Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
Volume 10, Number 2Fall 2003
Letter from the Chair
I came across a New York Times article recently, entitled “Big Blue’s Big Bet: Less Tech, More Touch”. Its thrust is that IBM is transforming itself into a company that will be a “side-by-side” partner with businesses, rather than merely a supplier of hardware and software. They “want to capture in software some of the things business people really do – like sifting and analyzing information – and automate it”. This will involve “sophisticated text analytics, modeling, simulation, mathematical optimization and the like.” Hmmm … this sounds just like what we’ve been teaching our mathematics and computing students for the last decade and more. Remember those phrases when someone asks you “what can I do with a math degree”!
One of the main purposes of our newsletter is to hear back from our alumni. We enjoy the tales of success and enjoy passing them on to you – you’ll find several later in the publication. We’d also like to translate the feedback we get into action, by which I mean taking advantage of your experiences since graduation to improve the education we offer our current and future students. In our next issue, we are going to include a survey form to that effect. You can help us construct that survey: suggest questions!
Among our many recent changes is a sparkling new electronic face to the world – our web page, I mean – attuned to the University’s new “brand” image (I hate that word, but recruiting is cut-throat these days). Thanks go especially to Ms. Fanglin Zhong and Ms. Christine (Rihong) Xu. Take a look and tell us what you think.
There have also been a number of physical changes. For instance, we now have a top-of-the-line computing laboratory in CU410, used for our three network classes, our computer security class and for our web technology class, just to name a few. Using money from the Wehr Foundation, we have just completed a Geometric Modeling Laboratory in CU392, inspired by Dr. James Factor’s research and teaching interests. With an emphasis on “visualization’’, we expect that it will develop into a resource for faculty and students in Engineering, Biology and Chemistry as well as our own department.
More important than the physical changes have been the new personnel. Dr. Iqbal Ahamed and Dr. Ruta Bajorunaite have each weathered the storm of their first semesters – new classes to prepare, independent research to establish, maturing from a graduate student to a professorial mentality. We are already in the midst of hiring another computer scientist and another mathematician – more news of that in our next issue.
Back to IBM and mathematics … what sort of applications do they have in mind? According to the Times, last spring their services and research lab started working with FinnAir on a project to use mathematical modeling and optimization algorithms to try to increase customer loyalty, reduce marketing costs and improve response rates among members of its frequent-flier program. An airline representative said: “That can be huge money in the airline business. And it’s done with mathematical modeling. We could never do it ourselves.”
Did your undergraduate degree, whether in mathematics or computer science, prepare you for challenges such as those? Let us know!
Peter Jones, Chair
Dr. Iqbal Ahamed &Dr. Ruta Bajorunaite
Research & Publications
Bajorunaite
Published: Besien, K., Loberiza, F.R., Bajorunaite R., Armitage, J.O., Bashey, A., Burns, L.J., Freytes, C., Gibson, J., Horowitz, M.M., Inwards, D.J., Marks, D.I., Martino, R., Maziarz, R.T., Molina, A., Pavlovsky, S., Pecora, A.L., Schouten, H.C., Shea, T.C., Lazarus, H.M., Rizzo, J.D., and Vose, J.M., November 15, 2003 Comparison of Autologous and Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation for Follicular Lymphoma, Blood 102, 3521-3529.
Bankston
Published: Modeling non-intersective adjectives using operator logic, The Review of Modern Logic, vol. 9, nos. 1 & 2, 9-28.
Hamedani
Published: A characterization of symmetric random variables, (with Hans Volkmer), Comm. in Statistics. Theory and Methods, Vol. 32, No. 4 (2003), pp. 723-728.
Why independence when all you need is sub-independence,J.. of Statistical Theory and Applications, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2003), pp. 280-283.
Krenz
Published: G.S. Krenz and C.A. Dawson, Flow and pressure distributions in vascular networks consisting of distensible vessels,Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 284:H2192-H2203, 2003.
B. Suki, A.M. Alencar, U. Frey, P.C. Ivanov, S.V. Buldrev, A. Majumdar, H.E. Stanley, C.A. Dawson, G.S. Krenz and M. Mishima, Fluctuations, noise and scaling in the cardio-pulmonary system,Fluctuations and Noise Letters 3(1):R1-R25, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2003.
C.A. Dawson, S.H. Audi, G.S. Krenz and D.L. Roerig, Chapter 9, Endothelium and compound transfer, in Molecular Nuclear Medicine: The Challenge of Genomics and Proteomics to Clinical Practice,L.E. Feinendegen, W. W. Shreeve, W.C. Eckelman, Y.-W. Bahk, and H.N. Wagner, Jr., Editors. Springer, New York, 2003, pp. 201-216.
Jones
Published: Inverse semigroups determined by their lattices of convex inverse subsemigroups I, (with K.H. Cheong),Algebra Universalis 49 (2003), 51-80.
Inverse semigroups determined by their lattices of convex inverse subsemigroups II, (with K.H. Cheong),Algebra Universalis 49 (2003) 81-106.
Merrill
Published: S.J. Merrill, Solving Problems: Perchance to Dream, ICTMA 11: Mathematical modeling: a way of life, S.J. Lamon, W.A. Parker, and S.K. Houston (eds.), Horwood Pub., 2003, 97-105.
Ruitenburg
Published: Intuitionistic axiomatizations for bounded extension Kripke models, (with Mohammad Ardeshir and Saeed Salehi), Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 124 (2003), pp. 267-285.
Slattery
Published: Character Degree Sets that Do not Bound the Class of a p-Group, with I.M. Isaacs,Proc. American Mathematical Society, Vol. 130, (2002), 2553-2558.
Tonellato
Research: Member of Faculty Department of Biomedical Engineering,MarquetteUniversity, Milwaukee, WI.
Published: Twigger, S., Lu, J., Shimoyama, M., Chen, D., Pasko, D., Long, H., Ginster, J., Chen, C.F., Nigam, R., Kwitek-Black, A., Eppig, J., Maltais, L., Maglott, D., Schuler, G., Jacob, H., Tonellato, P.J.,Rat Genome Database (RGD) - mapping disease ontothe genome, Nucleic Acids Research 30(1):125-128, 2002.
Kendziorski, C.M., Cowley, A.W. Jr., Greene, A.S., Salgado, H.C., Jacob, H.J., Tonellato, P.J., Mapping baroreceptor function to genome: a mathematical modeling approach,Genetics 160:1687-1695, 2002.
Kotchen, T.A., Broeckel, U., Grim, C.E., Hamet, P., Kaldunski, M.L., Kotchen, J.M., Schork,N.J., Tonellato, P.J., Cowley, A.W., Jr., Identification of hypertension-related QTLs in African American sib pairs, Hypertension (inpress), 2002.
Tonellato, P.J., Kendziorski, C.M., Cowley, A.W., Jr.,Characterization ofblood pressure dynamics of rats: a model basedapproach, Amer. J. Physiol.(Heart and Circulation) (in revision), 2002.
Thomas, M.A., Jiang, N., Torres, M.J., Von Bergen, J.L., Wang, Z., Tonellato, P.J.,Evaluation of high-throughput microarray image processing techniques andapplications, Journal of Computational Biology (submitted), 2002.
Thomas, M.A., Chen, C.F., Jensen-Seaman, Tonellato, P.J., Twigger, S.N. Phylogenetics of rat inbred strains, Mammalian Genome (in press), 2002.
Wang, X., Jiang, N., Feng, X., Xie, Y., Tonellato,P., Ghosh, S., and Hessner., M.J., A Novel Approach for HighQuality Microarray Processing Using Third-Dye Array VisualizationTechnology(submitted), March 2003.
Activities & Awards
James Factor
Attended: DIMACS CAD/CAM Workshop at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, October 2003.
Presented: Geometric Modeling Colloquium, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the invitation of Shri Joshi, February 3, 2004.
Received: Wehr grant to establish a Geometric Modeling Lab in the MSCS department (CU 392) for faculty and student research. The installation should be completed Spring Semester 2004. This lab is the first of its kind at MarquetteUniversity. At present, it consists of three high-end computers, one of which is a dual processor computer. Software will be available to encourage curve, surface, solid modeling development, geometric algorithm research, and generally expand students' and faculty's interest in this important area.
Kim Factor
Presented: Gamma-set domination graphs: Complete biorientations of trees,Midwest Graph Theory (MIGHTY) XXXVI Conference,May 31, 2003.
Participated: As a research mentor in the Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) Institute's Direct Connect program at Rutger's University, New Brunswick, NJ. I was one of five research mathematicians from around the country (including Alaska) who was invited to participate in this program. While there, I designed three research problems (based upon my current research) and introduced them to teams of high school math teachers. We worked on developing the research preparing a professional presentation, and submitting a technical report. New results were obtained. Note: DIMACS is the top institute worldwide for studies in discrete mathematics, and particularly my area of graph theory, July 13 - August 1, 2003.
Krenz
Presented: Poster at Experimental Biology 2003, San Diego, CA, April 12-15, 2003.
Poster at the annual fall meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Nashville, TN, October 1-3, 2003.
Oral presentation at the Christopher A. Dawson Memorial Symposium, Medical College of Wisconsin, October 25, 2003.
Served on Special Study Section 9, National Institutes of Health grant review panel March 12-14, July 9-11, September 25-26, 2003, Washington, D.C. (reviewed S10, R33, R43/R44 and R01 NIH grants).
Undergraduate News
Undergraduates Mark Krywaruczenko, Francisco Ojeda, Wendy Wimer, and Jennifer Witry, and graduate student Audia Dobson participated as panelists at Discovery Days presentations on November 9 and 16. They spoke to prospective students and their families about our Department, answering questions about majors, courses, internships, advising, and other aspects of student life.
Five of our undergraduates competed in the 2003 William Lowell Putnam Competition on Saturday, December 6. The six hour Putnam exam, given in colleges and universities throughout North America, is a challenging test of originality and technical competence. Can you solve this sample problem from the 2003 exam? Find the minimum value, for real numbers x, of
|sin x + cos x + tan x + cot x + sec x + csc x|.
Pi Mu Epsilon by Jacob Manske
2003-2004 Pi Mu Epsilon Officers
Jacob Manske-PresidentEmily Stockhausen–Secretary
Matthew Schaning – Vice PresidentJustin Evert– Treasurer.
Dr. Wim Ruitenburg - Faculty advisor.
Dr. Ruitenburg and Pi Mu Epsilon Members
Our new initiates members: Daniel Blythe, Kendra Bower, Emily Brauer, Ryan Cerniglia, Tricia Chavez, Timothy Chumley, Heather Cross, Josh Gozdzialski, Kenneth Hartman, Adam Hermsen, Amanda Heyman, Ann LaFave, Ann Lee, John Massanisso, Ben Nitti, Tanya Onushko, Kathleen Rock, Megan Schaefer, Liz Simpson, Meghan Tobolski, Jared Verdoorn, Wendy Wimer, John Wolanski, John Zeirke, Brandon Zingsheim.
Colloquia by Bankston
September 19: Brian McMaster, QueensUniversity, Belfast, NorthernIreland,How Near to Normality is the Sorgenfrey Plane?
October 10: Peigang Li, MSCS, MarquetteUniversity,Identifying Biological Processes in Microarray Data using singular Value Decomposition and the Gene Ontology Database.
October 24: Ruth Howes, Physics, MarquetteUniversity,The Changing Landscape of Undergraduate Physics.
November 07: Xujing Wang, Medical College of Wisconsin, The MCW Microarray Platform: Aim for High Quality Gene Expression Measurements and Biology-driven Data Mining.
November 14: Kenneth Kunen, Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Complex Stone-Weierstrass Property.
December 10: Dae-Kyoo Kim, Software Engineering Research Group, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, A Metamodeling Approach to Specifying Design Patterns.
Graduate News
Last year, you read about new MSCS graduate computer science courses. The flurry of graduate curriculum activity continues! The university approved the following new graduate courses or course modifications for August 2004:
MSCS 215 - Advanced Linear Algebra. This new course is an important addition to our graduate offerings and will benefit both our Master’s and Ph.D. students. Linear algebra concepts are used, for example, in theoretical mathematics arguments, numerical calculations, image processing, search engines and text analysis.
MSCS 216, 217 - Logic and Set Theory 1,2. This new graduate sequence will cover naive set theory, first order logic, elementary model theory, non-standard analysis, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems for elementary arithmetic, axioms for set theory, ordinal and cardinal arithmetic, the continuum hypothesis, methods of inner models and forcing for proving consistency and independence.
MSCS 218, 219 - Universal Algebra and Semigroups 1,2. The graduate sequence, “Theory of Semigroups” has been renamed to reflect the inclusion of universal algebra.
In addition to the above courses, the department has added two new topics courses, MSCS 281 - Topics in Applied Mathematics and MSCS 285 - Topics in Foundations. Another change in the graduate program will be evident next year: the bio-mathematical modeling Ph.D. specialization will be renamed “biomathematics.” At the beginning of the department’s bio-mathematical modeling Ph.D. specialization, terminology describing the subdiscipline was in flux. With growth of the field and the recent creation of life science special interest groups within SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics), mathematics terminology as applied to the life sciences has standardized. Students, universities and industry will more easily recognize the name “biomathematics.”
If you know of potential graduate students (computer science, math or math with an emphasis in statistics) please have them contact the MarquetteGraduateSchool or contact us directly!
Graduations, December 2003
B.S. in Computational Math
Francisco Ojeda
B.S. in Computer Science
Patrick HumpalJustin Krieher
Robert PhanmahavongEric Scholz
Master of Science in Bioinformatics
Polasa RamakumariTai Lung-Wen
Master of Science in MSCS
Janardhanan KampurathNatraj PathuriPonmalar Ratnam
Jagadeesh Yeturi
Master of Science in Computing
Tom BarbourTim DavisVikalp Jain
Panna RaikarFawad SayedSheng Wang
Yizhou XieTimothy DavisTaoying Huang
Roman JimenezLesiley JohnVenugopal Kekunnaya
Peigang LiSasi NagarajanBradley Olson
Vishwanath PuggeraGrant RettkeSundaresan Ramakrishnan
Fawad SayedChoon-Hong YapFanglin Zhong
Yeturi, Pathuri, Li, Zhong and Drs. Krenz, Byleen, Struble, Jones
Letters from Alumni
We love to hear from you so please send a letter to any department member or via email to
.
Then, you will get to read about yourself as well as your friends in the next newsletter.
Mike Wolff ()
We hope you have had an “astronomical year”! We have, in more ways than one. For us, much of 2003 “revolved” around Mars! We flew to Spain (sans kids) last January for an international meeting on the Red Planet, at which Mike spoke about atmospheric issues. Mars was so close to earth this summer that 4 spacecraft from various countries were sent exploring, each hopefully landing this Dec/Jan.
In June and July, we spent time at Cape Canaveral, awaiting the launches of NASA’s MER A and B (Mars Exploration Rovers). We observed the day launch of MER A in person, but finally gave up and watched MER B on CNN. The spacecraft both land in January, so Mike has been/will be spending a lot of time at JPL in Pasadena. He’s part of the team that helps guide the mobile Rovers in their data collection after they land.
Carolyn, who completed the newest Harry Potter while awaiting the launches, just turned 9 and is in the 4th grade.
Matthew, who got a great tan while awaiting the launch, is newly 7 and in the 1st grade. He has become an independent reader, a “make-something-out-of–nothing” expert, and continues to perfect the art of “sister bothering”.
Ryan, formerly “the quiet one”, is 4 ½ years old, attends pre-K daily, and is formally “out of his shell”.
Chris Gunneson
Howdy and Happy Holidays!
2003 has been a good year for us, and we hope it finds you well.
Chris has been keeping busy with (surprise!) tole painting. She started a little business, and is now officially The Painting Lady.
Dan spent a lot of time at the office this year, his 14th at Microsoft. He is currently the Test Manager for MSN Messenger.
Ken Pronovici
Julie continues to be challenged by the Kenwood Chamber Orchestra. Over the last year, she has met and worked with a number of very talented soloists from the Minnesota Orchestra. She also played some chamber music this year with a septep and participated in a string quartet workshop.
Early in the year, Ken earned a position as one of about a thousand “official” Debian Linux Developers worldwide. This was a result of an application process that lasted almost a year, and was certainly more challenging than any “job interview” Ken has had before. Debian is a free computer operating system created and maintained entirely by volunteers. Ken spends anywhere from five to twenty hours a week helping maintain some of the five thousand software “packages” that comprise a Debian system. The Debian work is sort of a natural extension of Ken’s skills and hobbies, he’s excited about finally being able to “give something back” to the free software community he’s participated in for so many years.
Ken’s work at Northwest Airlines has continued to be enjoyable as well. Ken continues to write back-end software, and this year spent much of his time writing low-level communications software. For example, if you use nwa.com to check the status of your flight, your request for information ultimately goes through the software Ken has been writing. Ken would still rather not have a pager, but has decided that the pain of the pager is balanced out by the interesting work he has been doing and all of the new things he’s had the chance to learn (engineer’s mantra: boredom is bad!).
In July, Juli’es job moved in a different direction. She went from being a member of a 30-person software verification team to being the lead of a six-person team. July-October were very busy months. Julie wrote the project’s testing strategy and then coordinated with team members in three states. The project finished on time and under budget, a rarity at Medtronic. Julie is not sure she wants to be a project lead “when she grows up”, but thinks this was a worthwhile experience, even if she was pretty stressed-out for the entire month of August.
Just like last year, we have been taking digital pictures, and we have put many of them up on our online photo gallery:
Karen Woest & Phil Hubing
Hope this holiday season finds you well. Both Phil and I are fine. Work has been keeping us both very busy. Phil is still working at Motorola and I am still working at Lucent. Both companies have downsized significantly over the past couple of years and although the number of people has been reduced significantly, the amount of work and schedules has not been cut back. Lucent may have led in the number of telecom layoffs. It has gone from 150,000 employees in 2000 to les than 35,000 in 2003. As a result, both of us find ourselves working a lot of long hours.