NJIT in the News

Iskander Akhatov, PhD, an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at North Dakota State University, will discuss "Direct Write: Modeling and Experiment" on Nov. 13 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Itai Cohen, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of physics at Cornell University, will discuss "Defects and Epitaxy" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Oct. 30 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

Jonathan Wylie, PhD, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong, will discuss "Drawing of Viscous Threads with Temperature-Dependent Viscosity" on Oct. 23 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

With the League Championship Series set to begin tomorrow, NJIT Mathematics Professor Bruce Bukiet has, once again, analyzed the probability of each team winning their post-season series. Bukiet updates his calculations daily during the Major League Baseball post-season.

NJIT Mechanical Engineering Professor Anthony D. Rosato, PhD will discuss "Density Relaxation of Granular Matter" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Oct. 16 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Robert Gilmore, PhD, professor in the department of physics at Drexel University, will discuss "Chaos: What Have We Learned?" at the Fall 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Oct. 9 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

John Bush, PhD, associate professor of applied mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will discuss "The Fluid Trampoline: Droplets Bouncing on a Soap Film" on Oct. 2 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Jun Zhang, PhD, an associate professor of physics and mathematics at the Courant Institute, NYU, will discuss "Ratchets in Fluid Transportation and Biological Locomotion" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Sept. 18 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

A sign on the corner of 1st Avenue and East 4th Street in Manhattan was renamed at a ceremony this summer in honor of  Frieda Zames, the late NJIT Associate Professor Emerita of mathematics and disability rights advocate who played a pivotal role in making the NJIT campus accessible to persons with disabilities. Zames, who taught math at NJIT for 27 years, died in 2005 at the age of 72.  Her three decades of advocacy also included pushing for access to the 88th floor observatory of New York's Empire State Building, which is now accessible. 

Sheldon M. Ross, PhD, Epstein Chair Professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California, will discuss "Gambler Ruin Problems and Pricing Barrier Options" at the Fall 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Sept. 11 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Morton Denn, PhD, a professor at the Levich Institute, CCNY, will discuss "Issues in the Flow of Yield-Stress Liquids" at the Fall 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Sept. 4 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Two professors of mathematics at NJIT will number among the first Fellows named by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).  Gregory Kriegsmann, PhD, noted for his research in applied mathematics, asymptotic methods and more, will receive the honor.  So, too, will Robert M. Miura, PhD, who develops mathematical models in neuroscience.  The ceremony will take place this coming July in Denver.

NJIT will host on June 1-2, 2009 Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics (FACM '09), the sixth in a series of annual conferences organized by the NJIT's Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics. This year's conference will focus on mathematical biology with sessions in neuroscience, ecology, biophysics, and biostatistics. For a list of plenary and invited speakers, click here. 

Ka Yee Lee, PhD, a professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Chicago, will discuss "Beyond Wrinkles: Stress and Fold Localization in Thin Elastic Membranes" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on May 1 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Michael Shearer, PhD, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Center for Research in Scientific Computation at North Carolina State University, will discuss "Particle Size Segregation in Granular Flow" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on April 24 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Arthur Cohen, PhD, a professor in the Department of Statistics at Rutgers University, will discuss "New Multiple Testing Methods in the Dependent Case" on April 17 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. 

Image Processing and Mathematical Morphology: Fundamentals and Applications (CRC Publisher, 2009), a new reference book by NJIT computer science professor Frank Y. Shih offers a comprehensive overview of morphological mechanisms and techniques and their relation to image processing. More than merely a tutorial on vital technical information, the book places this knowledge into a theoretical framework. Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of  the structure of words.

Mark Alber, PhD, professor in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics and the Center for the Study of Biocomplexity at the University of Notre Dame, will discuss the "Connection Between Discrete Stochastic and Continuous Models in Biology" at the Spring 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on April 3 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Harvey Segur, PhD, professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado, will discuss "The Explosive Instability" at an Applied Mathematics Colloquium on March 27 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Yuji Kodama, professor of mathematics at The Ohio State University, will discuss "Two Dimensional Solitons in Shallow Water" at an Applied Mathematics Colloquium on March 13 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Hernán Makse, PhD, professor in the Levich Institute and Physics Department at City College of New York, will discuss "Theory of Random Packings" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Feb. 27 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.  

Marcus Felson, PhD, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark, will discuss "Modeling Crime with Super-Simple Mathematics" on Feb. 20 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.  

Cyrill Muratov, PhD, an associate professor in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, will discuss "A Variational Approach to Front Propagation in Infinite Cylinders" on Jan. 30 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. The lecture is the second in the Spring 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series.

A new and better way to predict earthquakes and avalanches may soon be available to forecasters thanks to mathematical research underway at NJIT.   Using mathematical modeling, researchers are investigating how forces and pressures propagate through granular materials. 

Salvatore Torquato, PhD, professor of chemistry at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University will discuss "Can Disordered Sphere Packings Ever Be Maximally Dense?" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Dec. 5 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.  

Pierre Collinet of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium will discuss "Thin Liquid films, Droplets and Contact Lines with Evaporation and Condensation" at an Applied Mathematics Colloquium on Nov. 21 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. 

Peter D. Miller, PhD, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, will discuss "On the Semiclassical Limit for the Sine-Gordon Equation" at an Applied Mathematics Colloquium on Nov. 14 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. 

Andrea Bertozzi, PhD, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of California-Los Angeles, will discuss "Swarming by Nature and Design" at the Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on Oct. 24 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. 

Linda Cummings, PhD, an associate professor in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, will discuss "Bistability in Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Devices" on October 17 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. 

Doron Levy, PhD, associate professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland-College Park, will discuss "Group Dynamics in Phototaxis" on Oct. 3 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2. The lecture is part of the Fall 2008 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series.

Joyce McLaughlin, a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will discuss "Shear Stiffness Imaging as an Early Diagnostic Tool: New Applications and New Imaging Algorithms" on Sept. 19 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will host May 19-21, 2008, more than 200 leading experts for the fifth annual Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics Conference, an unusual three-day event featuring leading researchers who will discuss the latest news and research findings in their fields.

"Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics," the fifth in a series of annual conferences organized by NJIT's Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics, will be held on May 19-21 at NJIT. This year's conference will focus on mathematical biology (including mathematical neuroscience, developmental biology, and ecology), mathematical fluid dynamics, applied statistics and biostatistics, electromagnetics/waves, and acoustics.

Gregory Kriegsmann, distinguished professor in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, will discuss "Propagation in Periodic Dielectric Media" on May 2 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Thomas Powers, PhD, James R. Rice Associate Professor of Solid Mechanics and Associate Professor of Engineering at Brown University, will discuss "Life at Low Reynolds Number Revisited" on March 28 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II. The lecture is part of the Spring 2008 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series.

Iain D. Couzin, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, will discuss “Collective Motion and Decision-Making in Animal Groups” on Dec. 7 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

The popular website RateMyProfessor (RMP) has ranked Soha Abdeljaber, a university lecturer in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, number 45 of the 50 highest rated professors for 2007 in the nation. Abdeljaber has taught pre-calculus and calculus in the department since 2000.

A recent paper on the collisions of solitary waves published by Roy Goodman, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, was cited in the September 27, 2007 issue of Nature magazine.

Klaus Lackner, PhD, the Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, will discuss “Energy Options for the 21st Century” on Nov. 30 at 11:35 a.m. in the NJIT Campus Center Ballroom A.

Michael Weinstein, PhD, professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, will discuss “Coherent Structures and Energy Transfer in Conservative Nonlinear Systems” on Nov. 16 at 11:30 a.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

Stephen Childress, PhD, professor in the department of applied mathematics at New York University, will discuss “Hovering of Passive Bodies in an Oscillating Airflow” on Nov. 9 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

Philip Holmes, PhD, professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, will discuss “Collective Neuronal Dynamics and Drift-Diffusion Models for Decision Making” on Nov. 2 at 11:30 a.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

Irving R. Epstein, PhD, the Henry F. Fischbach Professor of Chemistry at Brandeis University, will discuss "Differential and Cross-Diffusion Effects on Pattern Formation in Reaction-Diffusion Systems" on Oct. 19 at 11:35 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

NJIT’s Bruce Bukiet, the World Series Forecaster, is once again banging away on his keyboard, this time to name winners of Major League Baseball’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) and Cy Young awards for the 2007 season.

Michael Pallotta, a senior majoring in mathematics, received the Presidential Leadership Award yesterday from NJIT President Robert A. Altenkirch at the Highlander Student Achievement Awards ceremony. The awards recognize outstanding student leaders, student staff, campus organizations and programs as well as department and college award recipients.

“Flexible Adaptive Clinical Trials: Methods, Software and Case Studies” is the topic of a talk by Cyrus Mehta, PhD, president of Cytel Inc. and a professor of biostatistics at Harvard University, on March 9 at 11:30 a.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

Brenda Farrell, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of otolaryngology at Baylor College of Medicine, will discuss "Membrane Tether Forces in Mast Cells" at a Mathematical Biology Seminar on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m., Life Sciences Building, 1st floor, Rutgers-Newark.

Darko Volkov, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of mathematics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will discuss “An Inverse Problem for the Recovery of Active Faults from Surface Observations” at a Fluid Dynamics Seminar on Feb. 5 at at 4:15 p.m. in  Cullimore Hall, Room 611.

"Mind the Gap: Synchrony and Gap Junctions" is the topic of a talk by Bard Ermentrout, PhD, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, on Oct. 13 at 11:30 a.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall II.

The New York Mets have a 60 percent chance of taking the the National League Championship series, with a 24 percent chance of clinching the deal in six games, said Bruce Bukiet, an associate professor of mathematical sciences at NJIT.

High school teachers of mathematics, science and technology gained experience in the infusion of engineering-related materials into mathematics instruction at a Summer Institute on June 25-29 at NJIT. Conducted by the Albert Dorman Honors College in collaboration with the Center for Pre-College Programs and the Pre-Engineering Instructional and Outreach Program, the Summer Institute demonstrated how the inclusion of engineering applications helps students relate their learning of mathematics to the real world.

Starting this fall, William Paterson University (WPU) students can start working on master’s degrees in computer science or math from NJIT while completing their bachelor’s degrees at WPU. “This new agreement will allow William Paterson students and alumni as well as professionals who live or work near the WPU campus to advance their educations without leaving their backyards,” said Gale Tenen Spak, associate vice president of Continuing and Distance Learning Education at NJIT.

Robert Miura, PhD, professor in the departments of mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering and acting chair of the mathematical sciences department at NJIT, will discuss "Solitons and the Inverse Scattering Method: An Historical View" on March 10, 11:35 a.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall II. Contact: John Bechtold.

Robert Miura, PhD, a professor in the departments of mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering, was honored yesterday by his colleagues for receiving on Jan. 13 the Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution To Research In Mathematics from the American Mathematical Society.

Sure they taste great boiled and properly seasoned, but crabs may also hold the key to some of biology's most intriguing questions about rhythmic patterns in the central nervous system and what happens when those patterns become abnormal. Research into rhythmic neuron-firing patterns that activate muscles in the stomachs of crabs is one of about a dozen studies under way at NJIT's interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics that combine mathematical and biological techniques to determine how physiological systems function. A crab's simple digestive system, says Farzan Nadim, associate professor of mathematical sciences, makes the crustacean an ideal research model. "Because a crab has only about 30 neurons involved in digestion, it is a good choice for studying the rhythmic pattern of fast and slow nerve impulses that activate the stomach muscles during grinding, chewing, digesting and filtering food," says Nadim. The researcher and his colleague, associate profesor Amitabha Bose, use computational, analytical and experimental techniques to study the crabs. Nadim's research is funded by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and both researchers also have grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Through the work of mathematicians over the past 20 years, we now have general principles that show us that rhythmic patterns in most animals--including humans--are essentially the same," Bose points out. "Scientists have established that most species can perform several rhythmic motor activities simultaneously, such as walking, breathing, swimming and chewing. What we don't know yet is how these rhythmic activities are generated by neurons and why nerve cells sometimes begin to misfire and disrupt the normal oscillating fast-slow rhythmic pattern. Malfunctioning of these neuron-firing patterns leads to such abnormalities as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. Jorge Golowasch, an associate professor of mathematical sciences, also collaborates with Nadim in researching neural networks in crustaceans' stomachs. Using electrophysical and computational methods, Golowasch studies cellular and network mechanisms that enable neurons to recover from disruptions produced by growth and injury. With the help of NIH and NSF support, he is attempting to answer the question of how the nervous system can be flexible, or plastic, while at the same time remaining stable, which may shed light on mechanisms of learning and memory. Expanding the spectrum of studies Nadim, Bose and Golowasch are among the members of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics who are pursing studies in mathematical biology, a field of applied mathematics that has been growing steadily in recent years. One of the largest concentrations of researchers working in mathematical biology in North America is to be found at NJIT, an their efforts have been supported by major external funding. To date, the funding that has been awarded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and other public and private sources amounts to nearly $2.5 million. Research in mathematical biology spans a growing range of applications, including studies in animal and plant populations, physiology, biomechanics, epidemiology, disease pathology, neuroscience, hemodynamics, molecular biology, pharmacokinetics and cell physiology. Some examples of medical applications include the detailed study of the components of the brain, treatment of diseases, and the design of pharmaceutical devices for drug delivery. In mathematical biology, equations and experiments go hand in hand. Accordingly, most mathematical biology studies are conducted by teams of researchers that include mathematicians who use analytical and computational models to propose a hypothesis and experimentalists who carry out the relevant experiments in their laboratories to test them. Some of the NJIT researchers are working independently while others are collaborating with experimentalists at Boston University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, New York University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. A model approach at NJIT The expertise in mathematical biology marshaled at NJIT was one of the reasons Robert M. Miura, associate chair of the department of mathematical sciences and professor in mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering, decided to join the faculty two years ago after having been at the University of British Columbia for over two decades. Miura is involved in a number of neuroscience and related studies, including looking at why neurons fire at specific frequencies, how large-amplitude ion waves propagate in the brain after injury, how normal beta cells in the pancreas work electrically, and how malfunctioning beta cells can lead to diabetes. "Interestingly, the types of mathematical equations that govern electrical activity in pancreatic beta cells also govern the electrical activities in other cells such as neurons and heart cells," explains Miura. "This is one of the beauties of mathematical modeling. Many of the mathematical ideas gleaned from one model of a biological system can be applied to models of many other systems." The microcirculatory system, comprising tiny capillaries and arteries that can't be seen without a microscope, is the focus of Daniel Goldman's Whitaker Foundation-funded research. An assistant professor of mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering, Goldman is using mathematical and computational models to study blood flow and mass transport in the microcirculatory system during sepsis, a potentially fatal condition caused by an infection. Sepsis can cause the body's major organs--the heart, kidneys, liver and lungs--to fail, resulting in death. "We know that sepsis changes the flow patterns of the blood, which can lead to a lack of oxygen in organs," says Goldman. "But lack of oxygen is not the only cause of organ failure. With our studies we hope to have a better understanding of what other factors lead to sepsis." This multidisciplinary perspective is affirmed by Daljit S. Ahluwalia, chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and director of the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics. "Before we can hope to cure a disease, we have to understand the underlying mechanisms, and that requires several disciplines," he says. "The 21st century has been called the century of biology, and here at NJIT we are applying our wide-ranging expertise, which includes mathematics, to the many unanswered questions about how physiological systems work."

If you’re interested in learning how to improve a golf swing, create a better baseball bat or combat sepsis, NJIT is the place to be.  More than 200 mathematicians and scientists are on campus for NJIT’s first international research conference May 21-22.  Conference sponsors are NJIT’s Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics.