Winter 2011-2012
School of Mathematical Sciences
Volume 1, Number 2
Student research profile
Tran finds her mathematics passion in actuarial science
With several research experiences and a summer
internship under her belt, Anh Tran, a third-year
applied mathematics major, has confirmed her interest
in becoming an actuary. While working at an insurance
company in her home
country of Vietnam,
she saw firsthand the
day-to-day operations
of the company. “I
highly recommend an
internship to other RIT
students,” states Anh.
“It was beneficial to
see how mathematics
can be used to analyze
business decisions.”
Anh’s desire to
learn
mathematics
began at a young age.
In high school, her role
model was Terence
Tao, a 2006 Fields Medal awardee, because “he studies
interesting math topics, like number theory, and
accomplished so much at a young age.” Anh came to the
United States to finish her high school education at a
mathematics and science school in Maine. Her guidance
counselor included RIT on her list of colleges to
consider, and the rest is history.
Along with her internship, Anh has had a collection
of research experiences at RIT that have helped her find
her passion for actuarial science. Each experience began
with learning a collection of definitions and a few key
concepts. From there, Anh would start deriving new
conjectures and proofs. She has worked independently
with Darren Narayan on the rankings of graphs as well
as on a team with students from the University of
Rochester and Rutgers during a Research Experience for
Undergraduates at RIT. Anh gives the following advice
for research success: “Be energetic, enthusiastic, and
creative.” Although Anh’s immediate goal is to become a
practicing actuary, she hopes to return to research in the
future. (see TRAN, p. 2)
Faculty research profile
Biostatistics applications provide rewards for Chen
For Linlin Chen, an Assistant Professor in the School of
Mathematical Sciences at RIT, it was the chance to take
her skills and apply them to important real-world
problems that set her on her current path of studying
biostatistics and biomathematics problems across a wide
range of topics.
Like many SMS professors, Chen’s academic
background is not entirely in mathematics. She earned
her bachelor’s degree in mechanics from Beijing
University, and a master’s degree in computer science
from Rice University in Houston. Following a stint at the
oil services firm Schlumberger, she worked as a senior
programmer for the Center for Aging and
Developmental Biology at the University of Rochester
(UR), where she says that interactions with the
biologists and doctors she met and worked with fostered
a strong interest in biostatistics. Building on her
computational and mathematical skills, she proceeded
School of Mathematical Sciences
to earn her master’s and doctoral degrees at UR.
Her thesis work involved statistical studies of
microarray data, in which a large number of small DNA
segments are placed on a substrate and used to perform
widely parallelized genetic tests, with an emphasis on
the correlation structure of high-dimensional data,
especially genetic data. She continues to work on similar
projects studying possible inter-gene dependencies and
their effects on the performance of gene selection
procedures. She uses the results to form a computer
simulation model describing the cell population
dynamics and associated gene expression variations in
renewing tissues. Other active projects include using
microarray data to analyze statistical techniques that
help balance type I (“false positive”) and type II (“false
negative”) errors, studying factors affecting mortality
rates for patients with testicular cancer in collaboration
with a researcher at UR's cancer center (see CHEN, p. 3)
SMS Research News, smsnews@rit.edu
a quarterly publication of research
accomplishments and information
Editor-in-chief:
Editorial board:
Elizabeth M. Cherry
Joshua A. Faber
Kara L. Maki
SMS faculty and students take part in annual meeting of
Upstate New York Cardiac Electrophysiology Society
Four students working with SMS faculty presented their research at the
Upstate New York Cardiac Electrophysiology Society (Unyces) annual
meeting on October 28 in Syracuse. The single-day annual meeting brought
together researchers studying all aspects of cardiac electrophysiology and
arrhythmias, from subcellular to whole-organ investigations and
encompassing theoretical, experimental, and clinical studies. A unique
feature of all Unyces meetings is their focus on young investigators: apart
from the invited keynote speaker, the meeting presenters consist of
postdoctoral fellows and students, mostly at the graduate level, and
attendees strive to provide constructive comments and positive feedback.
RIT presenters this year included Mohamed Elshrif, a PhD student in
Benjamin Liu, left, explains his poster.
Computing
and
Information
Sciences, and Benjamin Liu, a BS student in SMS, both working with
Elizabeth Cherry; and Eric Spangler, an MS student in SMS, and
Mingming Wang, an MS student in Electrical Engineering, both working
with Nathan Cahill and Elizabeth Cherry. It was the first time for Liu,
Spangler, and Wang to attend a professional meeting in the field and
Elshrif’s first oral presentation.
Unyces meetings celebrate the history of cardiac electrophysiology
research in the upstate New York region. RIT participants joined a total
of nearly 100 researchers from universities and laboratories in New York
and Ontario at Upstate Medical University, this year’s host institution.
The
next Unyces meeting will take place in the fall, with RIT and the
Mingming Wang, left, and Eric Spangler, center,
University of Rochester serving as co-hosts.
discuss their poster with a conference attendee.
RIT researchers granted a millennium of computer time
Performing cutting-edge computational scientific
research can require tremendous amounts of computing
power, and an RIT team has just been awarded one of
the largest allocations across the nation, representing
more than 1,000 CPU-years worth of computing time on
some of the nation's largest supercomputers dedicated
to academic use. Carlos Lousto, along with colleagues
Manuela Campanelli, Joshua Faber, Scott Noble, and
Yosef Zlochower, all of the School of Mathematical
Sciences and Center for Computational Relativity and
Gravitation (CCRG), and Hans-Peter Bischof (Computer
Science/CCRG), have been awarded nearly 13 million
CPU-hours via the XSEDE program, a National Science
Foundation-funded project that awards time on 16
supercomputers at sites located across the country.
The computer time will be used to further the
CCRG's research efforts into the dynamics of black
holes, neutron stars, and accretion disks. “This
allocation, which represents 2 percent of the Ranger
supercomputer's entire capacity, will allow us to
continue to stay at the forefront of numerical relativity
and astrophysics, leadership which is recognized
throughout the community,” says Lousto. According to
Zlochower, the big challenge is not just using such a
large allocation, but using it well: “We've spent a great
deal of time learning how to use thousands of processors
at a time efficiently, pushing the limits of computer
science along with physics, and are working on
expanding our reach to tens of thousands of cores,” a
scale that has become possible only in the last few years.
TRAN, continued from p. 1
Success is not uncommon for Anh. She already has a
peer-reviewed publication entitled “Rank numbers for
some trees and unicycle graphs” in Aequationes
Mathematicae. “I think the publication process is an
interesting experience. It includes a lot of detailed work,
especially editing,” states Anh. In addition to her
publication, Anh has given a research presentation on
ranking of graphs at the Joint Mathematics Meetings
held in January. At the meeting, she was surprised to see
so many mathematicians (over 6,000 registered). Her
findings were well received by the mathematics
community.
In her free time, Anh enjoys puzzles, music, and
gathering with friends. In the spring, she will be
transferring to Temple University to complete a degree
in actuarial science while finishing her mathematics
degree. She explains, "Even though I need to leave RIT
to follow my ambitions, I will always be grateful for the
experiences I have had there that have helped me to
decide the direction I want to take in life." We wish Anh
the best of luck. She will be missed.
SMS Research News
Winter 2011-2012
Page 2
Seminar Series
Center for Applied and Computational
Mathematics
All seminars are at 12pm in Gosnell 2130.
Monday, December 5. Benjamin Liu (RIT):
Implications of non-uniqueness of curve fitting to sparse
experimental data on dynamics of cardiac
electrophysiology models; Eric Spangler (RIT):
Segmentation of magnetic resonance images for
structural modeling of the heart.
Monday, December 12. Ryan Lewis (Dartmouth
College): Multicore homology.
Monday, January 16. TBA.
Monday, January 23. TBA.
Monday, January 30. Shaohui Sun (RIT): Nearly rigid
descriptor-based matching for volume reconstruction
from histological sections.
Monday, February 6. Qinlian Zhou (U Buffalo): TBA.
Monday, February 13. TBA.
www.rit.edu/cos/math/acm/seminars.php
Science Cafes
Science Cafes are talks for the general public that
encourage questions and discussion. They are held
at 7pm at the Pittsford Plaza Barnes and Noble on
the fourth Tuesday of every month.
ccrg.rit.edu/~RSC
Publications
Peer-reviewed research articles by SMS faculty
and postdoc and RIT student authors.
Abadie J et al. [incl. Frei M, Peiris P, and Whelan JT] (LIGO
Scientific Collaboration). A gravitational wave observatory operating
beyond the quantum shot-noise limit. Nature Physics 7, 962-965
(2011).
Batocci E et al. [incl. Filipski AB and Cherry EM]. Teaching cardiac
electrophysiology modeling to undergraduate students: Lab exercises
and GPU programming for the study of arrhythmias and spiral wave
dynamics. Advances in Physiology Education 35, 427-437 (2011).
Jaramillo G, Lousto CO. Study of multi black hole and ring
singularity apparent horizons. Physical Review D 84, 104011 (2011).
Khullar S, Michael AM, Cahill ND, Kiehl KA, Pearlson G, Baum SA,
Calhoun VD. ICA-fNORM: Spatial normalization of fMRI data using
intrinsic group-ICA networks. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 5, 118 (2011).
Lousto CO, Zlochower Y. Hangup kicks: Still larger recoils by
partial spin/orbit alignment of black-hole binaries. Physical Review
Letters 107, 231102 (2011).
Maki KL, Kumar S. Fast evaporation of spreading droplets of colloidal
suspensions. Langmuir 27, 11347-11363 (2011).
Nakano H, Zlochower Y, Lousto CO, Campanelli M.
Intermediate-mass-ratio black hole binaries II: Modeling trajectories
and gravitational waveforms. Physical Review D 84, 124006 (2011).
Niederer SA et al. [incl. Cherry EM]. Verification of cardiac tissue
electrophysiology simulations using an N-version benchmark.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A 369,
4331-4351 (2011).
Ponce M, Faber JA, Lombardi Jr. JC. Accretion disks around kicked
black holes: Post-kick dynamics. Astrophysical Journal 745, 71 (2012).
CHEN, continued from p. 1
and working with researchers at
Undergraduate summer research opportunities
Rochester General Hospital
Undergraduate students interested in conducting
(RGH) on studies of a vaccine
research over the summer should take note of
hoped to reduce the incidence
opportunities for research fellowships offered through
of ear infections in children.
the College of Science, Center for Student Innovation,
In the spring, Chen will be
and the Honors Program as well as the Research
looking to work with some wellExperiences for Undergraduates Program in
trained undergraduate students
Mathematics at RIT. Application deadlines are
on the consulting projects she
expected in late February and early March. Interested
performs
with
RGH,
by
students should contact potential faculty mentors to
analyzing medical data and
discuss possible projects and Darren Narayan
using it to help guide her colleagues in their work. Her
(dansma@rit.edu) for more specific information.
advice for students is very clear: “You need to have
MS students: finalize faculty advisor selection
strong mathematical and computational skills these
Graduate students who have not yet selected an
days to succeed in academia, private industry, or other
advisor should do so as soon as possible to ensure
places.” She strongly encourages undergraduate
sufficient time is available to complete their thesis
statistics majors not only to learn the rudiments of the
work. “If you plan to graduate in the current academic
major statistics languages, but to spend the time to
year, it is imperative to start working on your thesis in
master the techniques that will open doors for them in
a timely manner,” says Director of Graduate Programs
the future, wherever their path may take them. Hers
Tamas Wiandt. Graduate students should arrange to
has certainly been a winding one, but she says it was
meet with potential advisors to discuss topics and to
entirely worth it. “I get to apply my skills every day to
plan a timeline for thesis completion.
a number of real, applied problems and help people
when I do. It's extremely fulfilling.”
SMS Research News
Winter 2011-2012
Page 3
Conference Presentations
Conference and symposium presentations by RIT faculty and postdocs and RIT students.
Students:
Brittany Ambeau, Harris Ennis, and Stefan Schnake:
Nondestructive electrothermal detection of corrosion. Joint
Mathematics Meetings (JMM), Boston, MA, January 2012
(poster).
John Costanzo and Nathan Cahill: A survey of the
feasibility of similarity measures for use in rigid registration.
JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012.
Erin Crossen and Selin Sariaydin: On an inverse
problem of parameter identification in compressible and
incompressible linear elasiticity. JMM, Boston, MA, January
2012 (poster).
Korinne Dobosh and Samuel Kennedy: Rank numbers of
rook's graphs. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012. Faculty
mentor: Jobby Jacob.
Mohamed Elshrif: Quantitative analysis of two models of
human ventricular cardiac electrophysiology. Upstate New
York Cardiac Electrophysiology Society (Unyces) Meeting,
Syracuse, NY, October 2011. Faculty mentor: Elizabeth
Cherry.
Meridangela Gutierrez-Jhong and Maxwell Bileschi: A
complete characterization of optimal vertex rankings of paths,
cycles, and joins of graphs. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012.
Faculty mentor: Darren Narayan.
Ryan Held and Lauren Stemler: Representations of graphs
modulo $N$. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012.
Benjamin Liu: Curve fitting to sparse experimental data:
Implications for the dynamics of cardiac electrophysiology
models. Unyces Meeting, Syracuse, NY, October 2011 (poster).
Faculty mentor: Elizabeth Cherry.
Benjamin Liu: Implications of non-uniqueness of curve
fitting to sparse experimental data on dynamics of cardiac
electrophysiology models. RIT Center for Applied and
Computational Mathematics (CACM), Rochester, NY,
December, 2011. Faculty mentor: Elizabeth Cherry.
Prabath Peiris: Gravitational wave data analysis using
cross-correlation method. RIT Astrophysics Research Talks
Jamboree, Rochester, NY, October 2011 (poster). Faculty
mentor: John T. Whelan.
Eric Spangler and Mingming Wang: Segmentation of
magnetic resonance images for structural modeling of the
heart. Unyces Meeting, Syracuse, NY, October 2011 (poster).
Faculty mentors: Nathan Cahill and Elizabeth Cherry.
Eric Spangler: Segmentation of magnetic resonance images
for structural modeling of the heart. RIT CACM, Rochester,
NY, December 2011. Faculty mentors: Nathan Cahill and
Elizabeth Cherry.
Andrew Zemke and Akhtar Khan: Identification of certain
parameters in fourth order boundary value problems. JMM,
Boston, MA, January 2012.
Faculty and Postdocs:
Raluca Felea: Folds and cusp singularities in seismic inverse
problems. University of Limerick, Ireland, October 2011.
Raluca Felea: Common singularities in SPECT and SAR
inverse problems, Inverse Problems, Isaac Newton Institute,
Cambridge, UK, November 2011.
Raluca Felea: A class of singular Fourier integral operators.
Loughborough University, UK, November 2011.
Rigoberto Florez and Darren A. Narayan: Maximizing the
number of edges in optimal k-rankings. Joint Mathematics
Meetings (JMM), Boston, MA, January 2012.
Matthew J Hoffman: Correcting flow estimates in
Chesapeake Bay using data assimilation. JMM, Boston, MA,
January 2012.
Bonnie C. Jacob and Jobby Jacob: From sum optimal to max
optimal graph rankings. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012.
Baasansuren Jadamba, Akhtar A. Khan, and Fabio
Raciti: Some remarks on stochastic variational inequalities
with applications to equilibrium problems. JMM, Boston, MA,
January 2012.
Akhtar A. Khan and Miguel Sama: Conical regularization
for abstract constrained optimization problems in Hilbert
spaces. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012.
Chulmin Kim: A brief statistical analysis of line-up in the
Major league baseball, New England Symposium on Statistics
in Sports 2011, Boston, MA, September 2011.
Chulmin Kim: Are the current weights 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3 the
best to produce the BCS rating in the College Football?, Fall
2011 Seaway Sectional Meeting of the Mathematical
Association Of America, St Bonaventure, NY, October 2011.
SMS Research News
Joy Lind and Darren A. Narayan: STEM real world
applications of mathematics. JMM, Boston, MA, January 2012
(poster).
Carlous Lousto: Hangup kicks: Still larger recoils by partial
spin/orbit alignment of black-hole binaries. 21st Midwest
Relativity Meeting, Urbana-Champaign, IL, November 2011.
Kara L. Maki and Satish Kumar: Fast evaporation of
spreading droplets of colloidal suspensions, NSF Mathematics
Institutes' Modern Math Workshop at The Society for
Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science
Annual Conference, San Jose, CA, October 2011.
Kara L. Maki and Satish Kumar: Fast evaporation of
spreading droplets of colloidal suspensions, 64th Annual
Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid
Dynamics, Baltimore, Maryland, November 2011.
Kara L Maki and Satish Kumar: Drying of spreading
droplets of colloidal suspensions. JMM, Boston, MA, January
2012.
John T. Whelan: Cross-correlation search for LMXBs. LSCVirgo CW Face-to-Face Meeting, Gainesville, FL, September
2011.
John T. Whelan, Emma L. Robinson, Joseph D. Romano,
and Eric H. Thrane: Treatment of calibration uncertainty in
multi-baseline cross-correlation searches for gravitational
waves. International Conference on Gravitation and
Cosmology (ICGC), Goa, India, December 2011 (poster).
John T. Whelan for LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo
Collaboration: Targeted and directed searches for periodic
gravitational waves. ICGC, Goa, India, December 2011.
Winter 2011-2012
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