News and Announcements
Martin Fraas is a mathematical physicist. He was born in Czechoslovakia and received his M.A. and PhD. degrees from Charles University in Prague. He had postdoctoral positions in the Technion (Israel) and ETH (Switzerland). Martin's first position in the US was in Virginia Tech, where he was an Assistant Professor in the mathematics department up until his move to UC Davis math department. Within mathematical physics, he focuses on studying the mathematical structures of quantum mechanics. He worked on open quantum systems, adiabatic theory, and quantum estimation theory. Most recently, his work focuses on topological phases of matter, a topic originating in condensed matter physics, and quantum trajectories, a topic originating in quantum optics.
Fernanda Valdovinos is a theoretical ecologist and network scientist. She recently joined (July 1st 2020) UC Davis as Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and before then she was Assistant Professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems since January 2018. Her group studies the structure and dynamics of ecological networks at ecological and evolutionary scales; including their resilience to biodiversity loss, biological invasions, climate change, and exploitation by humans. Her main research lines include plant-pollinator systems and food-webs, which she studies using a combination of mathematical and computational approaches. Valdovinos got her PhD in 2014 on Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chile, and then conducted her postdoc studies at the University of Arizona and spent part of her postdoc time at UC Berkeley. For more information visit: www.fsvaldovinos.com
Applied Mathematics at UC Davis welcomes a new faculty member of the graduate group. Professor Harishankar Manikantan. He is an assistant professor of Chemical Engineering and he works on mathematical modeling of continuum mechanics, and is broadly interested in problems involving fluid dynamics, multiphase flows, elasticity, soft matter, numerical methods, rheology, biophysics, hydrodynamic stability, nonlinear dynamics, and pattern formation.
We are happy to report that Prof. Rishidev Chaudhuri, a computational neuroscientist, with a joint appointment between Mathematics and Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior is the latest new member of the graduate group
in Applied Mathematics at UC Davis
The problem of comparing the shapes of surface arises in many fields,
including facial recognition, image processing, brain cortex analysis,
protein structure analysis and computer vision. It is referred to by
names such as surface registration, surface warping, best shape
analysis and geometric morphometrics. Hass and Koehl recently introduced a new
method to compare the shapes of two genus-zero surfaces (surfaces with no
holes) and to give an alighment between them.
Dr. Mariel Vazquez, a Professor of Mathematics, and of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and a CAMPOS Faculty Scholar at the University of California Davis, has joined the GGAM faculty. She is a mathematical biologist whose research focuses on the applications of topological and discrete methods to the study of DNA.
The paper, with co-lead author Damien Woods and other coauthors, has already received press coverage. Dr. Doty is working on theoretical aspects of molecular programming. He recently received an NSF CAREER grant titled Error-Free, Uniform and Composable Chemical Computation.
GGAM members Prof. Raissa D'Souza and Prof. Jim Crutchfield have just had
a paper accepted in Science
The article, coauthored with Benjamin Friedlander and with 2017 Applied Math Ph.D. graduate Shuyang Ling, appears on the front page of the news journal of he Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Join us for the GGAM Miniconference on Thursday Feb 28, with short talks from GGAM faculty members Profs. Javier Arsuaga, Krishna Balasubramanian, Becca Thomases, Xin Liu, and Gerry Puckett, a poster session, and a reception.
Liu, a member of the Department of Computer Science, is recognized for her contributions to the design of cross-layer resource allocation algorithms for cellular and cognitive radio networks.
"Working in the area of analysis, Luli has distinguished himself in the difficult mathematics of fitting smooth functions to large data. His research touches on many topics, notably harmonic analysis, partial differential equations and computational algebraic geometry, and has connections to theoretical computer science as well as applications to neurosurgery."
He works at the interface of statistics, optimization and machine learning with a focus on addressing inferential and computational aspects. He received his Ph.D from Georgia Tech. After appointments in Princeton University and and UW-Madison, he joined the Department of Statistics, UC Davis in Fall 2018. He has received an Facebook fellowship award and an ICML best paper runner up award.
Read about research of GGAM members Prof. Jesus De Loera (algebraic and geometric methods in optimization) and Prof. Blake Temple ("Crinkled Spacetime"); a profile of Dr. Alex Berrian, who graduated from the program in 2018 and is now an Audio Research Engineer at Gracenote; an update from the UC Davis Student Chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM); and more topics.
Upcoming Seminars
Thu, Oct 1, 10:00AM - Zoom lecture
Disc. Math : Erik, Greg, Anne, Jesus, Daniel, Elena, others
Meet UC Davis math faculty!
Thu, Oct 1, 1:10PM - Zoom (Online)
Student Research : Brian Harvie, UC Davis
Mean Curvature Flow vs. Inverse Mean Curvature Flow
Fri, Oct 2, 11:00AM - Zoom-o-sphere Zoom
QMAP : Eugene Skvortsov, AEI Potsdam
Quantum Higher Spin Gravity and three-dimensional bosonization duality
Tue, Oct 6, 1:10PM - zoom
Geometry : TBA
Meet some UCD faculty!
Tue, Oct 6, 4:10PM - Zoom Lecture
Data & Dec. : Abhishek Roy, UC Davis (Statistics)
Escaping Saddle-Point Faster under Interpolation-like Conditions
Wed, Oct 7, 11:00AM - Virtual MSB
Alg. Geometry : Man-Wai Mandy Cheung, Harvard University
TBA