The End of the Term

We are now in Finals Week and the end of the term approaches.

1. The department is searching for two positions in mathematics this year.
2. The department hosted a retirement dinner for Leo and Jonelle Comford on November 17th at the Charleston Country Club. A good time was had by all and several retired professors attended. We wish Leo and jonelle the best in their retirement.
3. Eastern Illinois U. mathematics students took part in the Putnam exam on December 3rd. We thank them for their participation.
4. The department welcomes Ravi Somayajulu to the faculty. Ravi recently obtained his PhD. from The Ohio State University.

Long Time No Write

The fall semester is well underway and I have only begun to write. So bere we go!!!
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Jonelle and Leo Comerford retired at the end of the spring semester
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Marshall Lassak has been apointed assistant Chair of the department
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William Green has accepted a position at Rose-Hulman And we will miss him greatly.
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Two faculty members are on a leave of absence and tbe department is doing its best to struggle through.
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The department has added some new faculty members but more details on this will follow
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I am writing using a tablet since I am out of town at a computer conference and so I mike a lota miztakez

Professor Baianu Lecture April 20th

Professor Ion Baianu (UIUC) spoke in the Department colloquium on April 20th on

THE `DUPLICITY’ OF MATHEMATICS IN THE REAL, IMPERFECT WORLD

Below is a sample of the abstract:

 A  new  look  at  old,  fundamental  problems  in  Physics,  Chemistry,  Biochemistry   and   Biology   will   be   presented   from   the   point   of   view   of   modern   Mathematics   and   Logics   focused   on   complexity,   asymmetry   and   symmetry   concepts   applied   to   fundamental  problems  in  Life  Sciences  and  Quantum  Physics.       The presentation is divided into two unequal parts consistent with the idea of the `duplicity’ of Mathematics when applied to nonlinear, highly complex problems in the real World.  The  first,  concise,  part  introduces  a  few,  logical    and  mathematical  concepts   that   are   essential   to   understanding   both   dynamic   complexity   and   partially   disordered   structures   (quasi-­‐crystals,   liquid   crystals   and   paracrystals)   in   physical,   chemical   and   biological   systems—especially   highly-­‐evolved   organisms   such   as   Homo-sapiens.

The   second   part   will   present   several   fundamental   aspects   of   modern   biology   approached   from   the   point   of   view   of   complex   systems   and   mathematical   modeling.

EIU Dynamics Conference this Weekend

The Department of Mathematics will host a conference this weekend on dynamical systems. See department webpage for details.

Charles Delman to Talk

Charles Delman will give a talk Friday April 6 at 4 pm entitled The Topology of Social Choice

Konstantin Slutsky to Speak March 30th

From the Abstract:

In 1950, Mark Graev gave a construction of two-sided invariant metrics on free groups over metrics spaces. These metrics were later used in descriptive set theory to produce exotic Polish groups. We will describe a similar construction of metrics on free products (possibly with amalgamation) of groups with two-sided invariant metrics and discuss some applications. I will try to reduce preliminaries to minimum.

Update from Old Main

I have not been very good about posting during the last month or more. So here is an update on the news in the EIU Math and CS Department.

The department welcomes a new faculty member, Ravi Somayajulu, for the fall of 2012.

The College of Science will have a new Dean, Harold Ornes. Dean Ornes will start work in the college this upcoming summer. Dean Ornes is an aquatic botanist.

Professor Andrew Mertz gave a talk on Ipad/Ipod programming on February 24 and Professor Patrick Coulton and Professor Peter Andrews spoke on invisible objects on March 2nd.

The Department will host a Geometry/Topology Day on April 7th. Research mathematicians from across the mid-west will attend. See the department webpage link on the sidebar for more information.

The 55th annual Teaching of Mathematics Conference will be held on campus April 17, 2012. See Conference web page

Professor Ionin to Speak Friday Feb. 10

Title:

Binary Representations of Regular Graphs

Abstract:

A spherical representation of a graph Γ in a metric space M is an injective map from the vertex set of Γ to a sphere in M; it is assumed that there exist d₁ < d₂ such that the distance between the images of any two distinct vertices is equal to d1 if the vertices are adjacent and it is equal to or d₂ otherwise.


A particular case of M = H_n, the binary Hamming space of (0,1) strings of length n, sometimes yields a useful information about the graph Γ. The least n, for which such a representation is possible, is the binary spherical representation number of Γ, or bsr(Γ). I will show that if Γ is a connected regular graph, then bsr(Γ) ≥ |Γ| − m where m is the multiplicity of the least eigenvalue of Γ. The case of equality gives a characterization of an important class of strongly regular graphs that has been avoiding a good characterization for 60+ years.

Catherine Kruger Presents at AMS-MAA Conference

Recent graduate Catherine Kruger gave a presentation at the Joint AMS-MAA-SIAM meeting the past week on Friday January 6, at 9:30 am in the Special Session on Research in Mathematics by Undergraduates and Students in Post-Baccalaureate Program. The presentation was in the
Back Bay Ballroom A, 2nd Floor, Sheraton in Boston Massachusetts.

The title of the talk was On Rosa-type labelings of directed graphs. Collaborators included Saad El-Zanati, Illinois State University and Jessica Klister, University of Wisconsin La Crosse.