Graduate Program

by Joel Hass


The past academic year saw an unusually high number of students completing Ph.D. degrees. Nine students either received or shortly will receive a doctorate from the Mathematics Department or the Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics. In addition six students graduated with M.A.T. degrees. Since our students are the most important aspect of our graduate program, I will start by briefly describing their achievements.

Graduating students:

In the Mathematics program, five students received or will shortly receive Ph.D.'s. Jeffrey Groah wrote a thesis on shock waves in general relativity under the guidance of Prof. Blake Temple, our recent Guggenheim Fellow. Jeff is starting a job at La Sierra University in the Fall. Richard Kavinoky also worked with Prof. Temple, and wrote a thesis on conditions in general relativity that lead to singularities such as black holes. Richard will be working as a lecturer at UCD this year. Also a UCD lecturer this year is Michael Penkava, who completed a Ph.D. with Prof. Motohico Mulase. Two of our students have found academic jobs while in the process of completing their Ph.D.'s. Masato Kimura, working with Prof. Mulase, has a position at the Univ. of Wisconsin Eau Claire campus. John Thoo, with thesis advisor Prof. John Hunter, has a position at Yuba College.

In the Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics we saw four Ph.D. awarded given this year. Jerome Coleman, who worked with Prof. Art Krener, wrote a thesis on "Gaussian spacetime models". Luke Simcik, whose thesis adviser was Prof. Peter Linz, wrote a thesis titled "Resolving non-smooth solutions to discretized ill-posed problems". Jerry and Luke have been employed as lecturers at UC Davis for the upcoming year. Ram Vedantham, who worked with Prof. Hunter, is starting a job at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His thesis was on "Shock waves in random media". Interestingly enough, shortly after he arrived in North Carolina, he was joined by a major shock wave in the form of Hurricane Hugo. There is a lot of interest in what his next result will be. Also finishing her Ph.D. this year in the GGAM was Xiaojun Wang, working with thesis adviser Prof. Tsu-Shuan Chang. Dr. Wang's thesis was titled "Global and Local Optimization Using Linear Bounding Functions", and she currently has a postdoctoral position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Davis.

The M.A.T. program graduated six students. All six found excellent jobs teaching mathematics at California high schools. John Barsotti at Vaca High School, Sheila Briggs at Crystal Springs Uplands School, Jodi Cohen Fink at Livermore High, Michella Hopkins at Analy High, Scott Immel at Dixon High, and Mikala Leschly at Florin High School.

Congratulations to all our finishing students.

New students:

We are expecting 20 new students this fall. Seven new students are expected in the M.A and Ph.D. programs in mathematics. Three new students are expected in the M.A.T. program. Ten new students are expected in the Graduate Group in Applied Mathematics.

Graduate Classes/Seminars:

In 1994/95 we continued our weekly research seminars on geometry/topology and analysis, as well as weekly colloquia in each of Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. Topology seminars, held on Wednesdays, were usually followed by well attended dinners at the Davis Farmer's Market at Central Park.

The following advanced courses on current research areas were given in 1994-95:


  • J. Borzellino - Comparison geometry.
  • S. Cleary - Geometric group theory.
  • S. Demoulini - Calculus of variations.
  • J. Hass - Hyperbolic geometry and 3-manifolds.
  • J. Hunter - Hamiltonian Systems.
  • X, Jiang - Elliptic boundary value problems.
  • A. Schwarz - Quantum Field Theory.


    The Mathematics Department is undergoing a major curriculum review which will encompass the graduate area. Several committees have met and looked at various areas and their recommendations will be acted upon by the Graduate Program Committee this year. One concern is to tailor our curriculum to maximize the opportunities available to our graduate students in an increasingly difficult job market.

    The job market for new and recent Ph.D.'s in mathematics continues to be very difficult. Recent data collected by the American Mathematical Society shows record levels of unemployment among recent mathematics Ph.D.'s. Various causes have led to a decrease in academic hiring, while the supply of Ph.D.'s remains high. To address this problem we plan this year to investigate the possibilities of starting up an internship program for our graduate students. Advanced mathematical skills are applicable in a wide variety of fields, but this is not always known to people hiring in these areas. We would very much like to hear from those of you with connections to industry or government labs who might be interested in participating in an internship program.

    As always, we would like to hear from former Davis graduate students about what they are presently doing and how they are applying their mathematical skills.

    News of past and present students:

    Farhat Baber (Ph.D. 1990) is an Associate Professor and chair of the Mathematics Dept. at the Federal Government College for Women, Islamabad, Pakistan.

    Morris Beatty (Ph.D. 1994), is studying Electrical Engineering in the doctoral program at UC Santa Barbara.

    Noah 'Sam' Brannen (Ph.D. 1994), has obtained a postdoctoral position in Tokyo sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.

    Wendy Brunzie (Ph.D. 1994), continues in a position at Montana State University.

    Continuing as lecturers at UC Davis are Adib Bagh (Ph.D. 1994), Kirk Wardlaw (Ph.D. 1994), Alan Jian (Ph.D. 1992) and Ali Dad- Del (Ph.D. 1988).

    Cindy Erickson (MS 1990) is a mathematics instructor at Cosumnes College. Also teaching for Cosumnes College is Miranda Anastas (Ph.D. 1988).

    Mostafa Ghandehari (Ph.D. 1983) is at the Dept. of Math., Univ. of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX.

    Daniel Heath (Deej) (Ph.D. 1994), completed a similar Postdoctoral fellowship in Japan, which he spent at Nara women's college in Osaka. He completed several papers while in Japan, some of which were in Japanese. He has now taken a tenure track position at East Texas State University. His address is Mathematics Department, East Texas State Univ., Commerce, TX 75429.

    Howard Iseri (Ph.D. 1992) and Phil Savoye (Ph.D. 1992) are both Assistant Professors at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania.

    Elaine Kasimatis (Ph.D. 1986) is teaching at Cal State Sacramento.

    Elmo Moore (Ph.D. 1973), who received his degree under the direction of Professor Henry Alder, is now Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Humboldt State University.

    Thomas Nordahl (Ph.D. 1983) is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Nordahl is still writing papers in Mathematics; he recently presented a paper at an International Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

    Kunitaka Shoji (Ph.D. 1984) is a Professor at the Dept. of Mathematics, Shimane University, Matsue, Japan.

    Michelle Stocking gave an invited talk at the Georgia Topology conference in Athens, Georgia on her work on almost normal surfaces. She will also be an invited speaker at the AMS meeting in Iowa next March.



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