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Invited Speakers and Poster


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Dr. Alejandro Aceves has a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona. Before moving to Southern Methodist University in 2008, he spent 19 years as a faculty member of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Mexico. The last four years he served as Department Chair. He has worked primarily in the modeling of nonlinear optics, including pulse propagation in optical fibers, laser filamenation and light localization in photonic arrays.

His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Departments of Defense and Energy. More recently he supervised a PhD project on the dynamics of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and implications on climate. Professor Aceves has mentored 8 PhD students and several postdoctoral fellows.

Dr. Pierre Albin grew up in Mexico and Texas, got his degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, and his PhD from Stanford University. After completing postdoctoral positions at MIT, NYU, IAS, and Paris VII, he is now on the mathematics faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He works in geometric analysis with an emphasis on analysis on non-compact and singular spaces.

 

        

Dr. Ubaldo M. Córdova-Figueroa completed his BS degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) in 2003. That same year, he went to Pasadena, CA to pursue a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Under Prof. John F. Brady’s advisement, he studied recent experiments showing catalytically driven propulsion at nano- and micro-scales appearing as a possible mechanism for the transport of colloidal particles. During his PhD work, he also devoted time to study macro- and microrheology of colloidal suspensions using Brownian dynamics simulations and propulsion mechanisms at low Reynolds number flow. This experience gave him the opportunity to become an expert in colloidal transport, the exploitation of chemical reactions for self-propulsion, and in the use of analytical and computational methods. Nevertheless, the most important outcome of this stage in his life was the sudden deep and genuine interest in transport phenomena and colloidal hydrodynamics and the need to teach others what he was learning. In 2008 he obtained his PhD and returned to UPRM where he is now an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering. In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER award, and in 2013 as Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering. His research experience includes the authoring of peer- reviewed articles in Physics Review Letters, Soft Matter, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Advanced Functional Materials, and Nature Chemistry. His research group considers a wide range of topics in transport phenomena and colloidal physics with special attention to propulsion mechanisms at low Reynolds numbers.

 

Dr. Andres Diaz  is currently Research Professor at Universidad Metropolitana's Puerto Rico Photonics Institute (PRPI) where he is Academic Coordinator and part of the Project Team of the New Horizons project funded by the US Dept. of Labor. Previously he was Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Department of Electrical Engineering of The Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA). He has over 12 years of experience in the area of photonics, with research in nonlinear optical materials, liquid crystals, tunable devices, frequency selective surfaces, and metamaterials. He has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University (2004), M.S. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University with a minor in High Performance Computing (2002) and in Physics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (1999), and B.S. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogota, Colombia, 1996) and in Physics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (1995). His current research interests are in nonlinear optical metamaterials, subunity and negative refractive index, and metamaterial-based nanophotonic devices.

 

Dr. Leslie Hogben is Dio Lewis Holl Chair in Applied Mathematics and Professor of Mathematics at Iowa State University, and Associate Director for Diversity of the American Institute of Mathematics. She is the author of more than 70 research papers and advisor to numerous PhD students, Masters students, and undergraduate researchers.  She is the editor of the reference book Handbook of Linear Algebra, an associate editor of the journals Linear Algebra and its Applications and Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra, and is the Secretary/Treasurer of the International Linear Algebra Society. Her research is in linear algebra and combinatorics, especially combinatorial matrix theory, spectral graph theory, and applications of linear algebra and graph theory.

 

Dr. Karen Rios-Soto obtained her PhD from Cornell University in 2008. She has ample experience in the development of students through educational, research and mentorship activities from the undergraduate to the doctoral level.  She has supervised undergraduate research for more than 25 students, and is currently supervising 4 master’s level students. She has been involved with the REU-Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) at Arizona State University (ASU) for more than 11 years. She has participated there as an undergraduate student, graduate student, and faculty and for the summers of 2010, 2011, 2012 as the summer director for the program. Under MTBI she has supervised more than 5 undergraduate summer research projects. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Science Center in ASU. Dr. Ríos-Soto’s research interests are in mathematical epidemiology, the modeling of disease dynamics, population biology and social dynamics. In particular, her research is driven by the study of the mechanisms underlying the spread of infectious diseases, their control and prevention. She also worked on theoretical approaches to study dispersal in epidemics and the impact of transient populations on disease dynamics. Her most recent interests are in studying how transient population impacts disease dispersion and persistence, as well as the impact of particulate matter such as PM10 in lung diseases. Other research projects are on estimation of epidemiological parameters from disease data, in particular for dengue fever. In the past, she has studied the role of epidemiological modeling approaches and methods on the deliberate release of biological agents (smallpox) and the role of peer pressure on various social processes such as smoking, ecstasy use and obesity. The mathematical tools involved in these modeling approaches are, among others, ordinary and partial differential equations, dynamical systems, difference equations,  integral equations, linear algebra, probability and statistics.

 

Dr. Amy Wesolowski  is a spatial epidemiologist working with Dr. Caroline Buckee on quantifying human behavior to understand the spread and dynamics of infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. In particular, her research focuses on the utility of mobile phone data to quantify human travel, especially for the spread of malaria in low-income countries. Prior to coming to Harvard, she received her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy in 2014 at Carnegie Mellon University. She is funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the James. S. McDonnell Foundation.