CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
CU math whizzes are at the top of the heap
Apr 17th
Outstanding winners of international competition, again
Two University of Colorado Boulder undergraduate student teams have been named among the 11 top winners from a field of 5,636 teams that entered the 2013 international Mathematical Contest in Modeling this spring.
Only 375 teams, or 6 percent of those entering the contest, were from the United States. The others were from Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
CU-Boulder undergraduate students, from left to right, Fiona Pigottt, Tracy Babb, Christopher Aicher, Gregory McQuie, Yueh-Ya “Sam” Hsu and David Thomas join faculty adviser Anne Dougherty, at center in front row, to celebrate their being named “Outstanding Winners” in the 2013 Mathematical Contest in Modeling. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)
CU-Boulder had two teams designated as “Outstanding Winners” in 2012 as well, and has had a total of 13 Outstanding Winner designations since 2000.
“I don’t know any other university, from anywhere in the world, that has that track record,” said Anne Dougherty of CU-Boulder’s Department of Applied Mathematics. “This is a testament to our excellent students and exceptionally strong undergraduate program.”
One of the 2013 problems focused on developing an effective, feasible and cost-efficient strategy to meet projected water needs in a given country, while the other challenged students to develop the “ultimate brownie pan” to maximize heat distribution and cooking potential in an oven.
Results of the contest, which took place at the students’ home institutions Jan. 31-Feb. 4, were announced by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications on April 5.
One of the two CU-Boulder teams designated as an “Outstanding Winner” was comprised of students Gregory McQuie and David Thomas of aerospace engineering sciences, and Yueh-Ya Hsu of applied mathematics. The team also was awarded the Mathematical Association of America Award.
The other “Outstanding Winner” from CU-Boulder included students Christopher Aicher and Tracy Babb of applied mathematics, and Fiona Pigott, who is double-majoring in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics. The team also was presented with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Award.
Dougherty served as faculty adviser to both teams. Any undergraduate CU-Boulder student was welcome to participate.
A third team of CU-Boulder students entered the contest and was designated a “successful participant.” That team included students Runnan Lou of aerospace engineering, Weiming Zhang of applied mathematics and Xinyu Shen, who is double-majoring in math and physics.
According to the contest rules, the students had 96 hours to decide which of two problems to complete, research their problem, come up with a mathematical model, program a numerical model and write a report.
Official contest results are posted at http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/contests/2013/results.
[includeme src=”http://c1n.tv/boulder/media/bouldersponsors.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”300″]
NASA sends CU Boulder big bucks for space weather mission
Apr 15th
CU-Boulder to receive $36 million
The University of Colorado Boulder will receive roughly $36 million from NASA to build and operate a space instrument for a mission led by the University of Central Florida that will study Earth’s upper atmosphere to learn more about the disruptive effects of space weather.
The mission, known as the Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, or GOLD, involves imaging Earth’s upper atmosphere from a geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles above the planet. The mission is expected to have a direct impact on the understanding of space weather like geomagnetic storms that alter the temperature and composition of Earth’s atmosphere, which can disrupt communication and navigation satellites, affecting everything from automobile GPS and cell phone coverage to television programming.
The GOLD mission, which is being led by research scientist Richard Eastes of the University of Central Florida, will launch aboard a commercial communications satellite as a “hosted” payload. Such payloads, which are secondary to the satellite’s main objective, represent the most cost-effective way to reach geostationary orbit, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineer Mark Lankton of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the GOLD project manager.
“LASP is extremely pleased to be working on this mission with Richard Eastes at the University of Central Florida, who we have been collaborating with for seven years,” said Lankton. “This mission is one of the first to involve a science instrument being launched on a communication satellite, which is a terrific idea and exactly the right way to run a quality mission on a smaller budget.”
The LASP instrument, known as an imaging spectrograph, weighs roughly 60 pounds and is about 2 feet long and about 1 foot tall and 1 foot wide – roughly the size of a microwave oven. It will launch aboard a commercial satellite built by SES Government Solutions in McLean, Va. The LASP instrument will be gathering data on Earth’s upper atmosphere in the far ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“GOLD’s imaging represents a new paradigm for observing the boundary between Earth and space,” said Bill McClintock, the deputy principal investigator on the CU-Boulder spectrograph and a senior research scientist at LASP. “It will revolutionize our understanding of how the sun and the space environment affect our upper atmosphere.”
A geosynchronous orbit is an orbit that completes one revolution in the same amount of time it takes for the Earth to rotate once on its polar axis. “We will be able to view almost a complete hemisphere of the Earth, almost all the time, with this orbit,” said Lankton.
The mission scientists will be looking for the effects of space weather on the upper atmosphere — the ionosphere and thermosphere located roughly 50 miles to 350 miles above Earth – caused by the sun and Earth’s lower atmosphere, said Lankton. “The giant driver is the sun, including geomagnetic storms that can cause bright auroras and the disruption of satellite communications,” he said.
Lankton said the science team also will investigate the effects that atmospheric waves and tides from Earth’s lower atmosphere have on the thermosphere-ionosphere system. The mission will make use of other instruments gathering data on the sun, including LASP’s $42 million Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment flying on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Roughly 40 LASP researchers will be working on the GOLD mission when it is at full strength, including five to 10 students, split about evenly between undergraduates and graduates, said Lankton. Other participants in the GOLD mission include the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of California, Berkeley, Computational Physics Inc. of Springfield, Va., and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The GOLD mission is part of NASA’s new Heliospheric Explorer Program designed to provide space observations to study Earth’s ionosphere and thermosphere. The mission is slated for launch in 2017. NASA Explorer missions of opportunity, such as GOLD, are capped at $55 million each.
by CU media relations
CU business school endowed with $2.25 million chair to promote global enterprise
Apr 3rd
Advancing global enterprise at the university level by a billionaire seems to make excellent sense.
A better understanding of the core drivers that help great leaders innovate — and avoid failure — is key to advancing global enterprise. The Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder is now better equipped to advance this understanding, thanks to a new $2.25 million gift from the Thomas Stix Guggenheim family to establish an endowed faculty chair aimed at educating new generations of entrepreneurs on the core drivers of successful business design and innovation.
This prestigious faculty post was made possible by Thomas Stix Guggenheim and his wife Pedie, of Cincinnati and Snowmass Village, Colo., and his four children, each of whom also attended CU-Boulder.
The new chair will enhance business education at the Leeds School by offering a broader exploration of the factors that allow some firms to succeed while others fail.
The chair also advances key Leeds priorities, as it will help aspiring innovators develop the critical thinking skills that result in creative solutions to diverse and complex challenges. “Our business experience has demonstrated there is as much, if not more, to learn from business failures as from successes,” Guggenheim said. “One main aspect of our endowed chair is to case-study this belief.”
David Ikenberry, dean of the Leeds School, said the creation of the Thomas Stix Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair in Business Design and Innovation is emblematic of the school’s mission. “We have embarked on an innovation agenda that will enable graduates to evolve in a rapidly changing business climate and ensure their ability to drive value,” he said. “We are fortunate and grateful for the family’s generous support as we pursue this great challenge.”
The concept of business design is an emerging area of business education — exploring the interaction of factors such as strategy, product or service design, and entrepreneurial leadership to solve complex problems and drive economic innovation and successful business creation.
With Leeds and CU’s long-standing reputation for entrepreneurship education along with Boulder’s identity as one of the nation’s most entrepreneurial and creative cities, the new chair is a logical fit for Colorado and its economy.
The Thomas Stix Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair in Business Design and Innovation is a tribute to the successful career and outstanding leadership of the chair’s namesake. After graduating from CU-Boulder in 1950 with a degree in marketing, Guggenheim went on to lead two successful hosiery (sock) businesses.
“It’s exciting to see CU-Boulder graduates giving back to the university in such an important way so future generations of students can succeed in their entrepreneurial endeavors,” said Chancellor Philip DiStefano.
A longtime donor to CU-Boulder, Guggenheim has supported the Center for Education on Social Responsibility, which integrates ethics education across the Leeds School curriculum to develop values-driven leaders, and a popular freshman-level course titled “Profiles in American Enterprise,” which invited top executives to discuss relevant business issues.
An endowed chair gift provides a reliable and perpetual stream of funding for a senior faculty position. It is a public indicator of a program’s prestige and it helps universities recruit and retain top talent.
A global search will launch immediately to identify a candidate to serve as the first Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair. The goal is to fill the tenured post, to be housed within the school’s Division of Management, for the start of the fall semester in 2014.
The gift is one of more than 275,000 gifts made to date during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance CU education, research, outreach and health programs benefiting citizens throughout Colorado and beyond. Visit http://www.cufund.org for more information.
–CU Press Release–
[includeme src=”http://c1n.tv/boulder/media/bouldersponsors.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”300″]
