News

In all of human history, only two diseases have been eradicated: smallpox and a cow disease called rinderpest. Through mathematical modelling, uOttawa professor Robert Smith? recently discovered that synchronizing vaccinations across regions may be the key to eradicating one of humanity’s greatest diseases once and for all: polio.

From May 7-10, the University of Ottawa hosted the "Workshop on Representation Theory and Analysis on Lie Groups over Local Fields" , organized by Professors Monica Nevins and Hadi Salmasian.  This large research conference attracted over 60 participants from all over North America and Europe.   This conference was generously funded by the Fields Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, the University of Ottawa Vice-President Research Office, and the Faculty of Science Research Office.

The Ecological Society of America has announced that the winner of the 2015 best paper in Theoretical Ecology is  American Naturalist: How individual movement response to habitat edges affects population persistence and spatial spread authored by Gabriel Maciel, PhD Student, and Frithjof Lutscher, Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

From the citation:  “This paper addresses a basic question motivated by ecological dynamics -- how behavior at habitat edges affects population persistence and spatial spread -- and comprehensively presents and analyzes a set of broadly applicable tools for incorporating edge behavior.  In doing so, Maciel & Lutscher nicely balance tractable models with biological realism and clearly describe how their modeling insights fit into the existing theoretical and empirical context.  In addition to advancing the long-standing theory of spatial population dynamics, the findings clearly contribute to the biological understanding of the effect of a variety of movement behaviors, such as faster movement through unfavorable habitat enhancing population persistence and an intermediate strength of patch-quality-based preference enhancing the rate of population spread, with a strong mechanistic understanding for why these dynamics arise. “

First-year math courses can be a stumbling block for many students. With regular work habits and a bit of foresight and preparation, you can make sure that you will succeed. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics wants to help you with their Math Workshops.

Each summer, uOttawa’s Department of Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) invite a select number of gifted high school students to campus to participate in the CMS Math Camp. 

Listen to the interview (available in French only) with Joseph Khoury, one of the "mathletes" camp organizers and professor at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Ottawa.

Joel Lemay, who recently completed his PhD under the supervision of Alistair Savage, is the winner of the inaugural Best Student Paper Prize 2014-15, for his sole-authored paper  “Geometric Realizations of the Basic Representation of gl_r“ to appear in Selecta Mathematica.  This award distinguishes an exceptional paper published by a student of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics during their studies.   To quote from the evaluating committee:  “The paper is extremely well-written and contains serious results”, having a very high caliber in terms of both mathematical research and mathematical writing. 

Charles Starling, a postdoctoral fellow working with Thierry Giordano and Vladimir Pestov, is the winner of the inaugural Junior Excellence in Mathematics Teaching Award 2014-15.  This award distinguishes an exceptional teacher from among all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows teaching in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.   To quote from his letter of nomination:  “Charles’ devotion to teaching is exemplary and he is already an outstanding teacher of high caliber appreciated by the students.” 

Victor Leblanc, professor of Applied Mathematics, was nominated by his students in MAT2322 for the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award, citing his “tremendous commitment” and his contagious “enthusiasm and positive attitude.”  The nomination concluded “He truly inspires the students to strive to success through hard work.  That is due to the fact that he is challenging and motivating while having high expectations towards attainable goals.”  Dozens of other students, from many other classes over the years, agreed, and the Faculty of Science chose him as the winner for 2014-15.  Congratulations on this well-earned award!

Professor Thierry Giordano's recent 60th birthday will be marked by an international conference in his honour. The conference, Functional Analysis and Dynamical Systems, will be held in the beautiful Brazilian city of Florianópolis from 24-28 February 2015.