Applied Mathematics at Western -- Applied Mathematics Courses

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The Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) is active both in traditional areas of applied mathematics and in theoretical physics, as well as in new rapidly developing areas such as chaos theory, genomics, and financial mathematics. Profiting from their diverse backgrounds, department members share a common interest in mathematical applications and interdisciplinary research. Areas of research concentration within the department include computational/numerical methods and applications of massive parallel computation, computer algebra, financial mathematics, materials modelling, industrial mathematics, mathematical biology, molecular dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, statistical and transport physics, theoretical elementary particle physics, and modern applications of quantum and classical field theory.

The interdisciplinary focus of the Department is reflected by a number of joint programs and partnerships. For example, UWO's Department of Applied Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy jointly administer a collaborative Ph.D. program in Theoretical Physics. Other UWO department partnerships include the Departments of Biology, Medical Biophysics, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Statistics as well as UWO's Molecular Genetics unit and its Ivey School of Business. UWO is a full member of The Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences, providing our graduate students with access to programs, workshops, and other Fields Institute activities.

UWO also has a memorandum of understanding with Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, as well as institutional membership in the Institute for Particle Physics (IPP) of Canada; in 2001, Fields, Perimeter, and IPP jointly co-sponsored UWO's hosting of the 23rd annual MRST Conference on Theoretical High Energy Physics. Members of the Department of Applied Mathematics also organised and hosted three other scientific meetings held at UWO in 2001: The International Conference on Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete, and Impulsive Systems (DCDIS), The Esso Centre for Mathematics Education Inaugural Conference, and ISSAC 2001 (The International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation).

A very significant measure of a university's success is the record of accomplishment of its students. UWO's Department of Applied Mathematics graduates have received numerous NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship Awards, as well as Ontario's prestigious C.G. Polanyi Prize for Scientific Research, the CAMS (Canadian Applied Mathematics Society) Doctoral Dissertation Award, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, UWO's Governor General's Gold Medal Award Highest Standing in a Graduate Program, and UWO's Society of Graduate Students Excellence in Teaching Award. A team of advanced undergraduate Applied Mathematics students has consistently performed well in the North America wide Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Modelling Competition, including a First Place Award in 1991 and several subsequent Certificates of Honourable Mention.

UWO's Department of Applied Mathematics is also the birthplace of SHARCNet - Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network. SHARCNet is a multimillion dollar initiative that has created a regional network of supercomputing resources across southwestern Ontario. SHARCNet is Canada's largest academic HPC facility, with multiple computer clusters accessed through a high-speed fibre-optic network. Much of the SHARCNet infrastructure, including technical and programming support staff, is housed in UWO's Department of Applied Mathematics, and graduate students within the Department have direct access to all SHARCNet resources.

Three members of the Department are also founding members of ORCCA, the Ontario Centre for Computer Algebra. ORCCA conducts fundamental research in computer algebra and promotes the development of mathematical software. Research topics in computer algebra include symbolic-numeric algorithms, languages and environments, and the symbolic analysis of ordinary and partial differential equations. The international impact of ORCCA has been enhanced over the past two years by nine research positions, which have allowed established researches in computer algebra to visit UWO for varying durations.

The Department of Applied Mathematics has recently initiated a research program in mathematical finance. Research directions include the construction of mathematical models of Ontario's recently deregulated electricity market, the analysis of weather derivatives and application to weather prediction, the application of chaos theory to finance, and the pricing of options on assets whose price traces incorporate large fluctuations. The Department also has strong interest in traditional applications of mathematics to industrial problems. Researchers within the department study fluid mechanics and other mechanical processes in industrial settings. Recent projects of industrial applicability include crash sensor studies, analyses of pollutant diffusion, research in pulp and paper machinery, the modelling of turbulent flow, and the secure encryption of data. Mathematical biology is also a new and rapidly developing research area within the Department, addressing issues such as the interplay between chaos and predictability in biological systems, as well as the modelling of a number of biological applications, such as the emergence over time of resistance to HIV medication protocols. The Department's Mathematical Biology Program currently has collaborative projects with the Harvard School of Public Health, the World Health Organization, the Theoretical Biology Division at Los Alamos National Laboratories, and NASA.

Theoretical Physics has been traditionally an area of strength at UWO. Roughly half of the Department of Applied Mathematics faculty members received their graduate training in some area of Theoretical Physics. An area of particularly strong concentration is theoretical elementary particle physics, which addresses the fundamental interactions and symmetries of nature. Theoretical physicists within the Department also research questions as diverse and fundamental as atmospheric transport phenomena and global warming/cooling, numerical approaches to atomic and molecular physics, the origin of mechanical friction within sliding layers of materials, and gravitational radiation phenomenology. This diversity of interests, which is only natural within the mathematically and computationally sophisticated environment the Department of Applied Mathematics provides, has led to a number of research awards for Department faculty both within and outside the university community, as well as active involvement in the newly-formed Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in nearby Waterloo, Ontario.

The University of Western Ontario is the fifth largest university in Canada, with an enrolment in excess of 20,000 undergraduate students. The University is located in London, an attractive university town of 330,000, known as "The Forest City" for its tree-lined streets and extensive network of parklands along the Thames River. London is also the home of Orchestra London Canada, a major Canadian symphony orchestra, and The Grand Theatre, a regional centre for drama and stage. London also hosts both SunFest and The Home County Folk Festival, which together bring an eclectic mix of international music artists to London every summer. London is conveniently located midway between Toronto and Detroit, Michigan, and the internationally acclaimed Stratford Shakespearean Festival is only a forty five minute drive from UWO's campus.

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