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# 2012 News Archive

 November 26, 2012 Qi Wang receives a NIH subaward from UNC Chapel Hill IMI member Qi Wang (PI) is granted a four year subaward from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill totaling $107,874 for his research on: Cytoskeletal Oscillations: Mathematical Modeling Integrated with Experiments. Funding for this project comes from NIH. "The role of Qi Wang, USC, is to develop the multiphase complex fluids model to describe the mechanistic response of cytoskeleton to various regulatory molecules such as GTPhases and Rho family etc. jointly with Greg Forest’s group at UNC. This modeling team will work closely with the experimental group to design the cellular model based on the phase field formalism and develop numerical simulation tools based on the model to compare with the experiment. Given the complexity in the cellular system, a prompt iteration between the experimental team and the modeling team will be one of the main advantages built into this interdisciplinary research endeavor." November 01, 2012 Kazarian and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Kazaros Kazarian and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article: "Hilbert spaces of vector-valued functions generated by quadratic forms" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:09). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. October 30, 2012 Qi Wang, Xinfeng Liu, Yi Sun and Xiaofeng Yang are awarded a SC EPSCoR/IDeA GEAR grant IMI members Qi Wang (PI), Xinfeng Liu (Co-PI), Yi Sun (Co-PI) and Xiaofeng Yang (Co-PI) are awarded a one year SC EPSCoR/IDeA GEAR Grant totaling$50,000 for their research on: In Silico Analysis of Multicellular Aggregate Fusion Using Field and Agent-Based Models. "The proposed Research Plan to engineer a 3D vascular tree in the 2009 NSF EPSCOR RII Track-1 proposal consists of five scientific thrust areas. In these areas, Thrust I focuses on in silico analysis of fusion of multicellular aggregates, spheroids, during biofabrication process and development of relevant mathematical models... In this proposal, we propose a two-pronged approach to develop in-silico predicative tools to understand multicellular aggregate fusion using field and agent based models. The effort of Thrust I will be benefited significantly through close interaction with researchers from other thrusts, which focus on biofabrication of branched vascular trees, accelerated tissue maturation of bioprinted constructs, and analysis of mechanical properties, respectively." October 26, 2012 Kerkyacharian and Petrushev publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Gerard Kerkyacharian and Pencho Petrushev published their article: "Heat Kernel Based Decomposition of Spaces of Distributions in the Framework of Dirichlet Spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:08). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP October 16, 2012 Summer School on Network Science:May 20-24, 27-31, 2013 http://imi.cas.sc.edu/events/summer-school-network-science/ Designed to bring network science closer to the USC community, this Summer School will present leaders in this field to lecture on campus. Four keynote speakers will each deliver five tutorial lectures over the course of two weeks. Additional talks will be presented by nationally recognized contributors. Sessions allocated to small group discussions and collaborative interactions will be encouraged. For more information please go to our Summer School on Network Science homepage or our Facebook group. BACK TO TOP September 17, 2012 Linyuan Lu, Laszlo Szekely and Eva Czabarka are invited to speak at the AISC 2012 International Conference Linyuan Lu, Laszlo Szekely and Eva Czabarka will each give a 30 minute invited talk at the "International Conference on Advances in Interdisciplinary Statistics and Combinatorics", October 5-7, 2012, in Greensboro NC. Their talks, presented on October 7, are "On Crown-Free Families of Subsets" (Lu) and "Mixed Orthogonal Arrays, K-Dimensional M-Part Sperner Multi-Families, and Full Multi-Transversals I (Szekely) and II" (Czabarka). BACK TO TOP September 17, 2012 Qi Wang and Xiaofeng Yang are awarded a National Science Foundation grant Qi Wang and Xiaofeng Yang (IMI) are awarded a four year National Science Foundation grant totaling $591,213 for their research on: Collaborative Research: Experimentally Guided Mathematics for the Mechanochemistry of Cell Shape Dynamics. "An integrated mathematical-experimental effort in cell biology is proposed, focusing on morphology and dynamics of motile cell phenotypes. Specifically, at spatial and temporal resolution scales appropriate to the study of live cells, we probe and model the molecular mechanisms of mechanochemical transduction, and mechanical feedback to chemical kinetics. The modeling goal is a platform to integrate detailed biological data and test biophysical hypotheses, with a predictive simulation tool for a cell in a specified extracellular environment. The model platform incorporates advances in cell substructure identification and property characterization (bilayer membrane, cortical cytoskeletal layer, cytosol and nucleus), coupled with advances in specific signaling pathways (Rho family of GTPases), their kinetics, and their role in mechanical activation and deactivation. A specific cell motility phenotype identified by the Jacobson lab is the testbed for this effort. Sustained morphological oscillations emerge in rounded cells having a period on the order of a minute. These cells mimic amoeboid migration and form a model system to study this form of locomotion that, while important in metastatic cancer, has received much less attention than mesenchymal migration." BACK TO TOP September 17, 2012 Laszlo Szekely and Eva Czabarka are awarded a DARPA grant Laszlo Szekely and Eva Czabarka (IMI) are awarded a four year DARPA subaward through the University of Notre Dame totaling$549,242 for their research on: Ensemble-Based Modeling of Large Graphs and Its Applications to Social Networks. "Czabarka, Szekely and their research group will work on network theoretic applications of the Lovasz Local Lemma, graph construction and sampling (exact, approximate and in expectation) with respect to prescribed graph parameters, pattern extraction from noise in networks, periodic structure detection and distances between networks allowing periodic structure detection, and on recognition of event-cascade motifs." BACK TO TOP September 06, 2012 Pencho Petrushev is awarded a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency grant Pencho Petrushev (IMI) is awarded a five year National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency grant totaling $750,000 for his research on: Highly Effective Compression and Evaluation of Geodetic Quantities. "Geodetic data are collected at accelerating rates with higher and higher resolution and accuracy every year. To meet the pressing requirements for higher resolution and accuracy the NGA team has developed the Earth Gravitational Model (EGM 2008), which utilizes spherical harmonics of degree 2160. The employment of high degree spherical harmonics, however, requires the development of innovative algorithms arising from sophisticated mathematical analysis. The primary objective of this project is the development of highly effective methods and software for compression and fast evaluation at many scattered points of geodetic quantities represented in terms of spherical harmonics such as the geoid undulation. This problem is usually treated in two steps: (i) Evaluation of the quantity of interest F from its spherical harmonic coefficients at regular grid points, and (ii) Evaluation/approximation of F at scattered points from its values at regular grid points. In this project we take on both problems (i) and (ii)." BACK TO TOP August 31, 2012 Peter Binev, Jerry Ebalunode and Wolfgang Dahmen are awarded a National Science Foundation grant Peter Binev (IMI), Jerry Ebalunode (CRCISI) and Wolfgang Dahmen (IMI) are awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling$300,000 for their research on: ATD Collaborative Research: Theory and Algorithms for High Dimensional Learning. "Many scientific problems, vital to the security, economy, and health of our nation, are modeled by complex systems that depend on several parameters or variables. Examples occur in modeling physical and biological systems, e.g. in atmospheric modeling; in optimal design (optimal control and shape optimization); and in understanding social networks such as those that occur in threat detection. The complexity of these problems prohibits the use of traditional numerical techniques for their solution. Thus, a major challenge to the numerical community is to develop new algorithms for detecting and capturing critical information held in the solution of such systems. This challenge has led to the introduction of a new wave of numerical techniques based on sparsity, adaptivity, and variable reduction. The research team of this proposal has been at the forefront of developing these new methods and providing a better understanding of their promise and their limitations. The main goal of this project is to build this understanding into a coherent theory resulting in sophisticated state of the art numerical algorithms that can be applied in a variety of settings." BACK TO TOP August 21, 2012 Colin Bennett publishes article in the journal: New York History The mathematical historians among you may be interested in Colin Bennett’s article "The Mathematician and the Madcap: George Baron in Newcastle and New York." Baron was the first mathematics teacher at West Point and founder of The Mathematical Correspondent, America’s first mathematics journal. Bennett's article, which appears in the latest edition of New York History, can be found in Vol. 92, No. 4 (Fall 2011), 229–246. BACK TO TOP August 20, 2012 Hong Wang is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Hong Wang (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling $240,000 for his research on: Development and Analysis of Fast Numerical Methods for Fractional Diffusion and Advection-Diffusion Equations. "It is proposed to develop efficient and faithful numerical methods for fractional diffusion and advection-diffusion equations with significantly reduced memory requirements and computational work. Preliminary numerical experiments for a two-dimensional linear fractional diffusion equation showed that the proposed fast method reduced the computational CPU time from 2 months and 8 days consumed by a standard method to 1 hour and 27 minutes, and reduced memory requirements significantly. The improvement of CPU time and memory requirements will become even more significant for larger problem sizes and especially for problems in three space dimensions. It is also proposed to carry out corresponding computational, numerical, and mathematical analysis for the numerical methods developed." BACK TO TOP August 08, 2012 Binev, Cohen, Dahmen, and DeVore publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Peter Binev, Albert Cohen, Wolfgang Dahmen and Ronald DeVore published their article: "Classification Algorithms Using Adaptive Partitioning" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:07). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP August 01, 2012 Eva Czabarka and Laszlo Szekely are invited to speak in Bielefeld, Germany Eva Czabarka and Laszlo Szekely have been invited to give 30 minutes talks at the Search Methodologies III Conference, September 3-7, 2012, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) of Bielefeld University, Germany. Czabarka's talk will be on "Mixed orthogonal arrays, k-dimensional M-part Sperner multi-families, and full multi-transversals." Szekely's talk will be on the "Consequences of the diamond problem for abelian groups." BACK TO TOP July 27, 2012 Michael Sutton Receives Governor's Award for Excellence in Scientific Research Download Original Article Michael A. Sutton (Mechanical Engineering / IMI) was one of two USC faculty members to receive the 2012 S.C. Academy of Science Governor's Award for excellence in scientific research. The award honors individuals or teams within the state who have made extraordinary achievements and contributions to science. Governor Nikki Haley presented the awards during a ceremony in the SC Statehouse on July 18, where Sutton was recognized for his pioneering work in the development of the computer vision based measurement method know as Digital Image Correlation. BACK TO TOP July 25, 2012 Lili Ju is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Lili Ju (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling$157,618 for his research on: Numerical Improvements, Mesh Adaptation and Parameter Identification for Parallel Finite Element Stokes Ice Sheet Modeling. "The numerical modeling of land-ice evolution has been a subject of growing interest because of the crucial role land-ice plays in global sea level and other parts of the climate system. Nonlinear, 3D Stokes flow is the gold standard among conceptual models for ice sheet dynamics. Ju has already closely collaborated with a team of collaborators on the preliminary development of a parallel finite element nonlinear 3D Stokes flow dynamical core for ice sheet modeling. The goal of the proposed project is to advance this current finite element Stokes ice sheet model by further enhancing its efficiency, accuracy, usability, and robustness. This will offer new insights through numerical simulations to the understanding of land ice evolution. " BACK TO TOP June 29, 2012 Laszlo Szekely, Linyuan Lu and Qi Wang are awarded a Visiting Scholars grant from the Office of the Provost IMI Members Laszlo Szekely (PI), Linyuan Lu, and Qi Wang (Co-PIs) are awarded a 10-month Visiting Scholars grant funded by the Office of the Provost, USC, totaling $21,949 for their project: Summer School on Network Science at USC. With this funding, "we propose to organize a two-week Summer School on network science at USC to help and promote this new interdisciplinary research direction, with the specific goals of (a) introducing other faculty and graduate students into this exciting new field, (b) increasing the awareness of USC faculty and administrators of the successes we made and the steps that have to be taken, (c) putting USC on the map of network science by bringing leading experts here, creating opportunity for collaboration and increasing the chances of network science proposals originating from USC, and (d) breaking the ground for developing a center in network science at USC." BACK TO TOP June 11, 2012 Lili Ju is awarded a US Department of Energy grant Lili Ju (IMI) is awarded a five year US Department of Energy grant totaling$348,420 for his research on: Predicting Ice Sheet and Climate Evolution at Extreme Scales (PISCEES). "The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at a growing rate. Although ice sheet models have improved in recent years, much work is needed to make these models reliable and efficient at whole-ice-sheet scales and to quantify uncertainties in predictions of future ice mass loss and sea-level rise. We therefore propose to develop and apply robust, accurate, and scalable dynamical cores (dycores) with adaptive refinements; to evaluate these dycores using new tools and data sets for verfication and validation (V&V) and uncertainty quantification (UQ); and to integrate these dycores and evaluation tools in the Community Ice Sheet Model (CISM) and Community Earth System Model (CESM). The resulting models and tools will provide the best available estimates, including uncertainty ranges, of future ice-sheet mass loss and resulting changes in sea level and climate." BACK TO TOP May 22, 2012 Pencho Petrushev is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Pencho Petrushev (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling $170,011 for his research on: Representation and Approximation of Functions in Nonclassical and Anisotropic Settings with Applications. "Many areas ranging from image processing, atmospheric sciences and oceanography to cosmology require efficient representation of the underlying functions in the natural topology of the targeted application. The capturing of physical phenomena occurring at various scales requires locally supported multiscale systems relative to the application domains. Moreover, these systems should be amenable to fast and accurate computation. The proposed research centers on the development of multiscale representation systems with these properties. Furthermore, it is proposed to develop sophisticated new methods for approximation and numerical computation using these systems. The project lies at the interface between computational harmonic analysis, spectral decompositions, orthogonal polynomials, nonlinear approximation and numerical analysis. It addresses the development of decomposition systems in several topologies." BACK TO TOP May 21, 2012 Szekely Gives Plenary Lecture at GraDR 2012 On May 21st, Laszlo Szekely gave a 90 minute invited Plenary Lecture at the GraDR 2012 Crossing Number Workshop and Minischool in Valtice, Czech Republic, with the title: "Crossing numbers: history, applications, and open problems." BACK TO TOP May 14, 2012 Coulhon, Kerkyacharian and Petrushev publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Thierry Coulhon, Gerard Kerkyacharian and Pencho Petrushev published their article: "Heat Kernel Generated Frames in the Setting of Dirichlet Spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:06). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP May 03, 2012 Temlyakov publishes article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Vladimir Temlyakov published his article: "Greedy Expansions in Convex Optimization" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:05). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP May 02, 2012 Nelson and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Jessica Nelson and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article: "Greedy Expansions in Hilbert Spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:04). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP May 01, 2012 Temlyakov publishes article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Vladimir Temlyakov published his article: "Greedy Approximation in Convex Optimization" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:03). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP April 27, 2012 Vladimir Temlyakov is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Vladimir Temlyakov (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling$211,452 for his research on: Greedy Approximation in Banach Spaces and Compressed Sensing. "The goal of the proposed research is to carry out fundamental mathematical study that will help us to significantly increase our ability to process (compress, denoise, etc.) large data sets. The main technique that will be used in achieving this goal is based on nonlinear sparse representations. We propose to study properties of specific methods of approximation that belong to a family of greedy approximation methods (greedy algorithms). These methods allow us to build sparse representations in an economical way." BACK TO TOP April 17, 2012 Dilworth, Soto-Bajo and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Stephen Dilworth, Moises Soto-Bajo and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article: "Quasi-greedy bases and Lebesgue-type inequalities" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:02). Please see link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP April 06, 2012 Xiaofeng Yang is awarded an ASPIRE-I grant from the Office of VPR Xiaofeng Yang (IMI) is awarded a 16-month ASPIRE-I grant funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research, USC, totaling $14,924 for his research on: Efficient modeling and numerical algorithm developments for multiphase complex fluid systems. "This proposal focuses on modeling, numerical analysis and simulations of multiphase complex fluid systems. The funding requested is to support a graduate student to assist in developing some basic but fundamental algorithms for solving systems connected to some underlying theoretical models. This research will ultimately contribute to the better understanding of pressing science and engineering applications." BACK TO TOP April 06, 2012 Qi Wang and Xiaofeng Yang are awarded a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research IMI members Qi Wang (PI) and Xiaofeng Yang (Co-PI) together with M. Gregory Forest and Peter Mucha, UNC-Chapel Hill, are awarded a three year AFOSR / DOD grant totaling$810,000 for their research on: Multiscale Mathematics for Nano-Particle-Endowed Active Membranes and Films. "Anisotropic nano-particles (rods, platelets, sheets, fibers) are employed to design active membranes, films, coatings and devices whose transport properties are, in principle, tuned and controlled at the nanoscale. However, structure lengthscales develop (including the potential for global percolating paths) in the particle ensemble through coupling between stochastic particle dynamics and hydrodynamic processing. All transport properties reflect these statistical, multiscale structures. We propose mathematics to characterize processing induced structures and the transport properties endowed by them... Air Force applications motivating this effort include optical, radio frequency, and acoustic filters and meta-materials, thermoelectrics, sensors, actuators, capacitors and photovoltaics." BACK TO TOP March 28, 2012 Jerrold R. Griggs Gives Plenary Address at the 2012 SIAM SEAS Conference Dr. Jerrold R. Griggs was one of four invited plenary speakers at the 2012 SIAM-Southeast Atlantic Section annual meeting in Huntsville, AL. The two day conference, held on March 24-25, 2012, consisted "of a combination of plenary talks, parallel sessions, and poster sessions to exchange recent advances on emerging and challenging problems in applied mathematics and computational sciences, and to enable communication between the theoretical mathematicians and applied scientists." Griggs's lecture: "Searching for Diamonds" was held on Sunday, March 25th. For more information on the plenary session, please visit the SIAM SEAS Invited Plenary Speakers website. BACK TO TOP March 19, 2012 New Book on Modeling NanoScale Imaging Edited by T. Vogt, W. Dahmen and P. Binev As part of its series: Nanostructure Science and Technology, Springer has published the book "Modeling Nanoscale Imaging in Electron Microscopy" (ISBN-13: 978-1461421900) edited by Thomas Vogt, Wolfgang Dahmen and Peter Binev, all IMI members. "Modeling Nanoscale Imaging in Electron Microscopy presents the recent advances that have been made using mathematical methods to resolve problems in microscopy. With improvements in hardware-based aberration software significantly expanding the nanoscale imaging capabilities of scanning transmission electron microscopes (STEM), these mathematical models can replace some labor intensive procedures used to operate and maintain STEMs. This book, the first in its field since 1998, will also cover such relevant concepts as superresolution techniques, special denoising methods, application of mathematical/statistical learning theory, and compressed sensing." About the Editors: Thomas Vogt is Director of the NanoCenter and Educational Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. Wolfgang Dahmen is Chair Professor of Mathematics at RWTH Aachen and member of the Leopoldina-German National Academy of Sciences. Peter G. Binev is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of South Carolina. All are members of the Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute. BACK TO TOP February 28, 2012 Joshua Cooper is highlighted in USC News http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=2935#.T006HVu9Hrg Download Original Article USC News and Internal Communication showcased Joshua Cooper in a recent article: "Sudoku clues have a minimum - say the computers". Apparently 17 is the magic number! According to a team lead by Irish mathematician Gary McQuire, the minimum number of clues required to solve a Sudoku puzzle is 17. Cooper discussed this "17-given-minimum-proof" at the recent Sudoku Challenge hosted on January 31st by the USC Gamecock Math Club and Pi Mu Epsilon honor society. BACK TO TOP February 12, 2012 László Székely is invited to speak in Dresden, Germany László Székely has been invited to give a talk on: Using the Lovasz Local Lemma for the configuration model at the international workshop: Mathematical Physics of Complex Networks: From Graph Theory to Biological Physics scheduled for May 14-18, 2012, in Dresden, Germany. Talk Abstract: The configuration model of Bollobas is the right way to look at random regular graphs or random graphs with prescribed degree sequence. Linyuan Lu and Szekely investigated settings, in which the Lopsided Lovasz Local Lemma of Spencer and Erdos requires only negative dependency graphs instead of dependency graphs works. (The difficulty is at finding negative dependency graphs that are not dependency graphs.) The new settings in which the Lopsided Lovasz Local Lemma works include the uniform probability space of perfect matchings in complete and complete bipartite graphs, when restrict our interest to canonical events. (An event is canonical, if it consists of all extensions of a partial matching to perfect matching.) As the configuration model derives random graphs with prescribed degree sequence from random matchings in the configuration space, it is no surprise that we can obtain lower bounds on the probability of certain properties. More surprising is that these lower bounds are tight for many properties, and matching upper bounds can be obtained, resulting in new proofs for many results on asymptotic enumeration, and also some new results. While the earlier results of Wormald, McKay and others on asymptotic enumeration usually allow a wider range of parameters, our results are more versatile and fairly easily can be adapted for modified problems. An interesting application is revisiting a classical result of Erdos: existence of graphs with large girth and large chromatic number. We show that almost all graphs with prescribed degree sequence and girth have large chromatic number, if the degree sequence satisfies some non-degeneracy conditions. BACK TO TOP February 10, 2012 Savu and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Daniel Savu and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article: "Lebesgue-type inequalities for greedy approximation in Banach spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2012:01). Please see link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP January 13, 2012 Michael Filaseta is awarded a National Security Agency grant Michael Filseta (IMI) is awarded a two year National Security Agency grant totaling \$42,753 for his research on: Polynomial Problems in Analytic Number Theory. "Polynomials play a central role throughout the various branches of mathematics, and this work studies a variety of problems, intended for research investigations for students, that have some connections to the area of analytic number theory." BACK TO TOP
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