Author: Brynn Boyer

UMW will present its 2012 Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series beginning in January and running through April. The popular program, which will examine the lives of a wide range of intriguing historical figures, is open to the public free of charge. The lectures will be held at 7:30 p.m. in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium on selected Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

The series begins Tuesday, January 24, with a lecture on Kurt Vonnegut by Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Great Lives Series. Shields is the author of the recently released “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life,” the first full-length biography of Vonnegut. The book has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Shields also is the author of “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,” the bestselling biography of the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The 2012 series will continue with lectures on major figures such as Christopher Columbus, Marquis de Lafayette, Marie Curie and the Wright brothers. The recent biographers of Aaron Burr, Noah Webster, Clarence Darrow and Marie and Pierre Curie also will present lectures.

For more information or for a complete listing of lectures, contact the Office of Events and Conferencing at (540) 654-1065 or visit www.umw.edu/greatlives.

Keith Mellinger, associate professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, had his article “Spreads, arcs, and multiple wavelength codes” published in the journal Discrete Mathematics.  In addition, he presented the talk “Blocking Semiovals and Cryptology” as an invited speaker at the Combinatorics, Algebra and Geometry Seminar at George Mason University in November.

Three UMW students presented results of their research projects at the fall regional meeting of the Mathematical Association of America held at Christopher Newport University in November.  Catherine O’Doherty presented “Explanation of the Matrix Exponential,” a work based on her project under the direction of Dr. Julius Esunge.  Ryan Vaughn’s presentation, titled “On the Contractibility of Finite coH-Spaces” extends his work with Dr. Randall Helmstutler which began during the Summer Science Institute of 2011.  Finally, Kelly Scott presented “Anti-Blocking Sets” based on her honors project currently in progress under the direction of Dr. Keith Mellinger.

Julius Esunge, assistant professor of mathematics, had his article “Density Dependent Utilities with Transaction Costs” published in the December issue of the journal Communications on Stochastic Analysis.

Leo Lee, assistant professor of mathematics, published two articles this fall.  His article “Error Estimates of Stochastic Optimal Neumann Boundary Control Problems” appeared in the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis (http://epubs.siam.org/sinum/resource/1/sjnaam/v49/i4/p1532_s1?isAuthorized=no). 

Dr. Lee’s second article, “Finite Element Approximations of Stochastic Optimal Control Problems Constrained by Stochastic Elliptic PDEs,” appeared in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022247X10006062).