I don?t quite know where to start this story.... Back when I was 8 and the only thing ticked excellent on my report card was math? Back when I was in high school and I realized I could do those things they called proofs that everyone else seemed to hate so much? Or when I arrived at Davis, wide eyed and 17, and met Carole Hom?

I had a wonderful experience at Davis, particularly challenging at times, but of course, that is what made it such a wonderful experience. I finished my degree in September of 1995, after spending the summer finishing a thesis on modeling natural populations. During my last year a "math career night" was organized, and I heard a talk from Kevin Christian, Davis graduate and employee of, at the time, Applied Decision Analysis Inc.. He said they applied mathematics to real world business problems, in a wonderful atmosphere of mutual respect for work and fun. I had already decided to head to graduate school at the University of Virginia in environmental science, hoping to apply my mathematical knowledge in modeling situations, but it sounded interesting, and stayed in the back of my mind.

A year later I was offered a job at Applied Decision Analysis, and started there on June 24, 1996. I now work in the Applied Decision Analysis group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a product of the same organization. I had never planned on ending up as a management consultant, but the work sounded too interesting to pass up, and I hadn't seen other opportunities for similar work anywhere else.

In my first two years at ADA I learned a lot about myself, and the way that I interacted with other people. I had to become aware of my strengths and weaknesses. I spent most of my time programming in Delphi, various statistics packages, and some interpreter languages. In addition to this I participated in client meetings, and analyzed results to try to draw out useful conclusions. I thoroughly enjoyed the work, as well as the environment in which I worked. I worked with a group of highly talented people. We played volleyball after work, watched all the James Bond films together, and went running at lunch. We had a band that played at the many annual social events. I was a back-up singer.

After two years at ADA I was beginning to manage pieces of projects, and participate in designing models and data collection algorithms. I spent a lot more time understanding what the numbers actually meant, and explaining that to clients. The opportunity came up to move to our office in London. I called my fiancée, and we said yes the next day. We spent four months preparing for a wedding and a move, and arrived in London on August 27th, 1998. At this time our company was bought by PricewaterhouseCoopers, so I began on September 1 at PwC's offices at 1 London Bridge.

The last 2 years in London have been incredible. I now manage projects and spend a lot of time selling our methodology to colleagues and potential clients. We specialize in applying quantitative techniques to business problems, but the hardest part is not the application of the technique, but in getting people to understand it. Of course for me, the fun part is actually applying the techniques. My favorite days at work are the ones when I get to sit down and design a model, or spend a few hours trying to understand strange results.

I am still in London, and am currently applying to Operations Research programs for the fall of 2001. Before returning to the US my husband and I plan to spend several months driving a VW bus around Europe.

When I think back on my Davis experience, I realize how important it was in providing me with a critical and analytical way of thinking. I feel indebted to my professors, particularly Carole Hom, and Motohico Mulase, for sharing so much of their minds with me. For those of you still enjoying your undergraduate years - relish them!

For the year 2000-2001 we are pleased to announce the arrival of seven new graduate students in the mathematics program. We also want to congratulate all those students who have received advanced degrees this year:

The Ph.D. in Mathematics was awarded to Anatoly Konetchnyi, who came to Davis from Independent Moscow University. His research was on Noncommcutative Geometry and Yang-Mills Theory, and he worked under the supervision of Professor Albert Schwarz. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley.

Maike Meyer came to Davis from Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Germany. Her Ph.D. was awarded for research in the area of Legen diagrams and Lagrangian Knots. She was a student with Dmitri Fuchs. Maike is now working for Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, in Nuremberg, Germany. In particular, her work is related to Universal Mobile Telecomunications Systems, also known as 3^rd generation wireless.

Tyler Evans came to Davis from Sonoma State University, and received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Dmitri Fuchs. His research concerned Deformations of Infinite Dimensional Lie Algebras, and he is currently a Lecturer at UC Davis.

Najla Fawal received her Master's degree in December, 1999, and has now been appointed to a teaching position at a high school in Santa Clara.

Elizabeth O?Neil received her Master?s degree in December, 1999, and has obtained a tenure-track faculty position at Olympic College in Bremerton, WA. Olympic College is a 2-year public institution.

Bao Guan received a Master's degree in June, 2000 and is continuing her studies in the Ph.D. program.

The 1999-2000 Academic year produced a number of new opportunities for students to become involved in research projects associated with Industry and or one of the National Laboratories. This June we received letters from researchers at Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, GeoEnergy Inc., Raytheon, MicroFab Technologies Inc. and Xerox expressing interest in having graduate students and/or post docs participate in research projects that these companies currently have going with UCD faculty. We received similar letters from researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Participation in a research project associated with one of these institutions often leads to the opportunity for the student or postdoc to spend time as an intern at the industrial or laboratory partner's research facilities. Not only is this type of experience valuable to students who wish to pursue non-academic careers, but it is often viewed quite favorably by academic employers, and can sometimes provide that extra edge in pursuing that ideal first assistant professorship. In addition, some of these institutions - for example the National Laboratories - have programs that allow a student who has advanced to candidacy to finish their Ph.D. thesis while employed at their research facility, usually at a much higher rate of pay than can be found in academia. This can be especially helpful for students with young families, and again, it is not an impediment to obtaining academic employment in the future.

Although this article has only mentioned graduate students and postdocs, similar opportunities exist for undergraduates as well. Interested students or post docs should contact Professor Puckett for more information.

The following students received their Masters of Arts in Teaching during the year 1999-00.

Six students will arrive in Fall 2000 to pursue their Masters of Arts in Teaching. They come to us from New York University, UC Davis and the University of San Francisco.

Both Lisheng (my wife) and I obtained our Ph.D. in Mathematics from UC Davis. I left Davis in 1991 to join the Department of Systems Science and Mathematics of Washington University in St. Louis. It is a great school and I enjoyed my three years experience at Washington U. as a visiting assistant professor. During that period of time, Lisheng managed to live in St. Louis for one year and to finish her Ph.D. dissertation on medical image processing. Then, she moved back to Davis to work in the Radiology Department of UC Davis Medical School. We had to live two thousand miles apart for two years. In 1994, I got tenure track offers (thanks to Art Krener) from both the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and Cal Poly. NPS has a strong program in control theory, a Ph.D. program in applied math, and the school is located in the irresistible City of Monterey. I decided to go to NPS. Three months after I moved to Monterey, Lisheng got an offer from KLA-Tencor, a leading company making yield management equipment for the semiconductor industry. The company is located in San Jose. We moved again from Monterey to Morgan Hill, a midpoint between Monterey and San Jose. Since then, we stayed with the same job at the same place for the last six years. Now, Lisheng is a senior software design engineer at KLA-Tencor and I am an Associate Professor of mathematics at NPS.

The greatest achievement in our lives is our daughter, Doreene Kang. She was born in December 1997, three years after we settled down in the Bay Area. From the beautiful baby, we learned new meanings about love, responsibility and happiness.

Life in the Bay Area is exciting. Our everyday life is surrounded by high tech, new ideas (good or not so good) and new technology, new job opportunities, internet, the stock market, etc. However, everyone has to work overtime to keep up with the pace, especially the pace of housing prices. When we feel tired, we drive to Monterey and enjoy the cool weather for a day. Although I came to my office in Monterey during working days for six years, I have not learned golf yet. Many faculty members of NPS are big golf fans. However, I always enjoy walking around the campus or on the Del Monte Beach next to the campus.

As for my research, I focused on two problems, bifurcation control and formation control. Feedback control of bifurcation and chaos is a young subject field attracting increasing attention. It is a difficult subject involving purely nonlinear performance of dynamical control systems. My joint work with Art Krener introduced a brand new methodology of bifurcation analysis and feedback design for control systems. My work on formation control deals with automation and coordination of large number of moving vehicles. It is a hot topic interesting to NASA, the Department of Defense, and the robotics industry. Working with a group of engineers, we are developing a mathematical model and a design algorithm for the control and coordination of multi-vehicle systems. My work on formation control has been funded by AFRL for the past two years. Every time when I ran out of ideas for my research, I came to Davis to see Art and it always worked. So, I hope to see some of you in my next visit, when I need new ideas again. Good luck to everyone.

We've had another year of change and growth amongst the staff in 1999-2000. Some of the change has been in new staff coming on board and having an existing staff member move to a vacant position. To recap the events for the year, three new staff members have joined the Math Staff. Richard Edmiston, our Accounting Assistant and right-hand to the Business Office Manager (Tracey Brooks), came to us from off campus with previous accounting experience and a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Arizona. Jessica Johnson also came to us from off campus and is our new administrative assistant in the Main Office. Her previous experience has been with an accounting firm in the Bay Area. Kristen White is our newest employee and she will assume the Chair?s Assistant position in early September. Celia Davis, who was formerly in this position, recently moved to the open Graduate Coordinator position. The opportunity provided Celia with some new and different challenges and was too perfect an option to pass up! For me, as the manager of the department, I am pleased to have such a fine group of people to assist me in the many tasks we perform throughout the year.

Henry Alder continued to teach the number theory course (MAT 115A) and chaired the committee selecting the recipients of the Henry L. Alder Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He also continued to chair the NSF supported campus project Minority Undergraduate Research Participation in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. He also served on the committee preparing the statewide tests designed to measure student achievement in mathematics with respect to the State Mathematics Standards. He also was appointed to the Technical Advisory Committee of the High School Exit Examination to be given soon to all prospective California high school graduates. He continued to chair several MAA committees, including the one selecting the recipients of the MAA Distinguished Service Award and was a member of the MAA Task Force advising the NCTM on the revision of its Standards. He also continued to serve as a member of the Board of Governors of the Pacific J. of Mathematics and Chair of its Investment Committee

Don Benson?s book, Moment of Proof, published by Oxford University Press in March 1999, was the winner of the Association of American Publishers Publishing Division 1999 annual award for excellence in the mathematical sciences. His publisher says that this is "a major award, among the most coveted among scholarly publishers."

Don Chakerian collaborated with Kurt Kreith on the book Iterative Algebra and Dynamic Modeling, published by Springer-Verlag in 1999. He has worked with Kurt in various inservices for elementary school teachers over the past year and will work with him in a Professional Development Institute during the first three weeks of August, 2000. During the past academic year he has given lectures at Fresno State University, Sacramento State University, for the Bay Area Mathematical Adventures, the Asilomar CMC Conference, the Spring meeting of the CMC³ at Lake Tahoe, and for Math Nite at Acalanes High School.

Kurt Kreith spent two weeks in Spain under the auspices of the Gaspar dePortol Catalonian Studies Exchange Program, visiting universities in Barcelona and Tarragona. He continues to serve as member of an Advisory Panel to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing on the revision of Standards of Quality for Subject Matter Programs for the Multiple Subject Teacher Credential. Under a grant from the California Professional Development Initiative in Mathematics, he is working with G. D. Chakerian on a program for high school teachers addressing "The Role of Technology in Support of Standards-Based Mathematics Instruction."

Sherman Stein has had an "Archimedes Year." After his book, Archimedes: What Did He Do Besides Cry Eureka? appeared, he spoke about Archimedes at California State University at San Luis Obispo and at San Jose, the Avid Reader bookstore in Davis, the Hellenic Society in Sacramento, Prof. Mulase?s calculus class, and at a meeting of the home-schooled children of Davis. He also lectured at Math Camp at the University of Washington on algebra and dissections. At the Northern California meeting of the MAA he spoke about four of his unsolved problems, which still remain unsolved. "Discrete and Computational Geometry" published his proof of a special case of his conjecture that a polygon whose sides are parallel to the x- and y-axes cannot be cut into an odd number of triangles of equal areas.

Takayuki Tamura continued his work in semigroups, with a paper of S-indecomposable semigroups contributed to the Third Symposium on Algebra, Languages and Computation at Osaka University, the summer of 1999. A sequel will be part of the Fourth Symposium in the summer of 2000. In addition he has continued to serve as a reviewer of Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt für Mathematik as well as a monitor of Radio Japan?s World Network. In his avocation of poet he has published in the Tanka form in Japanese and free style in English.

I came to Davis in 1987, for a sabbatical, on leave from University of Milan, where I held the position of Associate Professor. This was my first trip overseas, and I was accompanied by my wife Adriana, and two sons: Andrea (7 years old) and Emanuele (2 years old), and ... a future baby (to be born in California). During the Spring quarter, I started to think of the possibility of actually entering the Ph.D. program in Mathematics. This was an unusual move since certainly a 38 years old Italian professor doesn't very often return to being a ?student!? But the very stimulating atmosphere of Davis (and probably of the United States) convinced me to try. Of course, a big advantage was that this would require a longer stay at UCD. University of Milan wouldn?t approve too long a leave of absence so there was a serious time constraint. At times, I was convinced that studying for the Ph.D. qualifying exam, like 15 years earlier, wasn't such a hot idea. Nonetheless, I was able to complete all the requirements by the following Spring and wrote a thesis on "Set Convergence with Applications to Optimization and Probability" with R. J-B Wets as my advisor.

In August 1989 I returned to Italy. I must say that coming back wasn't easy, especially for my wife and my older son: our life in Davis was so rich and interesting that it was hard to re-adapt! I did maintain some good connections with people in Davis. My son Andrea and his friend have been exchanging summer visits. Our ex-baby-sitter (Gina) comes to Europe rather frequently and always visits us; we expect to see her again two months from now. I usually meet my friend John Roemer of the Economics Department when he comes to Italy: he even came for a weekend with his wife Natasha. And there have been a number of other Davis visitors.

I am now Full Professor at Politecnico di Milano (Technical University of Milan). My research interests are similar to those I pursued in my Davis thesis, with some detours to Nonlinear Analysis, specifically variational methods in critical point theory. Last September I organized a conference on well-posedness in optimization and related topics in a wonderful Palazzo in Gargnano, on the west side of an absolutely breathtakingly beautiful lake: Lago di Garda. It was magic, as all the invited speakers showed up, the weather was outstanding, the atmosphere absolutely fantastic. The dinners were served in a wonderful park overlooking the lake... I was lucky, because now many people will remember this conference. And in such a wonderful setting even doing mathematics becomes easier...

I am a sports addict, as a player and as a fan! I am still able to follow American football. A private channel shows us all the playoffs. I gave up watching baseball: baseball can?t be just seen on TV, it must be accompanied by ?studying the statistics? ... which are at least as important as going to the stadium ... moreover the A?s are now a much worse team than they were when I was in Davis. My son Andrea has corralled me into following the NBA. I am still playing tennis, even if much less than in Davis, due to the fact that here it?s more difficult to find compatible opponents ... maybe also due to my getting a bit older?

• Laura (Loos) Adint (1996, BAS) worked as a consultant for Andersen Consulting and is currently a Systems Auditor for the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, MI.

• Nate Burkett (1993, BS; 1994 MA) is a Senior Sorfware Engineer with Access Health in both Broomfield, CO and Rancho Cordova, CA. He notes that Number Theory has come in handy in his development of prime-number crypto systems.

• Jackie Coomes (1993, BS) earned an MS in mathematics in 1998 from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA. She is currently a Mathematics Specialist at that Institution.

• Elyon DeKoven (1994, MA) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial Design, Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands with an emphasis on computational linguistics, computer science and usability studies.

• Robert P. Dickinson (1967, Ph.D.) died in September 1999 at age 61 after a short illness. He had taught at Las Positas College and worked occasionally at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

• Joe Good (1996, Ph.D.) has left from his tenure track assistant professorship position at Skyline college in San Bruno to join Wind River Systems as a Software Engineer Instructor. This is an industrial teaching position, where he trains engineers to use his company's system development tools to customize their embedded operating systems.

• Gentha Gray (1993, BS) is currently a graduate student in computational and applied mathematics at Rice University in Houston, TX.

• Michael Harrington (1992, BA) is an Associate Actuary with CalFarm Insurance Company in Sacramento, CA. He is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries and was designated as an "Associate" by the Casualty Actuarial Society earlier this year.

• Brenda Hensley (1993, BS) is the Chair and mathematics teacher at Willis Jepson Middle School in Vacaville, CA.

• John C. Higgins (1964, Ph.D.) retired two years ago at Brigham Young University but continues to teach there as Professor Emeritus.

• Lisa Korf (1998, Ph.D.) is an Acting Assistant Professor/VIGRE postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

• Fran Milo (1995, BS) has been working at the Cafe Bernardo in Davis. Since October 1999, he is General Manager of this fine restaurant.

• Thomas E. Nordahl (1975, Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC Davis and the Center for Functional Imaging at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Presently on sabbatical leave, he is conducting research on the brain related to Parkinson?s and Alzheimer?s disease. He is still very interested in mathematics.

• Kunitaka Shoji (1984, Ph.D.) is a professor at Shimane University and has recently published a paper on the amalgamation of semigroups.

• Dennis Simmons (1998, BS) is a teacher at Vanden High School in the Travis Unified School District in Fairfield, CA.

EDITORIAL BOARD

• John Gehrmann
• Tracy Ligtenberg
• Motohico Mulase
• Roger J-B Wets

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