Chen, Feng

[Official Bio] Office: MA639 Email: chen221@math.purdue.edu Phone: 765-337-6037

Address: Department of Mathematics Purdue University 150 N. University Street West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067

Teaching [statement]

Fall 06: MA 265	Spring 07: MA 265	Summer 07: MA 266
Fall 07: MA 271	Spring 08: MA 166
Fall 08: MA 16100

Research ( advisor: Shen, Jie )
updating...

• Learning
  Essentially I'm still on a way of accumulating knowledge, which will lead me to success in my belief. I like learning all kinds of execellent numerical algorithms. The most elegant algorithm that has ever come to me is the conjugate gradient method. Also, I adore fast Fourier tranformation and Galerkin methods to differential equations.
• Creation
  As a graduate student, I'm afraid of lacking creation, which I think be the most exciting feature of an applied mathematician. Once I had a dream that I was talking with a matrix. It told me that people only know about how to describe its orderness, by 'rank'; however, they don't know 'entropy', another variable to quantify its chaos. When I was waken the next morning, I recalled the interesting dream and tried to find some reference about 'entropy'. I did find a few terms, but they didn't have much relevance to a matrix. Though failed, I do like that kind of feeling, the feeling of thinking out a weired but creative idea.
• Difficulties
  In research, the most difficult thing to me is to know what I should know and how to see subjects with what I know. The above statement is rather ambiguous. Anyway you see what I'm saying if you're also a grad student. The second difficulty is how I persuade myself to keep working with current assignments until finishing them. Last but not least, coding ,or more precisely, debugging, is always a problem. Simulating an algorithm is very important to understand what I have read. However, nobody wants to sit in front of a work satation all day long.
• Methodology
  I hope I don't forget to look back at every other period of my academic journey. Ask myself: What I have learned from my phd life? Does it makes a different me, and in what aspects? I'd like to rethink things that has made sense to me.
• Philosophy
  One day I was sitting at the garden by our math building. I felt the breeze, which shook the tree leaves gentlely. I looked above, and I saw the blue sky, where several paper clouds were drifting. This is a so complicated world. Do human ultimately want to simulate everything, such as a blast, a strand, etc... (But now the problem is, even if we have simulated 10 percent of the whole world, why the knowledge seems to have ocupied 1000 percent of my brain?)
• Principles
  a. There is no absolute correctness or falseness in research. The answer may be laid beyond of normal answers; b. Do things I'm interested in. If I can't, try to do it in a way interestingly to me; c. Always ask the best person, no matter where and when. Professor Shen is not my only advisor. Three people go, one it's my teacher; d. He Li (a famous Chinese poet in Tang Dynasty) could compose poems at seven. Hamilton knew thirteen laguages when he's thirteen. However, that's not me. I only do things that I can do.

Education

• 09/1999-07/2002: Jiangsu Yancheng Middle School, China
• 09/2002-06/2006: Information and Computational Sciences, Department of Mathematics, Nanjing University, China
• 08/2006-present: Department of Mathematics, Purdue University, U.S.A.

Semesters ( my favorite course and experience )

Fall 2006 (the English course)	Spring 2007 (Numerical Analysis)	Summer 2007 (the Algebra QE)
Fall 2007 (High Performance Computing)	Spring 2008 (Numerical PDE's)	Summer 2008 (ISU+IMA)
Fall 2008

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