005 M.S. and 2008 Ph.D. Astronomy, received a NASA Hubble Fellowship to continue her work on black holes and active galactic nuclei at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

WE GREATLY ENCOURAGE ALL OUR READERS TO KEEP US INFORMED OF THEIR NEWS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

PLEASE SUBMIT ITEMS TO: Mary Kearney (mkearney@umd.edu )

COLLEGE OF COMPUTER, MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Astronomy Department - Dr. Stuart Vogel, Chair
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Department - Dr. James Carton, Chair
Computer Science Department - Dr. Larry Davis, Chair
Geology Department - Dr. Michael Brown, Chair
Mathematics Department - Dr. James Yorke, Chair
Physics Department - Dr. Drew Baden, Chair
CSCAMM - Dr. Eitan Tadmor, Director
ESSIC - Dr. Antonio Busalacchi, Director
IPST - Dr. Rajarshi Roy, Director
IREAP - Dr. Dan Lathrop, Director
UMIACS - Dr. V.S. Subrahmanian, Director