2006–2008 IMA Postdocs
and Industrial Postdocs

Daniel Bates received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in May 2006. His dissertation, written under the supervision of Andrew Sommese, is on numerical algebraic geometry. Among other things, he has developed a software package called Bertini for numerical algebraic calculations.

Jason Gower received his PhD in Mathematics from Purdue University in December 2004. His dissertation, written under the supervision of Samuel S. Wagstaff Jr., is devoted to integer factorization algorithms. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. His current research interests include cryptography.

Milena Hering received her PhD in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in April 2006. Her dissertation, supervised by William Fulton, is titled "Syzygies of toric varieties". Her research interests lie in the intersection of algebraic geometry and combinatorics.

Benjamin Howard received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Maryland in May 2006. His dissertation, supervised by John Millson, is on quotients of flag spaces SL(n)/P by the maximal torus in SL(n).

Anton Leykin received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 2003. He dissertation "Algorithms in computational algebraic analysis" was supervised by Gennady Lyubeznik. Currently he is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago and is working on numerical algebraic geometry.

Hannah Markwig received her PhD in Mathematics from the TU Kaiserslautern in the spring of 2006. Her dissertation, written under the supervision of Andreas Gathmann, is on tropical enumerative geometry.

Jiawang Nie received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in spring 2006. His dissertation is titled "Global polynomial optimization with applications" was supervised jointly by James Demmel and Bernd Sturmfels. Some of his current research is centered on the application of space polynomials in sensor network localization.

John Voight received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2005. His dissertation "Quadratic forms and quaternion algebras: algorithms and arithmetic" was supervised by Hendrik Lenstra. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney, working with the Magma computational algebraic geometry group.

Three industrial postdocs will join the IMA in 2006. Industrial postdocs are sponsored by one of the corporate or government lab participating organizations and spend at least half of their time working on a project developed in cooperation with the partner organization. The 2006–2008 industrial postdocs are sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Boeing, and IBM.

Y. Sujeet Bhat received his PhD from the University of Florida in 2006 under the supervision of Shari Moskow. In his thesis work, Sujeet used multiscale analysis and homogenization theory to analyze a model for galvanic currents. Sujeet will work with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/SNAT).

Laura Lurati has been working on higher-order methods for the solutions of partial differential equations, including spectral methods based on Jacobi polynomials, discontinuous Galerkin methods, and finite difference essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) methods. She received her PhD in 2006 under the direction of Jan Westhaven at Brown University. Laura will work on design optimization with Boeing.

Hongchao Zhang received his PhD from the University of Florida in 2006 under the supervision of William Hager. His thesis work encompasses a wide variety of nonlinear optimization methods such as monotone and nonmonotone linear search techniques, nonlinear conjugate gradient methods, Bazilai-Borwein gradient methods, and active set strategies for box constrained optimization. Hongchao will work with IBM.

In addition to the newcomers, the following 2005–2007 Postdoctoral Fellows will stay at the IMA through 2006–2007: Evgeniy Bart, Gloria Haro, Song-Hwa Kwon, Hstou Liao, and Carl Toews.