WINTER 1998 Meet Our Research Assistant Professors Visiting Faculty Math Alums Advise SoS Faculty Feature Prof Helps Out at Olympiad 1997-98 Outstanding TAs Help Us Recruit Johnny Brown Selected 1998 Outstanding Teacher Editors and Contributors Math PUrview - Winter 1998 Math PUrview Home Page Math Department Home Page	Meet our Research Assistant Professors Each year for the past 15 years, the Department of Mathematics has hired young mathematicians to fill two-year positions known as Research Assistant Professorships (or RaP's). RaP appointments are intended for new or recent Ph.D.'s who can benefit from and contribute to an active research environment. We recruit young people from research areas in which we have strong existing programs and research-active senior faculty. A Research Assistant Professor is the mathematics version of the lab science postdoc who gains experience working in a well-equipped laboratory. Unlike lab science postdocs, however, RaP's gain experience in the classroom in addition to conducting their own research, collaborating with other faculty members, and participating in departmental research seminars. RaP's are assigned to teach mathematics service courses for engineering students and upper level mathematics courses. The time spent in our department as RaP's provides young mathematicians with the opportunity to learn how to organize themselves for academic careers that require a careful balance of research and education. We as a department, in turn, benefit from the energy and vitality generated by bright young mathematicians in research seminars and the classroom. Three new Research Assistant Professors joined the Mathematics Department faculty last fall. Brian Birgen received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in August '97. Brian works in complex analysis and wrote his dissertation under the supervision of David Barrett. Mary Sandoval completed her Ph.D. at Michigan in August Œ97 under Alejandro Uribe. Her areas of specialty are differential geometry and global analysis. Mary is an MAA 1997-98 Project NExT Fellow. Adrienne Stanley received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in May Œ97. William Fleisner was her thesis advisor. Adrienne's research areas are set theory and general topology. Three of the department's six RaP's are currently in the second year of their two-year appointments. They describe their experiences in the Mathematics Department since coming to Purdue. Sarah Ferguson, Ph.D. University of Houston, 1996. Sarah¹s research is in operator theory and spaces of analytic functions. Last year I ran a seminar on topics in operator theory. The speakers included faculty from Purdue, one outside speaker, Ken Davidson, and graduate students of Carl Cowen. I also participated in the operator algebras seminar, which this year is combined with the operator theory seminar. I spent this last summer traveling to several conferences, including a fantastic one in China. I also participated in a workshop on operator spaces organized by Gilles Pisier at Texas A&M. In the last year and a half, I have certainly established closer ties with some of my professional colleagues and consequently have new resources for learning and doing mathematics that I did not have a year ago. I am very excited about my professional future, and being at Purdue has a lot to do with that. Lizabeth Rachele, Ph.D. University of Washington, 1996. Her field is partial differential equations--more specifically, inverse problems and microlocal analysis. In the last year and a half, I have participated in the math department's seminar on Fourier integral operators led by Professor Antonio Sa Barreto. I presented my research on an inverse problem in elastodynamics in the Department of Mathematics colloquium. I received an 18-month NSF research grant. I attended conferences on control theory, analysis, and geophysics and met with researchers at the University of Washington. I am currently continuing my research on inverse problems for hyperbolic equations. Alan Roche completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1996. Alan's principal research interest is in the representation theory of reductive p-adic groups. I attended a week-long conference on the representation theory of real and p-adic groups in Seattle last July. I've spoken about my work in the automorphic forms and representation theory seminar here and also in seminars at Harvard (Feb 96), Ecole Normale (June 96), Université Paris 7 (June 96), Ohio State (Oct 96) and U. of Toronto (Feb 97). I'm currently working on a number of projects in the representation theory of p-adic groups--one is joint with Professor David Goldberg.