Printer-friendly versionForty-five new positions for highly-trained mathematical scientists across the country have been created as a result of a partnership among the seven National Science Foundation-supported mathematics institutes. Five of these one-year positions have been selected by the Faculty of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study for an appointment beginning in September 2009. Four of the recent PhDs will be based at a host institution and one will be based at the Institute. Each will have a mentor at his respective host institution. The four based at partnership institutions will each have an Institute faculty contact and will be encouraged to visit the Institute for at least one week per term and give a seminar on their research. Pierre Albin of Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be hosted by the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University; Jonathan William Bober of the University of Michigan will be hosted by IAS; Reimundo Heluani of the University of California at Berkeley will be hosted by his home institution; Joseph A. Johns of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences will be hosted by Barnard College; and Jean-Philippe Lessard of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, will be hosted by his home institution. To learn more about this initiative, click here.
News Briefs Archive
The April 30, 2009 online issue of Eurosurveillance features an article by Benjamin Greenbaum, Member in the School of Natural Sciences, former Member (2006-07) in the School of Mathematics Vladimir Trifonov, and former School of Natural Sciences Member (2003-08) Raúl Rabadán, coauthored with Hossein Khiabanian of Columbia University. The article, which grew out of research conducted at Columbia's Department of Biomedical Informatics, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and the Institute's Simons Center for Systems Biology, reports that preliminary analysis suggests at least two swine ancestors to the current H1N1, one of them related to the triple reassortant viruses isolated in North America in 1998. The complete article, "The origin of the recent swine influenza A(H1N1) virus infecting humans," may be viewed here.
Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science, and Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, are among the 210 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Established in 1780 by founders of the United States, the Academy is comprised of scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business, giving it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.
Former Members Alain Rouet (1981-82) and Raymond Stora (1961-62) are among the winners of the 2009 Dannie Heineman Prizes for Mathematical Physics, awarded by the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. Rouet, President and CEO of Science & Tec, and Stora, a researcher at Laboratoire d'Annecy-Le-Vieux de Physique Theorique (LAPTH), both in France, share the prize with Carlo Becchi of the University of Genoa, and Igor Tyutin of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow "for discovery and exploitation of the BRST symmetry for the quantization of gauge theories providing a fundamental and essential tool for subsequent developments."
Charles Simonyi, Chairman of the Institute's Board of Trustees and President and Chief Executive Officer of Intentional Software, has become the first civilian to travel into space for a second time. Dr. Simonyi was aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 26 and docked with the International Space Station on March 28.
While in space, Dr. Simonyi conducted experiments and communicated by HAM radio with students on Earth. He again wore the Institute seal on his flight suit, as he did on his first flight in 2007. His website, www.charlesinspace.com, features a blog about his travel, along with information about his training and the mission. Dr. Simonyi returned to Earth on April 8.
The work of Tanmay Vachaspati, Visitor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been published in Physical Review Letters (101, 141301, September 29, 2008). "Cosmic Sparks from Superconducting Strings" explores Vachaspati's investigation of cosmic sparks from cusps on superconducting cosmic strings in light of the recently discovered millisecond radio burst by Lorimer et al. Vachaspati's work has also been highlighted on PhysOrg.com in an article titled, "Cosmic Strings Might Emit Cosmic Sparks, Answer Cosmological Questions."
In 1986, Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, published an article in The American Historical Review entitled "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." The most frequently accessed AHR article online, the journal editors consider it "one of the most oft-cited in all of contemporary historical literature." In December 2008, The American Historical Review published a forum to reflect on the influence of Professor Scott's seminal article in various fields. Five historians representing different chronological and geographical outlooks contributed essays commenting on the ways Scott's article influenced their fields. You may access the forum here.
The January 2009 issue of Physics Today features an article by former Member (2003) and Princeton University Professor Igor Klebanov and School of Natural Sciences Professor Juan Maldacena. The article contains new information about strongly interacting quantum field theories and their surprising correspondence with gravitational theories. The complete article, "Solving quantum field theories via curved spacetimes," may be viewed here.
Institute Trustee Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, has been honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Gregorian was named recipient of the 2008 James L. Fisher Award for Distinguished Service to Education at the CASE Summit for Advancement Leaders, held in New York City in July. The award honors individuals, organizations, foundations, corporations, or publications for their extraordinary service to education of national and/or international significance, beyond service to a single institution or state. Gregorian has served on the Institute's Board of Trustees since 1987.
Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, features an article by Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science, in the September 26, 2008 issue. "Can Neural Data Improve Economics?" explores how neurobiology can guide economic experiments and refine economic models. The complete article is available here.