Three faculty members in the Case Western Reserve University Department of Mathematics have been named Simons Foundation Fellows and were granted funds to extend their upcoming sabbaticals to focus solely on research.
Assistant professors Mark Meckes and Elizabeth Meckes plan to use their fellowship grants to spend a year at the Institut de Mathematiques de Toulouse in Toulouse, France. Elizabeth will study with a research group that specializes in probability and analysis. Mark will collaborate with colleagues on random matrix theory and convex geometry. He also plans to use Toulouse as a base to visit other colleagues in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.
Assistant professor Peter Thomas will visit the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, which is associated with Humboldt University and other universities in Berlin. He’ll collaborate with colleagues to understand the effects of random ion channel fluctuations on the behavior of nerve cells and neural networks.
Each grant amounts to a half-year’s salary plus $10,000 for leave-related expenses.
Earlier this academic year, Daniela Calvetti, chair of the mathematics department, received a five-year, $35,000 Simons Collaboration Grant. The funding allows her to work with Albert Gjedde, professor and head of the department of neurobiology and pharmacology at the University of Copenhagen, to study brain cell metabolism in healthy and diseased conditions.
The private, New York-based Simons Foundation, incorporated in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons, advances research in mathematics and the basic sciences.