Ingrid Daubechies Caps a Semester of Internationally Renowned Speakers

Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University, gave the Convocation on May 1, 2013.  Daubechies focuses on the mathematical aspects of time-frequency analysis, in particular wavelets, as well as applications. Her research was the breakthrough which made applications of wavelets to signal processing possible.

Her Convocation focused on her work commissioned by the Van Gogh Museum to detect fraudulent art, work that was featured in a 2008 PBS broadcast of NOVA.

Daubechies is a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the McArthur Foundation and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and the Academie des Sciences (France). In 2000 she was the first woman awarded the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics. Prof. Daubechies is the first female and current President of the International Mathematical Union.

Other visitors spring semester included:  

• Associate Professor Bo-Hae Im from Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea. She spoke about elliptic curves in the Math and Statistic Student Seminar;
• Paul Zorn, past president of the Mathematical Association of America and professor at St Olaf, who spoke to students about "Extreme Calculus;" and
• Assistant Professor Fernando Gueverra-Vasquez from the University of Utah who spoke on "How to become invisible without a cloak."

In December, Professor Sam Burer of the Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, presented a lecture on employing optimization techniques in ranking problems with a direct application to college football.