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Grants, Research

Math Faculty receive NSF Grant for Innovations in Graduate Education

Math faculty members have been awarded an NSF Innovations in Graduate Education grant to run a pilot program that seeks to counteract some of the challenges faced by graduate students at geographically isolated institutions.  PI Elizabeth Gross notes that peer collaboration can play an important role in developing the research, but that such opportunities are limited at institute UH Mānoa.  The grant will create new such opportunities by forming  mini-research groups with PhD students from UH Mānoa and students from other institutions.

Co-PI Daniel Erman notes that if the program is successful, it could “could pave the way for similar programs at other geographically isolated institutions”.   The grant of $436,302 will fund three such groups over 3 years.  This will provide new opportunities for collaboration and professional development for a number of UH Mānoa PhD students in mathematics.  The first project will launch in Fall 2025.

See also this UH news article about the program.

Research

New faculty member: Hailun Zheng

 

DE: Let me first say: welcome to our department! What type of mathematics are you interested in?

HZ: My research lies in geometric combinatorics. I am interested in polytopes, one of favorite discrete objects studied by ancient Greeks.

DE: Do you have a favorite open problem?

HZ: Günter Ziegler (now president of FU Berlin) proposed the following open problem: Consider a 4-dimensional polytope. Denote by f_i the number of its i-dimensional faces (for example, f_0 is the number of vertices) and define the fatness as the ratio (f_1+f_2)/(f_0+f_3).
Question: Is fatness bounded? The current record for the upper bound is around 9. No improvement has been made in the last 20 years.

DE: What types of courses are you most excited to teach?

HZ: I would love to teach anything related to combinatorics or discrete geometry. Linear algebra is also a fun course to teach; I probably already have taught it too many times.

DE: What have you liked the most about Hawai’i so far?

HZ: The mountains here are impressive. Dazzling in the morning sun and fading in the gray evening mist, they afford a myriad of scenes.

DE: Can you tell us something about yourself that might be surprising?

HZ: I can think of two things.
1. I failed two prelim exams in the first year of the PhD program; at that time I was very focused on writing a Kung-fu novel (which is, of course, not an excuse).
2. I did not plan to be a mathematician. In high school I thought it would be cool to become a reporter for National Geographic, and so I planned on studying archaeology or geology or journalism in college. My dream did not come true… Is it good or bad?