Recent Additions to Our Faculty
Meet Jeff Wheeler
The Department of Mathematics is pleased to introduce our newest faculty member, Jeff Wheeler. Wheeler earned his Ph.D. from the University of Memphis in May 2008. The primary result of Jeff's dissertation involved extending a Combinatorial Number-Theoretic conjecture of Paul Erdos and Hans Heilbronn to finite groups (the original conjecture was established in 1995). His research won first place in the Math and Computer Science division of the University of Memphis graduate research fair. In addition, four of the top five co-authors with Paul Erdos (Andras Sarkozy, Ralph Faudree, Richard Schelp, and Cecil Rousseau) were at Memphis Jeff's final year, and two of which were on his committee (Sarkozy and Rousseau). Jeff was also fortunate to have the renowned Combinatorist Bela Bollobas on his committee.
Jeff's first two papers appeared this year in the number theory journal Acta Arithmetica. His paper with Paul Balister has earned Wheeler an Erdos number of three, and being Paul's student gives him the distinction of being an academic nephew of Andrew Wiles. Jeff also comes to Pitt with a rich and successful teaching history from his time lecturing at Belmont Technical College (St. Clairsville, OH), Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Memphis, Rhodes College (Memphis), Duquesne University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Jeff is a Wheeling, West Virginia native who is happy to again live in a region that is not flat. In addition to teaching and doing math, Jeff enjoys hiking - especially in the mountains - and drinking and brewing good beer. He and his wife Jamie both earned their bachelor's degrees from Miami University and their master's degrees from the University of Tennessee. Moving to Pittsburgh has allowed Jamie to continue her eight year career with FedEx. After doing finance for many years, Jamie now solves customers' logistic concerns. She has won FedEx's highest award - the Corporate Five Star Award - from founder and CEO Fred Smith. Jamie and Jeff live in Marshall Township, north of the city, with their soon-to-be four year-old daughter, Anna, and their 18 month-old son, Jackson.
Meet Konstantine Zelator
Konstantine Zelator is a native of Athens, Greece and obtained a diploma (5-year degree) in civil engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1978; a master’s of science degree in mathematics in 1982 from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Between 1984-2010 Zelator has been very active both in teaching and research. He has published 21 papers in traditional, refereed print journals. He has also published 23 papers in the electronic publication arXiv.org, owned and operated by the Cornell University Library. He is currently working on another six papers which are in various stages of development.
Zelator has worked as a faculty member at quite a few colleges and universities, which include the University of Pittsburgh, Rhode Island College, University of Toledo, University of Northern Colorado, Antioch College/University, Carnegie Mellon University, Heidelberg College and Penn State University.
Zelator published a sci-fi book in 2003 entitled Atlantis Revisited (Dorrance Publishing). In October 2001 he founded his own publishing entity, Brainstorm Fantasia Inc. Recently he published through Brainstorm Fantasia 2 math books After Calculus Algebra: Relations, Numbers, Functions, equations and A Trigonometric Primer: From elementary to Advanced Trigonometry.
Konstantine Zelator became a naturalized US citizen in 1991 and holds dual citizenship with US and Greece.
Professor Stuart Hastings Retires
The Department of Mathematics is sorry to announce the retirement of Professor Stuart Hastings, after an illustrious 23 year career at the University. Professor Hastings received his Ph.D. in 1964, under the direction of Norman Levinson at MIT. After time at Case Western Reserve University and SUNY Buffalo, he came to Pitt in 1987, as departmental chair. He stayed in this position for eight years, at the end of which he was happy to turn the administration over to his successor, Professor Chadam, and direct his full attention to teaching and research.
Some of his most enjoyable teaching moments have been in recent years, where he taught mostly upper level classes for math majors, particularly linear algebra and differential equations.
“We have had some excellent students in the new century, and the great majority of students now, whether they are particularly skilled in math or not, have been fun to work with,” Hastings said. “I’m approaching retirement with mixed feelings -- looking forward to the increased freedom but the probably decreased association with the student age group. I hope to not lose all such contact, however, I’m anticipating teaching the honors version of ordinary differential equations in the spring term, 2011.”
Hastings graduate teaching has also been rewarding over the years. On the border between teaching and research comes advising of graduate students. His Ph.D. students here at Pitt have been, and continue to be, a source of significant pride.
“ I am so pleased that two of them were awarded Andrew Mellon Fellowships by the University, and I continue to be in contact with a number of former students, from the Pitt years and before, about interesting research issues.” Hastings added.
Hastings research has been mostly in differential equations, and he has enjoyed collaborations and discussions over many years with Professors Ermentrout, McLeod and Troy, as well as more recent work with them and with Professor Chen. In addition, he has enjoyed the collegiality of the math department over the years, and the discussions about math, teaching, and life with faculty, staff and students remain a pleasure.
Moving beyond the world of differential equations, Hastings enjoyed additional collaborations. In conjunction with James Greenberg, who was later Head of the math department at CMU, he developed what became known as the Greenberg-Hastings cellular automaton, and he was pleased to see in a recent Google search that this model is continuing to be used by researchers around the world. Another excursion outside of differential equations resulted in a collaboration with two younger mathematicians at Pitt, Professors Borisov and Dickinson. This was a project in geometry which grew out discussions at departmental teas about his new hobby of woodworking.
“I have no ambition to make fine furniture, but I do hope to continue making toys for my grandchildren,” Hastings adds. “I actually know very little geometry, and so in this paper, published last month, I provided some of the questions and my collaborators provided interesting, and sometimes unexpected, answers. “
Professor Hastings will still be frequenting the department -- this fall he will be working with a Ph.D student as she completes her thesis, and finishing a graduate level book on differential equations with Professor Mcleod.