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NSF Math Institutes create new jobs
New mechanism for investing in young math PhDs
brings their talent to new settings, supports career pipeline
May 11, 2009 - Washington, DC
The seven NSF Mathematical Sciences Research Institutes announce
the creation of 45 new one- and two-year positions for young,
highly-trained mathematical scientists across the country. In addition
to furthering research in all areas of the mathematical sciences, these
positions will allow recent PhDs to teach at community colleges and
other higher-education institutions or to participate in projects tied to
business and industry. This new initiative is a result of a partnership
among the National Science Foundation-supported mathematics institutes.
The impact of the economic downturn is being felt everywhere--including
academia. This year has seen widespread hiring
freezes and canceled job searches at universities across the country.
For the mathematical science community, this has meant almost 400 lost
positions for recent PhDs. The severity of the situation became
apparent earlier this year
when many graduates, even of top-tier programs, were facing
unemployment. The NSF, through its Mathematics Institutes, responded by creating these new postdoctoral fellowships.
The training of these young scientists represents a long-term
investment. The postdocs typically spent five years in graduate
education, often with some level of support from state or federal funds.
"These new researchers are primed to make significant contributions
to their fields,"
said Peter March, Director of NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences.
The newly created positions will place highly trained people as teachers at
two- and four-year colleges and universities, as well as in business and industry.
"These positions not only refine the research skills of new PhDs,
but provide them with opportunities to apply their training in other
settings," said Russ Caflisch, Director of the Institute for Pure and
Applied Mathematics (IPAM). "The role of research along with teaching
or industry mentors and professional development workshops reinforces
the Institutes' commitment to ensuring the continued success of these
young people in the work force."
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Short Timeline
Exactly one month elapsed between the first meeting of the seven
Mathematics Institute
directors and the close of applications.
More than 750 applications were received for the 45 positions.
Typically, academic job searches begin in the fall and take several months
to complete.
"The timing was perfect," said Eddie Herman, one of the newly hired
mathematicians. "Most academic positions are decided by the
middle of March, so the Institutes began advertising at exactly
the time when many of us were losing hope of finding a research
position and were ready to look for other jobs." Dr Herman received
his PhD from UCLA this year.
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Pipeline issues
The economic downturn is being felt by everyone, including
the research and academic community. Universities are
canceling job searches, which limits the number of positions for new PhDs and
people completing postdoctoral training. Additionally, many US graduate
programs have reduced the size of their incoming class.
In fact, some programs will not be admitting any students
in the next academic year. This will have the effect of
diminishing the size of our next generation of
scientists, those who would be graduating at a time when
our economy is recovering and in need of a highly trained workforce.
Currently, many workers are seeking re-training in
response to the needs of the changing economy--just as colleges
and universities face cutbacks.
"There are problems all along the pipeline," said Marty Golubitsky,
Director of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI).
"New PhDs are not finding jobs that make use of their extensive training,
and consequently graduate programs are admitting fewer students.
This stifling of scientific training in our next generation will make it more
difficult for the US to remain competitive in the future."
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Huge Response
"We knew that the job market for young PhDs in mathematics was extremely
tight this year, but we were astonished by the number and quality
of the applicants for these new positions," said Robert Bryant,
Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in
Berkeley, California. More than 750 applications were submitted for the
Institutes' postdocs, 400 of which came from people who received their
PhD just this year.
"Being able to offer these positions allows us to keep these highly
trained people in the workforce and is a great boon for mathematics and
for our society," said Bryant.
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Diverse Impact
The impact of this program is widespread, with
postdocs working in a dozen states across the country,
and in all areas of
the mathematical sciences.
While continuing their research, the Institute postdocs will
also apply their training through
teaching or industrial partnerships.
Below we highlight an example from each Institute.
Postdocs at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) will help
to fill a desperate need for math instructors by teaching at
De Anza Community College in Cupertino, California, and at San Francisco
State University.
"I have more than 1000 students on a waiting list for math classes,
and no faculty to teach them," said Jerry Rosenberg, Dean of Physical
Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering at De Anza. Thanks to this
initiative, approximately 250 of those students will be able to take
a math class from one of the new postdocs at AIM. According to Brian
Conrey, Executive Director of AIM, "We were aware of the dire need
for math instructors at California colleges, and we saw the Institute
postdocs as a way to help address that need. This will bring enthusiastic
young instructors into the classroom, and allow the postdocs to further
develop their teaching skills."
Their teaching duties will be in addition to the
research they will do under the direction of Stanford University faculty.
Through the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) in
Minneapolis, Dr Mustafa Tural, who trained in statistics and operations
research at the University of North Carolina, will intern at Telcordia
Technologies in Piscataway, NJ. He will apply his knowledge to the
development of statistical learning methods for creating more efficient
algorithms and protocols for communication networks. The project is
supervised by Dr Eric van den Berg, who leads a research effort on the
analysis of cognitive networks. "We are excited to have Dr Tural with
us. The work he will do here will have an impact on how large mobile ad
hoc networks are managed," says van den Berg.
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Prashant Athavale,
a postdoc from the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM)
will collaborate with scientists at Placental Analytics, a company
that studies the effect of placenta structure on fetal development. The
placenta can be used to track fetal development, faithfully
retaining information about possible prenatal problems and as a predictor of
adult health risks. The postdoc will apply his training in image processing
to study irregularities of placenta structure and develop models
of placental vascular branching.
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Among the ten Postdoctoral NSF Fellowships awarded through
the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley,
California, is Sikimeti Ma'u, originally from Tonga and now a permanent
U.S. resident. Ma'u will pursue research in geometry and topology as a
Postdoctoral Fellow at MSRI in 2009-10, then her NSF Fellowship award will
take her to Barnard, which has an historic legacy as a college for women,
to be mentored by the distinguished topologist Dusa McDuff. "It's a
really exciting opportunity," remarked Ma'u, "to be at the MSRI
while so many leading mathematicians in the field will be there, and to
be mentored by one of them. I'm very grateful to the NSF and MSRI."
At the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI),
the new postdoctoral fellows will be joining the existing postdoctoral
program, as this ensures that the fellows will become involved in
highly interdisciplinary research, a potential key for their future
employment. The postdoctoral appointments will typically be for two
years. For those interested in an eventual academic position, the
appointments will involve teaching at one of the partner universities
of SAMSI (Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), to ensure that they will
enhance their teaching skills.
Jean-Philippe Lessard, currently a postdoc at Rutgers, The State University
of New Jersey, has been selected by the School of Mathematics at the
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) for an appointment at Rutgers beginning in
September of 2009. Lessard is developing new techniques to deal with
large amounts of data.
Complicated problems, such as those arising in biology or engineering, can
be modeled on a computer. But the result is often too much data, and too
little understanding of the essential qualitative behavior of the system.
One solution to this problem of data overload comes from algebraic
topology, which is traditionally a very pure branch of mathematics.
This project concerns an abstract and notoriously difficult-to-calculate
notion of algebraic topology - Morse Homology, as developed by Morse,
Conley, Witten, and Floer. The goal is to make it computable.
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Julia Chifman, a postdoc at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute
(MBI), will be exploring the genetic relationship between species.
Phylogenetics studies the evolutionary history of a group of organisms;
for example, the evolution of different forms of the flu virus.
These histories can be illustrated through graphs called phylogenetic
trees and Chifman will use her training in algebraic methods to work on
the mathematical structure of these trees. Ultimately such studies can
lead to more efficient reconstruction algorithms and to new hypotheses
for evolutionary biologists to study.
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Contact Information
Estelle Basor
AIM Deputy Director
ebasor@aimath.org
(650) 845 2072 (office)
(805) 235 7471 (cell)
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Maria Zacharias
Office of Public Affairs
National Science Foundation
mzachari@nsf.gov
703-292-8454
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Dana Cruikshank
Office of Public Affairs
National Science Foundation
dcruiksh@nsf.gov
703-292-7738
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AIM (American Institute of Mathematics)
Palo Alto, California
http://aimath.org/news/postdoc/
Estelle Basor, Deputy Director
ebasor@aimath.org
(650) 845 2071
- IAS (Institute for Advanced Study)
Princeton, New Jersey
http://www.math.ias.edu/newsroom/news-briefs/#NSF
Christine Ferrara, Senior Public Affairs Officer
cferrara@ias.edu
(609) 734-8239
- IMA (Institute for Mathematics and its Applications)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
http://www.ima.umn.edu/
Fadil Santosa, Director
santosa@ima.umn.edu
612-626-0293
- IPAM (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics)
Los Angeles, California
http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/postdocs.aspx
Russ Caflisch, Director
rcaflisch@ipam.ucla.edu
(310) 983-3297
- MBI (Mathematical Biosciences Institute)
Columbus, Ohio
http://mbi.osu.edu/news/200905-postdocs.html
Marty Golubitsky, Director
mg@mbi.osu.edu
(614) 247-4758
- MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute)
Berkeley, California
http://www.msri.org/specials/nsfpostdocs/
Helene Barcelo, Deputy Director
hbarcelo@msri.org
(510) 643-6040
- SAMSI (Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute)
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
http://www.samsi.info/NR-postdocs-may11.pdf
James Berger, Director
berger@samsi.info
(919) 685-9352
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