Math faculty organize international workshop

Some people traditionally cap off their summer with a dip in the pool or a trip up to camp, but for many who spend their day deciphering computations that might make a layman’s head spin, numbers were the order of business recently. For three days at the end of August, renowned experts in the field of mathematics converged at SUNY Poly for a workshop on geometry and symmetry-based methods and how it applies to Engineering, Science and Education.

The August 28-30 workshop was intended to foster collaboration with SUNY Poly applied mathematics faculty in order to “develop the geometrical mechanics formulation of selected model problems in engineering and the natural sciences and to prepare the computational implementation of these problems,” according to workshop organizers. Appealing to mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists, the workshop offered a unique opportunity of scientific interaction as well as educational training. Through the ideas generated at the workshop, students were introduced to new developments in the field, including Mathematical Modeling, Vector Calculus, Partial Differential Equations, and Numerical Differential Equations.

Organizers say that research in the area of geometry and symmetry-based mathematical and computational methods using exterior and discrete exterior calculus is currently very active and has been gaining increasing attention from theoretical engineering communities. However, their application into classroom teaching is still lacking, as they are not generally included in the standard curriculum of traditional universities. One of the goals of the workshop was to develop projects for use in undergraduate classroom teaching.

The participants in the workshop brought with them a wealth of knowledge and expertise in geometric mechanics, structure preserving discretization methods, computational modeling, numerical analysis, and project-based teaching methods and included Anil Hirani (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Cristina Stoica (Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada), Michael Karwo (University of Technology Berlin in Germany), Robert Lowry (Suffolk County Community College) and Werner Bauer (KlimaCampus, CliSAP/CEN and University of Hamburg in Germany).

The organizers of the workshop—Andrea Dziubek, Edmond Rusjan and Wenfeng Chen—are already active researchers in the area, with established external collaborations. The event enabled them to continue establishing a track record of quality research activities right here at SUNY Poly.