Camassa and McLaughlin’s Overview is Featured in SIAM News

In 2019, Professors Roberto Camassa and Richard McLaughlin, in collaboration with Daniel Harris, Robert Hunt and Zeliha Kilic, published “A first-principle mechanism for particulate aggregation and self-assembly in stratified fluids” in Nature Communications. In their work, they study the aggregation of matter under gravitation in fluid systems and, in particular, they “observe and model mathematically an unexpected fundamental mechanism by which particles suspended within stratification may self-assemble and form large aggregates without adhesion” (Abstract). This work made Nature Communications’ list of 50 most read physics articles of 2019 (ranked at #8).

Recently, Camassa and McLaughlin were invited to write a synopsis of their 2019 work and the process of making the discovery. Their interesting overview was featured on the front page of SIAM News and can be found here.

Dr. Camassa Receives Distinguished Fellowship

Professor Camassa recently received a Rothschild Distinguished Fellowship from the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), Cambridge England, UK. During  the 2022 summer and fall activities, Prof. Camassa participated in the program “Dispersive hydrodynamics: mathematics, simulation and experiments, with applications in nonlinear waves” (URL: https://www.newton.ac.uk/event/hyd2/). As part of the program, he gave two keynote public lectures, as well as seminars in the program workshops and colloquia at institutions throughout the UK.

The Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences is devoted to the advancement of mathematics “in the broadest sense.”  They strive to achieve this by employing strict criteria for program selection. As mentioned on their website, programs are selected by the extent to which the topic is “interdisciplinary, bringing together research workers with very different backgrounds and expertise.” Since the institute opened in July 1992, 27 Fields Medalists, 9 Nobel Laureates, 23 Wolf Prize winners, and 12 Abel Prize winners have attended programs at the institute.

The INI is able to award fellowships through generous donations. The fellowship awarded to Prof. Camassa was made possible by the support of the  NM Rothschild and Sons foundation. Many other institutions and individuals have also made donations to the Institute, including Hewlett-Packard, the Dill Faulkes Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, CNRS, Rosenbaum Foundation, PF Charitable Trust, London Mathematical Society, Prudential Corporation plc and the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Sáenz awarded Sloan Fellowship

This article originally appeared here.

Run, Faraday, Run

The APS Division of Fluid Dynamics has announced the 2022 winners of its annual Gallery of Fluid Motion video and poster contest. UNC Mathematics is extremely proud that this year’s first place prize was given to James Guan and his team for their work with Faraday waves.

This is an excerpt. The full article was published on November 28, 2022, and can be accessed here.

Faraday Waves Get Moving

It’s one of those classic physics classroom demonstrations: water in a shallow vessel placed on top of a speaker producing a loud tone generates ripples on the liquid surface. These “Faraday waves” can form a range of patterns that are normally stationary, but the ripples will move around chaotically when the sound amplitude is large. Pedro Sáenz of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and postdoctoral researcher Jian Hui Guan wondered if this chaotic motion could be converted to coherent motion by restricting the space where the waves move. The researchers set up the liquid in a circular channel and were thrilled to see that the waves moved around the loop in an orderly way. The desired behavior appeared on the first try. “This is something that will happen once in my life,” Sáenz jokes.

The video from Sáenz, Guan, and their colleagues, shows that this coherent motion can proceed either clockwise or counterclockwise by random chance, but it can also be forced in one direction by adding a sort of staircase pattern (“ratchet”) to the walls of the channel. The researchers show that this steady motion of surface waves can also be guided through a more complicated channel network and can potentially be arranged to power a pump that could move another fluid through a separate channel. They titled the video Run, Faraday, Run to playfully refer to a famous line, “Run, Forrest, run,” from the movie Forrest Gump.

Nepal Round Three

What do you do when a gastrointestinal illness takes out half of your research team that traveled nearly 8,000 miles to Nepal to study the effects of climate change on Buddhist holy lakes?

You press on.

An interdisciplinary group of Carolina researchers first journeyed to Mount Everest’s Khumbu region in summer 2018, returned in fall 2019 and — after COVID delayed the original return plans — made the trek again to the Gokyo Lakes in summer 2022.

The team consists of mathematicians Rich McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa, marine scientists Harvey Seim and Emily Eidam and religious studies scholar Lauren Leve.

Leve was not able to make the trek to the lakes this year due to other research she was conducting in Nepal, but she laid important groundwork for the team’s journey by securing needed paperwork and permits. She has provided ongoing counsel and support on this high-altitude region that is sacred to the Buddhist tradition. KEEP READING HERE

This article was originally published here By Kim Weaver Spurr, photos by Rich McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa.

Read about the researchers’ first trip to Nepal in summer 2018 and their return trip in fall 2019.

2022 Mathematics Faculty Awards

2022 Mathematics Faculty Awards: Goodman-Peterson Teaching Award Recipients for Excellence in Undergraduate Education

Congratulations to Dr. Jason Metcalfe (Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor) and Dr. Richárd Rimányi (Bowman and Gordan Gray Distinguished Term Professor), who are the recipients of the 2022 Goodman-Peterson Teaching Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Education! The awards are intended to highlight the accomplishments of Mathematics Department Instructors who have made a great contribution to undergraduate instruction over the last two years.

Jason Metcalfe is a 2003 Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and joined the faculty at UNC in 2007 following postdoctoral positions at Georgia Tech and the University of California – Berkeley. His research focuses on the analysis of partial differential equations. He was a previous recipient of this award in 2017. His teaching and mentoring have subsequently been recognized with the 2018 Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching from the UNC system, the 2019 Faculty Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring from the Graduate School at UNC, and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professorship.

Personal Note from Professor Metcalfe: I’m especially honored that this award is named after Sue Goodman and Karl Petersen. And with that comes a great deal of responsibility. They were fantastic colleagues who were impactful through their teaching and mentoring. It is very proper that our department’s teaching award brings annual recognition to their careers. I am also humbled and honored to be receiving this award with Richárd Rimányi, for whom I have the absolute deepest respect as a colleague, as a researcher, as a friend, and as a teacher.

Richárd Rimányi received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at the Eotvos University Budapest. He moved to the US in 2001 and joined UNC in 2003. Since then, he has taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate classes, namely over 20 different courses, at our department. His research focuses on geometry and its relations to singularities, representation theory, quantum integrable systems and string theory.

Congratulations Richard and Jason!

Katie Newhall – 3rd Prize in the American Society of Transplantation Transplant Visionaries Challenge

Eric Weimer, PhD, and Katherine Newhall, PhD

April 14, 2022

The gift of life involves the recovery of organs for transplantation. But it is not always that simple. When a deceased organ donor is identified, a list is generated of transplant candidates who are suitable to receive each organ. Organ transplants require a compatible match and those matches can be rejected based on a poor fit between a donor and recipient. What many don’t realize is how complex this process is, especially how much work it takes and how critical timing is when making a compatible match between donor and recipient – ranging from 36 hours to only four, depending on how long the organ can remain preserved outside the body.

Combining the Expertise of Math and Immunobiology

What sparks innovation and advances in particular fields is when you intersect different disciplines. To improve the process for analyzing factors known to impact transplant outcomes, Weimer knew that the University of North Carolina had a diverse faculty that could help.

“It occurred to me years ago that crossmatching relies heavily on the use of numbers to make that virtual assessment,” he said. “That’s what led me to reach out to the mathematics department where I came across Dr. Katherine Newhall.”

Read the full article here.

3rd Prize in the American Society of Transplantation Transplant Visionaries Challenge

To share the significant impact of DARA and how it’s improving measurable outcomes, Drs. Weimer and Newhall competed in the American Society of Transplantation Transplant Visionaries Challenge – a competition judged on whether a project is novel, broadly applicable, and has potential for success in moving the field of organ transplantation forward. Entries from transplant professionals were selected to compete during the Cutting Edge of Transplantation (CEoT 2022) virtual meeting. After presenting DARA along with a pitch video produced by UNC Health Communications and HighAlpha Innovations, Drs. Weimer and Newhall came in 3rd place, winning $1,000.

Congratulations, Katie!

Roberto Camassa Awarded SIAM’s 2022 Kruskal Prize

Congratulations to Roberto Camassa, Kenan Professor of Mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences, for earning the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ Kruskal Prize for his work to advance the understanding of nonlinear wave evolution.

Roberto Camassa will deliver the Kruskal Prize Lecture at the bi-annual SIAM Nonlinear Waves and Coherent Structures meeting in Bremen, Germany this summer. He joins some absolute superstars in applied math with this. To date, Roberto is the sixth recipient, our own Chris Jones received the prize in 2016, so 1/3 of all awardees came from UNC for this international prize in applied mathematics. The SIAM Activity Group on Nonlinear Waves and Coherent Structures presents this award every two years to one individual for a notable body of mathematics and contributions in the field of nonlinear waves and coherent structures. Please extend congratulations to Roberto for this distinguished honor.

Linda Green Recipient of the Johnston Teaching Excellence Award

January 20, 2022

Congratulations to our very own, Linda Green, who was one of two recipients of the Johnston Teaching Excellence Award.

Carolina honored 25 faculty members and teaching assistants for their accomplishments with the 2022 University Teaching Awards.

Given annually, the awards acknowledge the University’s commitment to outstanding teaching and mentoring for graduate and undergraduate students. The Johnston Teaching awards were created in 1991 to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching. The awards are funded by the James M. Johnston Scholarship Program. Click here to read more about Linda!

Congratulations, Linda!

UNC Math Alumni Career Panel Series

November 24, 2021

The SIAM student chapter and GMA hosted a 3-day UNC Math Alumni Career Panel Series where graduate students of all stages in the program were invited to learn from the experiences of successful graduates in teaching positions, academic and government postdoctoral appointments, and industry jobs. Alumni shared advice on navigating career prospects as a graduate mathematics student and highlighted ways to be successful as a job applicant.

Update: April 4, 2022

The career panel hosted by UNC-CH graduate students made SIAM News! Click here to read the full article.