Linear Algebra and Applications Graduate Summer School: Additional Funding
Linear algebra is a subject of central importance in both mathematics and a variety of other disciplines. It is used by virtually all mathematicians and by statisticians, physicists, biologists, computer scientists, engineers, and social scientists. Just as the basic idea of first semester differential calculus (approximating the graph of a function by its tangent line) provides information about the function, the process of linearization often allows difficult problems to be approximated by more manageable linear ones. This can provide insight into, and, thanks to ever-more-powerful computers, approximate solutions of the original problem. The fundamental nature of linear algebra and its many applications make this an ideal theme for a summer program for graduate students.
The 2008 Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) Participating Institutions Summer Graduate Program on ``Linear Algebra and Applications'' will be held Iowa State University June 29 - July 26, 2008. The IMA will pay all costs for the principal speakers and all expenses for up to two students from each of the 40 IMA participating institutions to this Summer Graduate Program. This project will provide support for an 12 additional graduate students from non-IMA US institutions, and salary for a post-doctoral associate who will serve as a mentor to the graduate students. Applications will be taken through the Linear Algebra and Applications Graduate Summer School website www.ima.umn.edu/2007-2008/PISG6.30-7.25.08/
The program organizers are Leslie Hogben, Wolfgang Kliemann and Yiu-Tung Poon. The the principal speakers and their topics are:
Bryan Shader, University of Wyoming, Linear algebra and applications to combinatorics.
David S. Watkins, Washington State University, Numerical Linear Algebra.
Chi-Kwong Li, College of William and Mary, Matrix inequalities and equations in science and engineering.
Fritz Colonius, University of Augsburg, Germany, Applications of linear algebra to dynamical systems.
Lectures will be presented in the mornings and students will work in groups in the afternoons, supervised by post-doctoral associate Jason Grout. Each week the students will learn the necessary background to attack current research problems presented at the end of the week.
The Linear Algebra and Applications Graduate Summer School will help to educate future US mathematical scientists. This NSF funding will broaden participation in the summer school and will hence magnify its impact and allow a more diversified group of students to participate, since the organizers will now advertise the summer school broadly also to underrepresented groups of students outside of the IMA participating institutions.
