Department News

News
Department News

New faculty

Monika Ludwig from Technische Universität Wien joined the department as a Professor of Mathematics starting March 1st. Professor Ludwig's research is in convex geometric analysis, specializing in the study of valuations.

In the news

A letter from Professor Deane Yang was published in the September 11, 2006 issue of The New Yorker. The letter comments on the article Manifest Destiny, which recounted recent events surrounding the proof of the Poincaré conjecture.
Professor Shing-Tung Yau of Harvard University, who was awarded an honorary degree by Polytechnic University in 2005, was the subject of an article The Emperor of Math in the Science Times section of the October 17, 2006 issue of the New York Times. Professor Deane Yang is also quoted in the article.

Invited talks by department faculty

Professor Gaoyong Zhang spoke on An L_p Affine Isoperimetric Inequality and Its Applications in the Geometric Analysis Seminar at Harvard University on February 8, 2006.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Elementary Moves on Triangulations in the Workshop on Convex Sets and Their Applications at the Banff International Research Station on March 6, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Affine isoperimetric and Sobolev inequalites in the Convex Geometry Seminar at Université de Marne-la-Vallée on March 21, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms and the Minkowski problem in the Functional Analysis Seminar at Université de Paris VI on March 23, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms in the Geometric Analysis Seminar at Harvard University on May 3, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms and the Minkowski problem in the Analysis Seminar at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University on April 6, 2006.
Professor Monika Ludwig was one of fourteen plenary speakers in the 2006 Annual Conference on Phenomena in High Dimensions, held at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris on June 7-14, 2006. Other plenary speakers included Mikhail Gromov, who is widely viewed as the greatest differential geometer of our time, and Andrei Okounkov and Terence Tao who both won Fields Medals this year. Professor Ludwig spoke on Affine geometry of convex bodies.
Professor Yisong Yang gave a series of four invited lectures titled Topics in Mathematical Physics: Harmonically Representing Topological Classes at the Graduate Summer School, Fudan University, Shanghai, China in June 2006.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Valuations on Polytopes at Beijing University, Beijing, China on July 5, 2006.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Zur Affinoberfläche konvexer Körper in the Mathematics Colloquium at Universität Freiburg on July 21, 2006.
Professor Yisong Yang spoke on Knots, Existence of Knots, and Universal Growth Laws in the Partial Differential Equations and Applied Mathematics Seminar at Ohio State University on October 19, 2006.
Professor Yisong Yang was one of ten invited speakers at the Conference on Geometric Analysis and Non-linear Elliptic PDE's held at Johns Hopkins University on October 27-29, 2006 and spoke on Some elliptic problems in mathematical physics.
Professor Gaoyong Zhang spoke on An L_p Affine Isoperimetric Inequality and Its Applications in the Differential Geometry and Geometric Analysis Seminar at Princeton University on November 10, 2006.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Valuations on convex bodies in the Geometry Seminar at Universität Magdeburg on November 13, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang was one of six invited speakers and spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms at the 10th Annual Southeast Geometry Seminar held at Emory University on December 13, 2006.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms in the Mathematics Colloquium at Indiana University at Bloomington on March 9, 2007.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Optimal Sobolev norms in the Differential Geometry Seminar at University of Pennsylvania on March 15, 2007.
Professor Deane Yang spoke on Affine Sobolev Inequalities at the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians in Hangzhou, China in December 2007.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on L_p Intersection Bodies at the AMS Special Session on "Radon Transforms, Convex Geometry, and Geometric Analysis" of the Joint Mathematics Meeting in New Orleans on January 6, 2007.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Projection and intersection bodies at "The 2nd Dalhousie Atlantic Analysis Days" in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on March 31, 2007.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Bivaluations on Convex Bodies at the Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Hoboken, New Jersey on April 14, 2007.
Professor Monika Ludwig spoke on Bivaluations on Convex Bodies at the Workshop on Convex Geometry - Analytic Aspects at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica in Cortona, Italy, June 4 - 8, 2007.
Professor Monika Ludwig was one of eleven invited speakers at the Conference on Classical Convex Geometry held at the University of Missouri at Columbia on March 21 - 23, 2008 and spoke on SL(n) invariant valuations.
Professor Monika Ludwig was one of six invited speakers and spoke on SL(n) invariant notions of surface area at the 13th Southeast Geometry Seminar held at Emory University, Atlanta, on March 30, 2008.
Professor Gaoyong Zhang spoke on Affine Isoperimetric Inequalities at the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians in Hangzhou, China in December 2007.
Professor Yisong Yang spoke on Knots and Topological Growth Laws in the Faddeev Model Princeton University in April, 25, 2008.

Recent publications

By Professor Monika Ludwig:

A classification of SL(n) invariant valuations,

Annals of Mathematics,

Intersection bodies and valuations, American Journal of Mathematics 128, 1409 - 1428 (2006).
(with C. Haberl) A characterization of Lp intersection bodies, International Mathematical Research Notices 2006, Art ID 10548, 29 pages.
(with M. Reitzner) Elementary moves on triangulations, Discrete and Computational Geometry 35, 527 - 536 (2006).
Valuations in the affine geometry of convex bodies, Proceedings Of The Conference on Integral Geometry And Convexity, Wuhan 2004, World Scientific, Singapore, 49 - 65 (2006).
(with C. Schütt and E. Werner) Approximation of the Euclidean ball by polytopes, Studia Mathematica 173, 1 - 18 (2006).

Jointly authored publications by Professors Erwin Lutwak, Deane Yang, and Gaoyong Zhang:

Optimal Sobolev Norms and the L_p Minkowski Problem, International Mathematical Research Notices (2006) 1-21.

By Professor Yisong Yang (in reverse chronological order):

(with F. H. Lin) Energy Splitting, Substantial Inequality, and Minimization for the Faddeev Model and Skyrme model, Communications in Mathematical Physics 269 (2007) 137--152.
(with F. H. Lin) Faddeev Knots, Skyrme Solitons, and Concentration-Compactness, Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Differential Geometry Methods in Theoretical Physics, pp 313--322 (2006).
(with N. Sakai) Moduli Space of BPS Walls in Supersymmetric Gauge Theories, Communications in Mathematical Physics 267 (2006) 783--800.
(with F. H. Lin) Static Knot Energy, Hopf Charge, and Universal Growth Law, Nuclear Physics B 747 (2006) 455--463.
(with X. Q. Wang) Existence of Static BPS Monopoles and Dyons in Arbitrary (4p-1)-Dimensional Spaces, Letters in Mathematical Physics 77 (2006) 249--263.