Entries by santillanc@math.ucla.edu

In Memoriam: Veeravalli Seshadri Varadarajan

It is with great regret that the Mathematics Department must note the passing last week, at age 81, of our colleague Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor Veeravalli Seshadri Varadarajan. Professor Varadarajan, known to all as Raja, led a research career of lasting international influence.  He was in active service at UCLA  for 49 years until  his  […]

Russel Caflisch elected to National Academy of Sciences

Former IPAM Director and UCLA Professor of Mathematics Russel (Russ) Caflisch is one of 100 new members to be elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.  Russ had a lengthy career at UCLA; he joined the Mathematics Department in 1989 (with a joint appointment in Materials Science and Engineering) and became Director of IPAM in […]

In Memoriam: Charles Stone

Dr. Charles (Chuck) J. Stone passed away on April 16, 2019. Chuck received his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1961 under the direction of Samuel Karlin, and he joined the UCLA Department of Mathematics faculty in 1964. The early part of his career was devoted to probability theory, working closely with Sidney Port. During the […]

Recent Ph.D. graduate receives Sacks Prize for best dissertation of the year in logic

Recent UCLA math graduate Danh (Danny) Nguyen Luu has been named the sole winner of the 2018 Sacks Prize by the International Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL). The Sacks Prize is awarded for the best dissertation of the year in logic. Previous winners include Gregory Hjorth (former UCLA faculty), Itay Neeman, Matthias Aschenbrenner and Artem Chernikov (current faculty). Danny received his Ph.D. in Spring 2018, under […]

Taking a cue from spider webs, UCLA researchers snag fresh water with vapor capture system

Photo caption: Researchers Abolfazl Sadeghpour, the study’s co-lead author, Hangjie Ji and Navid Dehdari Ebrahimi with their experimental water capture setup. Photo credit: Oszie Tarula/UCLA A key element in the UCLA team’s system is its ability to consistently generate water droplets of the same size and constant flowing speed. These water beads enable the system to effectively […]

Professor Stan Osher developed key numerical algorithm used to reconstruct image of black hole

UCLA mathematics professor Stan Osher, Cognitech Inc CEO Leonid Rudin and then PhD student Emad Fatemi, now sadly deceased, created a numerical algorithm that was instrumental in reconstructing the cleaned up image of the black hole captured in April 2017. Their work has been cited as the key regularization function in sparse modeling that has been applied to astronomical imaging (Akiyama et […]

Vote for Roper’s Lab in NSF video competition ending soon

The UCLA Myco-Fluidics Laboratory or “Roper’s Lab,” led by mathematics Professor Marcus Roper, is a semi-finalist in the National Science Foundation (NSF) We Are Mathematics Video Competition. This contest aims to “bring mathematics to life in a way that can help to break down barriers for those who may not otherwise understand what it means to do advanced mathematics or conduct research […]

Professor Tim Austin proves the “weak Pinsker conjecture”

UCLA mathematics professor Tim Austin has published a proof of the “weak Pinsker conjecture,” first posed in the 1970s. Austin’s work provides the building blocks for a better understanding of the mathematical descriptions of random change. In a recent article, Quanta magazine praised Austin’s research, highlighting its importance in the field. Below, Austin gives a detailed explanation of the theorem: […]

Professor Mason Porter named 2019 SIAM Fellow

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has selected 28 members, including Professor Mason Porter (University of California, Los Angeles), to join the 2019 Class of SIAM Fellows. According to SIAM, these distinguished members were nominated for their exemplary research as well as outstanding service to the community. Through their contributions, SIAM Fellows help advance […]