News

Suresh Venapally, a visiting professor in the department for the 2009-10 year, was recently named as one of only eleven recipients of the prestigious Bhatnagar award in 2009. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards for Science and Technology are given to scientists below 45 years of age, for their outstanding scientific contributions made primarily in India during the last 5 years proceeding the year of the Prize. The SSB Prize comprises a citation, a plaque and a cash award of Rs.5,00,000/- , and are given to the recipients by the Prime Minister of India. The department offers hearty congratulations to Suresh!

Professor James Nagy was recently conferred a Distinguished Alumnus Award by his undergraduate and MS institution, Northern Illinois University. Nagy was recognized as an internationally recognized leader in the field of digital image processing and restoration. Nagy has been at Emory University since 1999 and has contributed significantly to the department's programs and to graduate student advising. The faculty, staff and students of the department offer their warm congratulations to Professor Nagy on this recognition. More details can be found at http://www.niu.edu/clas50/50alumni/nagy.shtml

Professor Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University will speak on "Counting problems in number theory" at 5:30pm on Thursday, October 15th, in MSC E208. He is well known for his research achievements (leading to many prizes such as the Cole Prize for number theory), for his writing (for which he was awarded the Merten M. Hasse Prize), and for his clear and engaging talks. This talk is aimed at a general mathematical audience and will be understandable by undergraduate math majors.

The department congratulates Dr. Li Xiong for receiving a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. This prestigious fellowship is awarded nationally to 20 junior faculty members each year in the social and natural sciences and the humanities. The award provides a year of leave to Dr. Xiong to work on her project, which focuses on private and confidential information sharing in distributed healthcare information systems.

Math's in your cards, so deal with it

A 17th-century French gambler helped spark the modern theory of probability, says Ron Gould, author of the newly published "Mathematics in Games, Sports and Gambling: The Games People Play."

The textbook, based on Gould's popular freshmen seminar by the same name, reveals elementary probability theory and discrete mathematics through card tricks, dice rolling, baseball and other sports and games.

The aim is to help students develop a more logical, questioning approach to solving problems. "And, I hope they have a good time," adds Gould, a Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics who has taught at Emory for 30 years.