This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Mathematics is Focus of Two Grants CAMPUS CURRENT


Faculty Updates RESEARCH, AWARDS, ACTIVITIES


Brain Trust Lisette de Pillis, Norman F. Sprague Jr. Professor of Mathematics and the Life Sciences is one of the key par- ticipants of the Brain Tumor Ecology Collaborative, a three-year project that recently was awarded funding through the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Washington University in St.


Louis (lead institution), Columbia University, University of California at San Diego and Harvey Mudd College are partnering for the project. De Pillis will work with fellow researchers who will pool their expertise to better understand tumors that start in the brain or spine, also known as gliomas.


Lisette de Pillis


Grandma Got STEM You may have heard the expression, “That’s so easy, my grand- mother could understand it.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Rachel Levy would like


to counter the implication that grannies (gender + maternity + age) might not easily pick up on technical/theoretical ideas. Her blog Grandma Got STEM (http://bit.ly/10MQ0si) is a vehicle for collecting stories and remembrances about women who have made an impact in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and related fi elds. Submissions come from the women them- selves and the people who know them. In the fi rst month, the blog attracted readers from more than 50 countries. The project welcomes submissions representing perspectives from all over the world. Levy is also the recently appointed editor-in-chief of SIURO, an online publication devoted to undergraduate research in applied and computational mathematics.


Evolution and Christianity Equipped with a grant from The BioLogos Foundation, chem- istry Professor David Vosburg hopes to spark healthy dialogue on evolution and Christian faith. Vosburg’s project, “Catalyzing Compatibility of Evolution and Christian Faith on Secular Cam- puses: Curricular Resources for Student Groups,” was awarded $80,772 through the foundation’s Evolution & Christian Faith grant program. The BioLogos Foundation was established by Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and current director of the National Institutes of Health, to


promote discourse on the relationship between science and reli- gion and to emphasize their compatibility. Vosburg will develop materials that Christian student groups and churches can use to explore and discuss evolution, creation and Christianity.


Underwater Exploration Engineering Professor Chris Clark is working with marine archeologist Dr. Timmy Gambin from the University of Malta, who studies ancient water supply. Clark, four HMC students and a team from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo spent their spring break using underwater robots to explore ancient water systems and marine caves in Malta and Sicily. The students investigated previously unexplored underwater sites, including ancient cis- terns—water storage systems located beneath castles, fortresses and churches. The team deployed a small underwater robot equipped with a 2-D scanning sonar device to view the structures and collect measurement ranges. The data will be used to create maps of the underground water systems.


One-task-at-a-time computing Computer science professors Chris Stone and Melissa O’Neill have been awarded a three-year, $375,395 National Science Foundation grant to support undergraduate computer science research in concurrency, which involves the development of a simpler programming model for multicore processors. “These processors, with many computers on a single chip,


are increasingly common even in inexpensive computers and cell phones,” said Stone. “To take advantage of their power and speed, programmers divide problems into many small pieces that can be solved simultaneously. Unfortunately, coordination between these tasks is notoriously tricky and error-prone.” Stone and O’Neill’s project “Observationally Cooperative


Multithreading” (OCM) lets programmers pretend that all their tasks execute one at a time, taking turns. The result is improved program speed and resource utilization, with a one-task-at-a-time mental model that is simple enough for beginning programmers to understand. Over the next three years, 18 students will help de- sign, develop and evaluate practical OCM implementations using techniques such as transactional memory and lock interference.


Teaching Excellence Mathematics Professor Francis Su won the 2013 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished Teach- ing of Mathematics. Given by the Mathematical Association of continued on Page 10


SPRING 2013 Har vey Mudd College 9 Faculty News


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40