Department of Mathematics

The department welcomes one new faculty member and ten new postdoctoral fellows this fall.

Ioana Suvaina joins the department as an Assistant Professor. She received her? Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2006 under the direction of Claude LeBrun. She then spent a year as an Instructor at the Courant Institute at New York University. In 2007-2008, Suvaina was awarded a European Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institut des Hautes ?tudes Scientifiques in France. When she returned, she again served for one year as instructor at the NYU Courant Institute.
Her research focuses on the interactions of differential geometry with other fields such as Seiberg-Witten theory, symplectic topology and algebraic geometry.? In particular, she has studied the dependency of the existence of Einstein metrics on the smooth structure considered on a 4-manifold. More recently, she has become interested in questions regarding the existence of K?hler metrics of constant scalar curvature on orbifolds.
Besides mathematics, Suvaina enjoys tennis, hiking, and snow skiing, and is interested in learning more about photography and European history.
?I am delighted to join the Department of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University,? she says, ?and I look forward to collaborating with my new colleagues.?
Ten new postdoctoral fellows have also joined the department.

Simone Bova received his Ph.D. at the University of Siena, Italy in 2008.? His research interests lie in the intersection between mathematical logic and computational complexity.

Richard Burstein received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008.? His research is in the area of von Neumann algebras, with emphasis on subfactors and planar algebras.

Michael Chance earned his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University in 2009.? His research interests are symplectic geometry and topology, more specifically problems related to Hamiltonian systems.

Ionut Chifan earned his Ph.D. at the University of California Los?Angeles in June 2009. His research interests are in the area of?operator algebras, particularly rigidity results in von Neumann?algebras.

Juraj Foldes? research interests are in the study of qualitative properties of elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Minnesota in 2009.

Stacy Hoehn earned her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2009.? Her research interests lie in the areas of geometric topology and algebraic K-theory.

Zhian Wang received his Ph.d in applied mathematics on 2007 from the University of Alberta in Canada. His research interest is in mathematical biology and partial differential equations with a focus on the? multi-scale modeling of chemotaxis, stability of traveling waves of chemotaxis models as well as prevention of blow up behavior in chemotaxis.

Jonathan Whitehouse received his Ph.d from the University of Minnesota in 2009. ?His research interests are in geometric data analysis and compressed sensing.

Rufus Willett received his Ph.D. from Penn State University in 2009.? His research interests are in operator K-theory, coarse geometry, and analytic and geometric aspects of group theory.

Dongping Zhuang received his Ph.D. in mathematics from California Institute of Technology in 2009. His research interest lies in geometric group theory, including dynamics, geometry and rigidity of groups and their applications to low dimensional topology and dynamical systems.

?We are thrilled to have all of these new mathematicians join us,? says Department Chair Dietmar Bisch. ?They bring a wide range of experience and interests to our department and will make Vanderbilt an even more stimulating place to do mathematics.?