This award supports participation in the "Tenth Mississippi State Conference on Differential Equations and Computational Simulations," which provides a forum where mathematicians, engineers, and scientists from academia and industry exchange research and education ideas involving theoretical, applied, and computational developments in differential equations and associated simulations. The conference will be held October 23-25, 2014 on the campus of the Mississippi State University. The website for this conference is www.ccs.msstate.edu/deconf/de2014.
The conference is a collaborative endeavor between the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS), a High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPCC) member center, at Mississippi State University. The majority of the grant funds will be used to provide travel support to graduate students and recent doctoral recipients. The conference will provide these future research leaders an opportunity to present their work, to meet and collaborate with other researchers, educators, and practitioners, and to learn about recent developments in this interdisciplinary field.
" with a mission of providing a joint forum where mathematicians, scientists, and engineers from academia and industry exchange research and education ideas involving theoretical, applied, and computational developments in differential equations and associated simulations. The conference is also to provide graduate students and young Ph.D.s an opportunity to present their work, meet other researchers, educators and practitioners, learn of recent developments in the proposed interdisciplinary field, and produce a new generation of mathematical models and challenges. Ten principal lectures were presented by the following speakers: Alfonso Castro, "Professor Shivaji and how to find the bottom in semipositone problems," Harvey Mudd College Pavel Drábek, "Results and open questions for some quasilinear eigenvalue problems," University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic Paul Durbin, "The phenomenon of bypass transition and its modeling in practice," Iowa State University Jonathan Freund, "Numerical simulation of cellular blood flow in small vessels," University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Suzanne Lenhart, "Modeling of Johne's disease in dairy cattle," University of Tennessee, Knoxville Philip Maini, "Modelling collective cell movement in biology," Oxford University, United Kingdom Jean Mawhin, "The multiplicity of solutions of relativistic-type systems with periodic nonlinearities," Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium Peter Polacik, "Bounded solutions of the Fujita equation: three examples," University of Minnesota Junping Shi, "Exact multiplicity and uniqueness of positive solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations and systems: Old and new results," College of William and Mary Peter Takac, "Time analyticity of solutions to the Heston volatility model in mathematical finance," Universitat Rostock, Germany The principal lectures were from various disciplines such as applied and computational mathematics, biology, materials sciences, and aerospace engineering all of which concentrate on differential equations and computational simulations. In addition, a total of 83 contributed papers were presented at the conference and 167 participants from 12 different countries registered for the conference. The conference participants came from Algeria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, China, Georgia, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The conference was also dedicated to Ratnasingham Shivaji, Professor of Mathematics at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in celebration of his 60th birthday, his outstanding contributions to differential equations, and his service to Mississippi State University. Shivaji’s former students and colleagues gave remarks on Ratnasingham Shivaji during the conference banquet held on Thursday night, October 23, 2014. This is a truly multidisciplinary conference with a focused theme, which is needed in the area of differential equations & computational simulations, mathematical models, mathematical and numerical analysis, computational techniques and their applications to real world problems. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics (www.math.msstate.edu) and the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS, www.ccs.msstate.edu), a High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2, formerly the NSF Engineering Research Center) member center, at Mississippi State University (MSU, www.msstate.edu) provided the perfect opportunity to assume a leadership role for this mission. Another important feature of the conference is the involvement of many young researchers (especially underrepresented minorities) in mathematical sciences, including graduate students, post-doctorate associates, and new faculty. A total of 32 graduate students and recent Ph.D.s (graduated on/after 2010) from outside MSU were supported by the NSF to participate in the conference. Also, partial travel expenses of principal speakers were paid from this grant. There were a total of 31 MSU graduate students/recent Ph.D.s who participated in the conference and we were able to waive their registration fees using our internal funds. Among these 63 young researchers, there were 18 women and 12 minorities. A total of 42 graduate students/recent Ph.D.s presented papers at contributed sessions. One of the unique features of the conference was the fostering of close interaction and networking opportunities between the participants. By providing all meals each day for two and a half days, the participants had a greater opportunity to network with other researchers. The breakfast and lunch room in the Colvard Student Union was furnished with 20 round tables seating up to 10 participants each to encourage networking. Also there was a room for coffee and refreshments, which was equipped with sofas and tables, available to the participants throughout the conference in order to help promote more conversation between the researchers. Our unique schedule and facilities initiated active research collaborations among participants. For young researchers, our unique schedule and environment also promoted close interaction with senior researchers, giving these future research leaders a greater chance of meaningful collaborations and therefore greatly enhancing their academic career.
