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The College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (PAMS) is a dynamic organization featuring high-quality teaching, research and public service.
We reach beyond the traditional classroom to provide the best educational opportunities for our students – whether in a facility outfitted with the latest instructional technologies, on the deck of a marine research vessel, or in the deserts of Mongolia.
The world is our laboratory, and our faculty and students have enjoyed a long tradition of international collaboration in all five of our departments: Chemistry; Mathematics; Physics; Statistics; and Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Together with colleagues across the globe, we are working to better understand many of today’s most important scientific challenges and to make positive impacts on science, our economy, our environment, and the human condition
Partnerships and Research Collaborations
Africa
Fred Semazzi, professor in Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, seeks to better understand the regional climate of Eastern Africa. In collaboration with the Drought Monitoring Center in Nairobi, this research will benefit several important international research and operational initiatives. For example, the work will be useful to the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum, an international experiment aimed at using seasonal prediction to reduce society’s vulnerability to climate variability. Also benefiting will be the National Science Foundation International Decade for the Eastern Africa Lakes international research program, the CLIVAR Africa research initiative and the east African coffee industry.
China
Lian Xie, professor in Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and a member of the Science Advisory Board for the China Meteorological Administration / Eastern China Meteorological Center (CMA/ECMC), hosted an NC State visit by an eight-member marine meteorology delegation from Shanghai, China, in September 2006. Representatives from various NC State academic units and the visiting delegation reached an agreement to cooperate in marine meteorological research and education.
The Department of Mathematics formed and facilitated a research and education partnership in symbolic computation involving faculty and students at NC State, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beihang University. A National Science Foundation grant funded two workshops, one in Raleigh and one in Beijing, where the groups met to collaborate.
PAMS Dean Daniel L. Solomon recently visited China as a member of NC State’s delegation to several Chinese universities, in an effort to build collaborations and partnerships. One goal of the trip was to advance preliminary discussions about a specific partnership in which students at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) would enter NC State’s Financial Mathematics masters program. Pang Tao, assistant professor of Mathematics at NC State, won an internationalization seed grant to pursue development of this partnership. He joined the delegation in Shanghai for a meeting with SUFE leaders, who were enthusiastic about the proposal. You may read blog entries from Dean Solomon and other delegation members, as well as more information about NC State’s connections to China, at: http://www.ncsu.edu/china/journal/jun3.html
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Japan
The Department of Chemistry has a research collaboration with the University Elector-Communications on thermal investigation of the MALDI-MS mechanism and with Canon on using mesoporous silicon surface in MALDI-MS analysis. The department also collaborates with Kyusho University on self-assembly of synthetic chlorophyll analogues.
The Netherlands
The Department of Chemistry has research and education collaborations with the University of Leiden. NC State’s Professor Stefan Franzen teaches a multiscale modeling course involving relevant aspects of quantum and classical theory. Expansion of the course content to include mesoscale modeling led to an international collaboration with Professor Hans Fraaije of Leiden University, who participates in teaching of the course, and who collaborates on understanding surface electrostatics of nanoparticles using mean field theory methods. Fraaije taught three lectures from the course in 2006 in Raleigh. The Department of Chemistry actively collaborates with Fraaije on relating electrostatic data to theory.
Poland
Stefan Franzen, professor of chemistry, has coordinated a collaboration that has led to publications, patents, seminars and courses at Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) and the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (IBCh) of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznan. The expertise in nucleic acid structure-function relationships in Polish universities and institutes will be of great benefit and will enhance the training of both graduates and undergraduates.
Conferences and Summer Courses
Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Professor Viney Aneja organized the world’s first international conference on agricultural air quality, an expanding field of research in which he is recognized as a pioneer. More than 350 scientists, policy makers, regulators and economists from across the globe attended the four-day, “Workshop on Agricultural Air Quality: State of the Science,” which was held in Potomac, Md., in June of 2006.
Mathematics
NC State hosted an international research conference on “Lie algebras, vertex operator algebras and their applications” in 2005. It was organized by Kailash Misra, professor of mathematics. More than 100 researchers from several countries participated. More information can be found at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~misra/LieConf2005/
Misra and fellow Mathematics Professor Naihuan Jing organized an international conference on “Quantum affine Lie algebras Extended affine Lie algebras and Applications” at BIRS, Banff, Canada, in March 2008.
Statistics
In the summers of 2006 and 2007, Sujit Ghosh, associate professor of statistics, taught short courses at Thammasat University in Thailand. His course ranged from Bayesian inference and MCMC methods to spatial statistics and its applications.
Study Abroad
As new members in the international trans-Atlantic Science Student Exchange Program (TASSEP), NC State undergraduate science students can study at some of Europe’s most prestigious universities. Recently, two chemistry students studied in Lund, Sweden, while the NC State Chemistry Department hosted a student from Denmark. In Fall 2007, several chemistry majors studied in Denmark, Scotland and Sweden, and the department will host students from France. TASSEP is open to all science, math and engineering disciplines, and students pay only the normal NC State tuition and fees to participate.
Awards
France
Universite de Nantes awarded Myung-Hwan “Mike” Whangbo, professor of chemistry, a Docteur Honoris Causa.” One of the most prestigious distinctions awarded by French universities and established in 1918 by an act of the French Republic, the Docteur Honoris Causa honors “foreign nationals because of eminent services rendered to the sciences, the letters or arts, France or the university.”
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