Made possible by a generous donation from the New College Alumni Association, the Soo Bong Chae Mathematician in Residence program brings a distinguished mathematician and an accompanying postdoc to the New College campus during the January interim period. The distinguished visitor delivers an intensive series of lectures to a group of participating New College students covering material not usually offered by New College faculty. These lectures culminate in a number of special projects on which students, with the help of the accompanying postdoc, work for the remainder of the interim.

The 1998-1999 Soo Bong Chae distinguished visitor was Professor Phillip Maini of Oxford University who was accompanied by Dr. Eamonn Gaffney, also of Oxford University. Professor Maini's lectures where devoted to "excitable media" and related topics in mathematical biology. The 1999-2000 Soo Bong Chae distinguished visitor was Professor Maciek Zworski of the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Zworski lectured on the mathematics of scattering theory and applications; in particular applications in quantum chemistry.

The 2000-2001 Soo Bong Chae distinguished visitor will be Professor Andreas Schulz of MIT. Professor Schulz will lecture on problems in combinatorial optimization with an emphasis on approximation algorithms and scheduling problems. The five lecture series will culminate in group projects involving open problems involving scheduling. These projects will involve developing computational models to be tested on existing libraries.

To facilitate student work on the projects outlined by Professor Schulz, there will be a five lecture series on related material in combinatorial optimization, as well as five lectures on programming in C++ for combinatorial optimization.

The following are suggested prerequisites for participation in this year's program:

• A first course in linear algebra
• programming experience (preferably C++)

Students interested in participating in this year's program should contact Pat McDonald.
 
 

Lectures begin on Wednesday, January 3, 2001, in the Mathematics Reading Room. Damian Beil (MIT) will speak on

• The general landscape of mathematical programming
• Review of Linear Programming (including duality)

Professor Schulz's lectures will begin on Monday, January 8, at 10 AM in the Math Reading Room and continue daily throughout the week. There will also be a daily problem session at 3PM in the MRR.

Information concerning the NSF sponsored Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates can be found here