Full CV (pdf file)

Employment

2010-present: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Professor
2021-present: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Associate Chair for Faculty
2012-2017: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Director of Graduate Studies in Mathematics
2001-2010: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Associate Professor
Spring 2000: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study
1997-2001: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – Assistant Professor
1996-97: Johns Hopkins University – Visiting Assistant Professor
1995-96: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – Hildebrandt Research Assistant Professor
1994-95: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (on leave from Michigan)
1993-94: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – Hildebrandt Research Assistant Professor
1988-93: Fellowship holder and Teaching Assistant during Ph.D. studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Ph.D. Dissertation: “Extremal problems involving logarithmic and Green capacity”, 1993
Ph.D. Advisor: Albert Baernstein II

External Funding and Fellowships

2023-2026: NSF award #2246537 “Spectral Shape Optimization: Extremality and Curvature”, amount $330,474
2020-2023: NSF award #2015431 INMAS – Internship Network in the Mathematical Sciences, amount $1,147,741
2019-2020: Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, grant for summer funding for 12 interns and computational training (co-PI), amount $59,000
2015-2020: Sloan Foundation award “Making way for a New Generation in STEM: A Proposal for The Illinois Sloan University Center of Exemplary Mentoring” (co-PI), amount $1 million
2014-2019: NSF award #1345032 PI4: Program for Interdisciplinary and Industrial Internships at Illinois (Mentoring Through Critical Transition Points program), co-PI with Yuliy Baryshnikov and Lee DeVille, amount $1.2 million
2022-2027: Simons Foundation Travel Support for Mathematicians #964018, amount $42,000
2016-2022: Simons Foundation Collaboration Grant #429422, amount $35,000
2011-2016: Simons Foundation Collaboration Grant #204296, amount $35,000
2012-2013: NSF award, co-PI with Zharnitsky; grant transferred from Hundertmark
1994-2001, 2002-2005: NSF sole-PI awards
2005: Visiting Erskine Fellowship, University of Canterbury
2003: Maclaurin Fellowship, New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications

Conferences Co-Organized

Midwest PDE Seminar, Fall 1999
AIM Workshop on Low Eigenvalues of Laplace and Schrodinger Operators, May 2006
Oberwolfach Workshop on Low Eigenvalues of Laplace and Schrodinger Operators, February 2009
AMS Special Session on “Time, Scale and Frequency Methods in Harmonic Analysis”, March 2009
AMS Special Session “Sharp Spectral Estimates in Analysis, Geometry, and Probability”, March 2010
Illinois/Missouri Applied Harmonic Analysis Seminar, eight meetings 2006-2010 (with support from NSF and IMA)
Banff Workshop “Spectral Theory of Laplace and Schrodinger Operators”, July 2013
Fifty Years of Hearing Drums: Spectral Geometry and the Legacy of Mark Kac, May 2016
Bedlewo 3rd Conference on Nonlocal Operators and Partial Differential Equations, June 2016
GROW – Graduate Opportunities for Women, October 2019
Sharp Eigenvalue Estimates for Partial Differential Operators, March 2020
AMS Special Session on Spectal Estimation and Optimization, March 2022
AMS-SMF-EMS Special Session on Spectral Optimization (Grenoble, France), July 2022

Teaching Awards

Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching, University of Illinois (2017)
Mathematics Department Distinguished Teaching Award for Tenured Faculty (2016)
Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, University of Illinois (2003)
Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois (2003)
University of Illinois “List of Teachers Rated Excellent”:
Spring 1998, Fall 1998, Spring 1999, Fall 1999, Spring 2001, Spring 2002, Fall 2002, Spring 2003, Fall 2004, Spring 2005, Spring 2006, Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022.

Notable Service

Director of Graduate Studies, 2012-2017
Search Committee (open area, open rank), 2022-2023
Personnel Committee for Specialized Faculty, 2022-2023
Sloan UCEM Steering Committee and Scholarship Committee (U of Illinois) 2015-2019
Executive Committee of the Department, 2004-2006 (including hiring, salary reviews, strategic planning)
Honors Committee, 2001-2007
Space Committee 2007-2011, 2018-2019 (chair 2007-2009, 2019-2020)
Altgeld-Illini Hall Renovation Committee 2020-2023 (chair 2020-2021, liaison to architects 2021-2023)
Journal of Geometric Analysis, editorial board 2020-present
SIAM Career Opportunities Committee, member 2018-2021, chair Jan. 2019 – Dec. 2020
BIG Math Network, steering committee 2016-2021, chair 2020-2021 (calendar years)
AMS Committee for the Prize for and Exemplary Program or Achievement 2020-2023

Invited Lectures

2024: Indiana University
2023: Geometric Spectral Theory workshop (Oberwolfach)
2022: Northern Illinois U. (colloquium), AMS (Central Section) Special Session on Spectral Estimation and Optimization, AMS-SMF-EMS Special Session (Grenoble), Shape Optimisation and Geometric Spectral Theory Workshop (ICMS, Edinburgh, UK)
2021: AMS (Western Section) Special Session on Complex Analysis and Potential Theory
2020: U. of Naples, Spectral Geometry in the Clouds (international online seminar)
2019: U. of Lisbon, American Institute of Mathematics (San Jose) workshop speaker on “Shape optimization with surface interactions”, U. of Missouri, Conference on “Shape Optimization and Isoperimetric and Functional Inequalities” (Italy)
2018: American Institute of Mathematics (San Jose) workshop participant on “Steklov eigenproblems”, Graduation speaker for PhD and Masters recipients (U. of Illinois Graduate College), New Mexico State U. (colloquium), New Zealand Mathematical Society annual meeting (Dunedin), Canadian Mathematical Society winter meeting (Vancouver), Conference on “Results in Contemporary Mathematical Physics” (Santiago, Chile)
2017: U. of West Georgia, Associated Colleges of the Chicago Area (ACCA), U. of Pittsburgh (colloquium), Spectral Days Conference (Stuttgart), U. of Washington, U. of Lisbon
2016: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology undergraduate colloquium, MAA Sectional Plenary Address (Jacksonville, IL), Conference on “Fifty Years of Hearing Drums: Spectral Geometry and the Legacy of Mark Kac” (Santiago, Chile), Mini-course on “Spectral Theory of elliptic differential operators” at the CRM Summer school on Spectral Theory and Applications (U. Laval), CIRM-Luminy conference “Shape optimization, Isoperimetric and Functional Inequalities”
2015: Banff Workshop on Laplacians and Heat Kernels: Theory and Applications, Nazarbayev U., U. Laval, U. Montreal, ICMS Edinburgh Workshop on Shape Optimization and Spectral Geometry
2014: Illinois Wesleyan U. (Natural Science Colloquium), Oklahoma State U. (colloquium), U. of Oregon, MSRI-UP undergraduate colloquium, Red Raider Symposium (Texas Tech U.), Bradley U. (colloquium)
2013: Purdue U. (colloquium), U. of Missouri at Columbia, Workshop on Spectral Theory and Geometry (Neuchatel), SIAM minisymposium on Laplacian Spectra for Shape Optimization, Classification, Recognition, and Beyond (San Diego)
2012: U. of Oregon (colloquium), U. of Oregon (seminar), CIRM-Luminy conference Shape Optimization Problems and Spectral Theory, Oberwolfach workshop Geometric Aspects of Spectral Theory, De Giorgi Center-Pisa workshop Geometric and Analytic Techniques in Calculus of Variations and PDEs
2011: International Conference on Harmonic Analysis and Applications (Macquarie University), Otago U. (seminar), Oklahoma State U. (colloquium), Washington U. in St. Louis (seminar)
2010: International Conference on the Isoperimetric Problem of Queen Dido and its Mathematical Ramifications (Carthage, Tunisia), U. of Arizona (colloquium), U. of Arizona (seminar)
2009: U. of Kentucky, Conference on Twenty Years of Wavelets (DePaul U., Chicago), Conference on Time-Frequency (Strobl, Austria)
2008: New Mexico State U., U. of Canterbury, Technical U. of Denmark, Symposium on Computational Harmonic Analysis (U. Missouri, St. Louis), 7th Australia – New Zealand Mathematics Convention
2007: Conference on Trends in Harmonic Analysis (Strobl, Austria), SIAM Special Session (Memphis), Illinois/Missouri Applied Harmonic Analysis Seminar, Vanderbilt U.
2006: International Conference on Harmonic Analysis (Merlo, Argentina), Dalhousie U., U.S.-Croatian Workshop on Wavelets (Washington U. in St. Louis)
2005: U. Missouri at Columbia, Conference on Modern Methods of Time-Frequency Analysis (Austria), Washington U. in St. Louis (Loeb Undergraduate Lecture), U. Minnesota
2004: Washington U. in St. Louis, Iowa State U., Workshop on Harmonic and Functional Analyses of Wavelets (Singapore), U. Basel, U. Autonoma de Barcelona, National U. of Singapore, U. of Canterbury, U. of Auckland
2003: U. of Auckland, Massey U., Victoria U., U. of Otago, U. of Toronto, Indiana U., Michigan State U.
2002: Oklahoma State U., Washington U. in St. Louis
2001: Texas Tech U., U. of Basel, Oberwolfach Conference “Elliptic and Parabolic Problems of Higher Order”, U. of Canterbury, Indiana U.
2000: Washington U. in St. Louis, U. of Missouri
1999: Edinburgh Conference “Dynamics of Thin Fluid Films”, Oklahoma State U., Northwestern U.
1998: Wabash seminar, Purdue U., U. of Virginia, Washington U., Wright State U., Oberwolfach Conference “Geometric Questions in Partial Differential Equations”.
1997: Vanderbilt Conference on Differential Equations, U. of Illinois (Urbana), U. of Illinois (Chicago), Northwestern U., U. of Missouri, Georgia Tech.
1996: Rice U., Washington U., Georgetown U., George Washington U., U. of Arkansas, U. of Maryland at College Park, Purdue U.
1996 MSRI Conference “Sharp Inequalities”, Mt. Holyoke Meeting “Optimization Methods in PDE”
1996 Oberwolfach Conference “Geometric Function Theory”
1995: Wayne State U., Technion in Haifa, Cornell U., Brown U., SUNY at Stony Brook, Institute for Advanced Study
1994: Florida State U., Washington U., U. of Auckland (New Zealand), U. of Canterbury (New Zealand)
1993: SUNY at Stony Brook, U. of Auckland (New Zealand)
1992: U. of Michigan, Purdue U., U. of Illinois at Urbana, Justus-Liebig Universitat (Germany), York U. (England)
AMS Special Sessions in 2015-1994: East Lansing, Knoxville, St. Louis, Lexington, Urbana, Baton Rouge, Chicago, Eugene, Pittsburgh, Lawrence, Birmingham, South Bend, Winston–Salem, Chicago, Louisville, Columbia (MO), Chattanooga, Orlando, Hartford, Cincinnati