Spring 2011 Newsletter - Bad Request

Oberlin Department of Mathematics
Alumni NewsLetter
Spring 2011
JACK CALCUT
We were pleased to welcome Dr. Jack
Calcut to the Mathematics Department this year.
Jack works in the areas of low dimensional
topology, geometric topology, and the topology
of orbit spaces. In addition to teaching
introductory and intermediate level mathematics
courses, Jack taught Geometry at the upper level
this year; next year he will offer 300-level
courses in Topology and in Number Theory.
Jack comes to Oberlin by way of Michigan
State University, where he completed a
postdoctoral position at his alma mater (class of
1999). He earned his Ph.D. at the University of
Maryland in 2004, then took a postdoctoral
position at the University of Texas before
returning to Michigan State in 2008 to work for
two years as part of an active geometry and
topology research group. Jack’s work has
appeared in the The Journal of Algebra and Its
Applications, The Journal of Knot Theory and
Its Ramifications, and The American
Mathematical Monthly, among other venues.
During his postdoctoral appointment at
Michigan State, Jack directed two
undergraduates in research. Thus, it was no
surprise that he was willing to direct an Honors
Student, Madhav Kaushish, on the topic of
Algebraic Number Theory, during his first year
at Oberlin.
Jack’s wife, Margot, teaches mathematics at
Lake Ridge Academy in Elyria. They have two
children.
OLIVER SCHIROKAUER
It is with mixed feelings that we report on
Oliver Schirokauer’s future. After teaching in
the Department of Mathematics for 18 years,
Oliver has resigned from the College in order to
pursue a career as a physician. He is currently
enrolled in medical school at Case Western
Reserve University, where he is part of the way
through the first year of the lengthy and
challenging process of becoming a doctor. We
are confident that he is up to the task and can
handle the rigors of being a medical student, but
we miss his daily presence on the second floor
of the King Building. We wish him the best of
luck; our loss is the medical community’s gain.

Benjamin Jakubowski, Rebecca Uhlman, and
Patrick Haggerty have been working on ternary
sequence sorting algorithms with Elizabeth
Wilmer as their advisor this year. In March, they
presented their results at the Spring Meeting of
the Ohio Section of the Mathematics
Association of America, held at Youngstown
State University.
ALUMNI NOTES
(Many of your responded to our request for
alumni notes a few weeks ago. Here are those
responses (lightly edited).)
Age 85, in a retirement home, some
distance from a university library and with no
car. Thank heaven for the Internet! Learn as
much as you can about that personal library at
your disposal on your computer. With Bing you
can even do quite a lot of bibliographic work to
back up your scientific papers. For instance, try
Wikipedia on Fibonacci numbers.
--Margaret (Waugh) Maxfield 47
Joint work by four of us succeeded in
simplifying the proof of a result in number
theory. We published it in 2010 [in Journal of
Number Theory, “Divisibility of Exponentials
Sums via Elementary Methods”]. My coauthors
are from the University of Puerto Rico
(Francis N. Castro and Ivelisse Rubio) and from
Paris Telecom (Hugues Randriam).
--H.F. Mattson '51
My math activities have wound down to
reviewing the occasional item for Computing
Reviews and helping my grandson deal with 6th
grade math. Actually his biggest problem is that
he's being taught much differently from his
parents. They're more anxious than he is.
--Chuck Crawford '60
I am just finishing working with some
mathematicians on progressions describing what
the math Common Core State Standards mean.
The standards are way way better than most
state standards were, and it will be wonderful
not to have 50 different sets of standards (one
for each state).
I have developed some geometry materials
so that young students can experience "the right
angled shapes": rectangles (including square
rectangles), right triangles, and isosceles
triangles made from two congruent right
triangles. The only materials now in use in
PreK and elementary focus on the equilateral
triangle world (shapes made from a small
equilateral triangle). Now I'm working on
materials for the parallelogram and acute/obtuse
triangles made from their diagonals. This is all
fun for me because most of my research has
been on number and computation.
In October I had a great visit and hike in
beautiful snow with Peter Molnar. We used to
study for calculus tests together. Seems like
only moments ago!!!!!!
--Karen Fuson '65
I am taking a term sabbatical from my math
teaching position at George School (Newtown,
PA), during which I will be doing no
mathematics whatsoever; rather I will be putting
together a book of excerpts from 50 years of my
parents' letters (to me) for the wider family. It is
an interesting project, a portrait of my family
and my parents' marriage over half a century. I
will also have time for some music, some
watercolor painting, and the enjoyment the
coming of spring in Bucks County.
--Mary Dart '66
I plan to retire on July 1.
-- Tom Gregory '67
I was installed as President of the Ohio
Council of Teachers of Mathematics at the
OCTM Annual Conference in Akron last
October. In the past year I have presented at the
Greater Akron Mathematics Educators Society
mini-conference (Using Mathematical Tricks
and Games to Teach Algebraic Proof) and at the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
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Annual Conference and Exposition (Teaching
Mathematics Through Music). I am currently
teaching in the Lorain City Schools at the Credit
Recovery Academy, a school for students who
are trying to pick up credits from courses they
did not pass the previous year.
--Mark Jaffee '67
I am moving on...to Elgin, Illinois
(Chicago-area), where my son Chris, his wife
Jeannine, and baby Evelyn (3/10/2011) live.
When I made the decision to move, my son Dan
also lived near Chicago, but alas he moved
to Connecticut last fall. (Lest you worry, his
departure was not caused by my impending
arrival, just coincidental.) I still work for Rho,
Inc. as a biostatistician, and I have been based at
home for nearly a year. However I can work
from home there just as well, so off I go. I look
forward to sharing in the life of my
granddaughter, but I'm moving into a new home
in a nearby "active adult" community as a way
to build my own new life in a place that is easy
to make new friends. While there is much about
the Boston area and New England that I will
dearly miss, I am looking forward to the next
step in life when I move in early May.
Professionally, I'm still quite active. I'm
wrapping up a 3-year gig as an officer in the
Biopharmaceutical Section of the American
Statistical Association, which followed a 3-year
tour of duty on the ASA Board of Directors,
which followed... I'm off to client meetings in
NYC and at the FDA before I move, so there is
no moss growing under my feet. However, if
some of you have mastered retirement, I'd love
to have advice--I hear the transition can be hard
and I want to do it gracefully when the time
comes. I'm moving, but my email will stay
kmonti729@gmail.com.
--Kathy (Nuckolls) Monti '71
I continue to teach mathematics at Concord
Academy in Concord, MA. Four years ago I
began using multiple-choice voting questions in
my calculus and precalculus courses, to promote
discourse and conceptual thinking. At first the
students voted by holding up cards. Last year I
introduced clickers, handheld devices to
transmit votes and display the results. (In class
on parents' weekend after the students voted on
this question, "True or false: You were once
exactly pi feet tall," the parents enjoyed their
turn to vote, as well as the ensuing lively
discussion about the intermediate-value
theorem.) Never a dull moment in the math ed
biz!
-- Deborah Gray '72
I am still teaching mathematics at The Taft
School in CT, supervising the Math Team, and
mentoring young teaching fellows right out of
college. I got a little spoiled through last year as
I had a young man who finished second in the
USAMO two years running. He helped our
team score well in the Harvard-MIT
Mathematics tournament also. Now he is a
freshman at Harvard (chose between full rides
there, Yale, MIT, and Cal Tech), and I am back
to more ordinary performers on the team. So it
goes.
--Ted Heavenrich ‘74
Well, I'm not sure if this counts as
interesting, but I am pleased to report that the
Third Edition of my book Data Mining
Techniques has just appeared. It is very much
updated from the second edition.
--Michael Berry '78
I'm still in Geneseo, NY, teaching at a
branch of the State University of New York.
Having spent this past academic year as the
Coordinator of Theatre and Dance (don't ask-academic
politics are the worst politics) I get to
jump from the fire into the frying pan--next year
I'll begin a three-year term as Chair of the
Mathematics Department. I'm still enjoying
teaching a wide range of things, from Logic and
Set Theory to Modeling Biological Systems.
The State of New York is broke, and that means
that the college is dealing with difficult budget
issues. We may be absorbing a few computer
scientists into the mathematics department in the
next couple of years as part of a plan to save
money.
As for family, my eldest daughter, Heather,
is starting the college search while my son, Eric,
is surviving life in middle school (boy, I'm sure
glad I don't have to be a teenager again!) My
wife, Sharon, is having a blast working as a
potter and she spends her spare time driving the
ambulance for the local fire department. We
have two cats and a guinea pig, with lots of
deer, fox, and other wildlife to keep us
company. So life is good, even though I still
miss my Oberlin days--both as a student and as
a faculty member.
--Chris Leary '79
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I graduated in 1979 and joined the USAF as
an officer. I thank the US taxpayers for fully
paying for my MS in Operations Research,
which I earned at George Washington
University. My interest in OR was a direct result
of taking classes from Prof. Igor Frolow. I even
ran into him one day in the DC metro while in
grad school.
I spent a total of 6 years in the AF as an OR
analyst in the Pentagon mainly working on
budget scenarios involving other countries.
While there, I was mentored by my boss, who
after retiring, moved to Arizona. He recruited
most of his staff, and I joined him at once-great
semiconductor corporation, Motorola. In 1987, I
changed companies, and have worked for
Honeywell Aerospace ever since as an avionics
engineer. Also in 1987, I married Tony
Massimini, an electrical engineer. We have two
children, a 22 yr old daughter and a 21 yr old
son. Neither has an ounce of mathematical or
engineering brain matter. Our daughter
graduated from the University of Arizona last
year, majoring in Italian and History. She
avoided all Math in college--so much for having
positive role models! She's spent a year working
as a hostess at a restaurant, as well as
freelancing as a photographer, and this summer,
begins law school in Sacramento, CA at
University of the Pacific. Our son attends
Northern Arizona University and has recently
switched majors to Accounting.
I totally credit majoring in Math for having
a successful and well-paying career.
--Esther Marx Massimini '79
I am the coauthor of a book entitled
"Statistical Learning for Biomedical Data"
(Cambridge University Press: Practical Guides
to Biostatistics and Epidemiology, 2011). The
book is for anyone who has biomedical data and
needs to identify variables that predict an
outcome, for two-group outcomes such as tumor
/ not tumor, survival / death, or response from
treatment. Statistical learning machines are
well-suited to these types of prediction
problems, especially if the variables being
studied may not meet the assumptions of
traditional techniques.
-- Karen Malley '80
I am currently Branch Chief and Senior
Investigator in the Biostatistics and
Bioinformatics Branch at the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development. His
group of ten Ph.D. biostatisticians does
statistical research related to reproductive, child,
and adolescent health. Major research areas are
in developing new methods for longitudinal data
analysis, survival analysis, and the analysis of
genetic and biomarker data.
On another note, my group is in the
intramural part of NIH. As such, we have an
active summer program where students are paid
to spend the summer doing research with us.
It’s too late for this year, but I encourage you to
identify some good Oberlin students who may
be interested in this for next year.
--Paul Albert '81
I joined Sony this year to help start a new
division in healthcare, and promptly found
myself deeply immersed in mathematics.
Imagine the statistics and population
identification that goes on between the shutter
press in a camera and when the smiles are big
"enough" to take the photo. Currently, I am
looking for new technologies and new
businesses.
On a personal level, our miniature belted
Galloway herd continues to thrive here in
California, where they love the snow and rain
that we get in the San Jose foothills.
--Peter David '81
I left my employer of 20 years to work for a
new firm. Mostly to see something different,
and also because the new firm will transfer me
to Beijing in a year. Our (Michael and I)
children are grown. Thomas is going to graduate
school and Andrew is going to college this fall.
So, we are free to move about. Michael has
accepted a teaching post in Beijing, and my new
employer will transfer me there. If you travel to
Beijing, please come to visit us. The best way
to contact us is via e-mail.
--Imelda Yeung Powers '81
I am now Group Leader of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory Statistical Sciences Group.
Founded in 1967, the group partners with
scientists, engineers, and policy makers to solve
problems of national importance by providing
statistical reasoning and rigor to
multidisciplinary scientific investigations and
the development, application, and
communication of cutting-edge statistical
research.
--Joanne Wendelberger '81
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I am currently Professor of Medicine and
Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Thomas
Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. My
clinical practice is in hepatology and I keep one
foot firmly planted in the realm of medical
education. I have been married to Gail Herrine
'83 for 25 years. Our two eldest sons both
graduated from Oberlin in 2010 - one a
humanist, the other a scientist.
--Steve Herrine '82
I've released my third CD of original
classical music, "Music Among Friends"
(Centaur Records No. 3077), and am now
putting the finishing touches on a symphonic
tribute to astronomy. And by day, I continue
doing application support and programming for
University of Michigan Medical Center
Information Technology.
--Matthew H. Fields (Double degree
'84/'85)
http://www.matthewfields.net
These are some of the discrete math
questions that I have been looking into recently:
1) conjugate interval orders describing the two
complementary ways to say that one time
interval (for example) is "before" another; 2)
ruminations on the apparent ubiquity of semimodular
functions on ordered structures, for
example as the rank functions of matroids; 3)
the need to extend graph motif analysis methods
to the general case of labeled, directed graphs;
4) how to recover simple concepts like convex
hulls, perimeters, areas, and Hausdorff measures
in discrete metric spaces (that is, metric spaces
where the underlying space is discrete, like a
graph or an ordered set). All of these are quite
important for a range of questions in
information systems management which we care
about here at PNNL, in applications like
ontology clustering and data mining in semantic
graph databases. Get in touch if you're a
colleague or student excited by these topics.
--Cliff Joslyn '85
I am in my fourth year as an Assistant
Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd
College in Claremont, CA. I really enjoy
working with my colleagues and my students.
After teaching at the middle and high school
levels, my job at a small liberal arts college
provides me the new opportunity to combine
teaching and research. I have been studying the
mathematics of a variety of problems in fluid
dynamics, from the dynamics of thin liquid
films with surfactants (chemicals that lower
surface tension), to the surface pattern on the
ocean made by whales, to the coordination of
groups of aquatic robots. I enjoy collaborating
with folks in Math and Physics from UCLA, NC
State University, Duke University and the
University of Washington. I am now teaching
first-year writing in addition to a variety of
mathematics courses, which is not so strange
after completing a Math and English double
major at Oberlin. I never imagined living in
SoCal, since I am firmly a North Carolina gal,
but I love the variety of fruit and vegetables
growing in everyone’s yards and the lack of
bugs that eat them. My family seems to enjoy
the chance to bike all over town all year long
and head to the mountains for snow during most
months. As I write this it is 90 degrees in town
with snow-capped mountains in view!
--Rachel Levy '89
For the past few years I've been developing
audio software. I am 1/3 of Cockos Inc.
Cockos makes REAPER
(http://www.reaper.fm), a digital audio
workstation (which is installed in a lab at the
Oberlin Conservatory), and I also make the
Schwa line of audio effects processors.
Audio DSP is a lively field. The most
mathematically interesting thing I've done lately
was the Olga virtual analog synthesizer
(http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=37,
please forgive the frothy text on that page). The
challenge was to combine circuitry modeling
with a user-controllable degree of
unpredictability -- far more unpredictability than
would ever be observed in physical circuitry --
without generating digital artifacts or generally
sounding bad. The implementation involved
applying an evolving bezier transformation to a
digitally generated waveform, and then
processing the result through a discrete fourier
transform to forcibly remove aliasing artifacts.
My math studies at Oberlin tended heavily
toward the theoretical rather than the applied, so
interestingly I have not encountered many
situations where I've been able to apply specific
math domain knowledge that I learned at
Oberlin. But what I have been able to apply,
and what in retrospect I think was the most
important part of my math education at Oberlin,
was a general approach to problem-solving that
starts with the assumption that if I apply
*myself* sufficiently to the problem, I will be
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able to solve it. In other words, there's no such
thing as domain knowledge that is out of reach,
there is only domain knowledge that I don't yet
know.
-- John Schwartz '89
I am now 3/4 of the way through my first
year of teaching high school in Cincinnati, OH.
I teach AP calculus and multivariate calculus
(which is about to turn to other topics) as well as
honors and AP physics. The students are
wonderful and I'm having a lot of fun with the
teaching.
-- Lenore Horner '92
I've taken a tenure-track position in
mathematics at California Lutheran University,
a small liberal arts college not unlike Oberlin in
certain respects. I spend most of my time with
teaching-related tasks; this semester I've been
delighted to teach topology, my research area.
I've still managed to find time to devote to
research-level point-set topology, focusing
mainly on cardinality bounds on homogenous
topological spaces. I presented a paper at a
conference in Greece last summer and will
likely present newer results at the Prague
Topological Symposium this summer. I've also
found time to dabble in my other main math
interest, mathematical models of the spread of
invasive species. Lately I've focused on models
of desert grass exotics, in conjunction with
biologists at the Arizona Sonoran Desert
Museum. In other news, I have a wonderful 15month-old
son who's become an avid
investigator of applied chaos theory around our
house. His chief word at the moment is "no",
which makes conversation, uh, interesting.
--Nathan Carlson '94
I work at the Advanced Visualization Lab at
the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, a small team which produces datadriven
scientific visualizations, particularly for
public outreach. Last year, we worked on the
scientific visualization scenes for the IMAX
Film "Hubble 3D". In particular, we were
responsible for the flight through the Orion
Nebula, and the journey into the Hubble Ultra
Deep Field. All told, we produced about 10
minutes of the 44 minute film.
This fall I'll be moving to Tucson, where
my wife Paige recently landed a tenure-track
position. We're still negotiating a position for
me, so wish me luck!
--Matt Hall '94
mahall@illinois.edu
http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/~mahall
I'm currently a lead infosec engineer with
MITRE, working in The Hague, Netherlands.
We've been here for 3 years so far. This past
year was a lot of fun because I became a mom.
I'm expecting another little one at the end of the
year.
--Sarah Brown '00
I completed a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at
the Georgia Institute of Technology in
December. My dissertation was on
characteristics of public transit network design
and operations that meet multiple sustainability
goals. Next stop is Munich, Germany for a postdoc
on Mobility Culture in Megacities.
--Laurel Paget-Seekins '01
I live with my wife and son in the Boston
area. I currently work as a software developer
and am pursuing a Masters in Software
Engineering from the Harvard Extension
School.
--Jordan Mueller '01
I finished a Masters in Architecture at the
University of Michigan last May. I am excited
to now be working at the Museum of
Mathematics in Manhattan. The Museum is a
start-up project, and not yet open. We plan to
open in 2012, and are on a mission to reveal the
wonders of mathematics to a broad and diverse
audience through highly interactive and
dynamic exhibits. It's going to be a really
exciting place, and I hope to run into many
fellow alums there!
--Emily Vanderpol '02
I am currently finishing a two-year visiting
position as a math professor at Carleton College,
and next fall will be starting a tenure-track job at
UW Eau Claire. In the past two years, I have
been able to attend a Several Complex Variables
conference in Brazil and to be a delegate at the
International Congress of Mathematicians in
Hyderabad, India. This is the conference where
the Fields medals and other prizes are awarded,
and is the biggest mathematical conference in
the world.
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On a more personal note, I got married last
June and we are expecting our first child in late
July.
--Jon Armel '03
I earned my bachelor's in math in 2004
from Oberlin. I've done a few different things
since then; my career has been moving more in
the direction of science and math lately. Right
now is actually a very exciting time for me and
it seems unlikely my activities over any six
month span in my life will ever be this
impressive again:
This spring I'm finishing a master's in
Atmosphere and Energy in the Civil and
Environmental Engineering department at
Stanford University. Right now I'm working as
a research assistant to Dr. Chris Field of the
Carnegie Institute of Washington on a project to
quantify the exchange of carbon dioxide
between the biosphere and atmosphere. This
summer I'm working as a fellow with the NYC
office of the Natural Resources Defense
Council, modeling the interaction between
climate and agriculture. I will begin PhD
studies in Harvard University's Department of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology this fall,
doing modeling and field studies of terrestrial
ecosystems and global change.
--Stephen Klosterman '04
My daughter Irene Yunhua Sun was born
on Aug 21, 2011. She is 7 months old now. So
far she is very talented at sleeping through the
night, which sure has made her working mom
happy and well rested. The math side of
her mom is already wondering when she can
start teaching Irene counting, and
maybe even throwing the 9 dots puzzle at her
some day.
--Ellen Chai '05
I don't have much to report mathematically,
but I am currently a Sales Representative for an
international wine import company T Edward
Wines. I am continuing my education with wine
studies at the Wine & Spirits Education Trust,
and have recently travelled to vineyards in
Napa, Bordeaux, Chile and Argentina. I live in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and am in the bridal
party of two Oberlin alumni weddings this year.
--Georgia Blume '06
This is my fifth year of graduate school in
Georgia Tech's ACO program. My research
involves graph theory and the combinatorics of
finite partially ordered sets. I hope to graduate
soon! As for something interesting, I learned
recently that we, as babies, naturally think of
quantities logrithmically. That is, instead of
thinking that 1, 2, 3, and 4 differ by the same
amount, babies think that 1, 2, 4, and 8 differ
equally, and the difference between 7 and 8 is
much smaller than the difference between 1 and
2. In fact, there exist societies that haven't made
this switch --- when asked which number is
half-way between 1 and 9, the adults say 3, not
5.
--Noah Streib '06
I am currently finishing up my Master's in
Music Composition at Illinois State. Next
semester I will be attending the Hartt School of
Music in the Doctoral Music Composition
Program.
I haven't come across too much exciting
Math out here in Music land, but I have
occasionally helped people with homework and
used Math references in some of the classes I
teach.
--Will Huebler '08
Although not particularly math related, I am
finishing up my time as a Shansi Fellow up in
the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh, India. I
didn't realize how much I had missed a good
problem set until my Hinditutor asked me to
help her study for an upcoming exam and tutor
her in some of the tougher math concepts. I
took a couple of the problems home with me
that she had been having trouble with. Although
they were all straight-forward trigonometry and
algebra problems, I tore through them with a
thirst like a traveler in the desert. I had
forgotten how much fun systems of equations
are!
--Jenna Lindeke '09
COMMENCEMENT
• This year our Commencement Reception
is Sunday, May 29 from 2-4 PM in King 205. If
you're here for commencement, please come;
we would love to see you.
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