Mary Ann Horn Elected to SIAM Board of Trustees
Department of Mathematics Research Associate Professor Mary Ann Horn has been elected by the membership of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) as the newest member of the Board of Trustees. She will serve on the SIAM board through 2011.
SIAM is an international community of more than 12,000 individual members, including applied and computational mathematicians, computer scientists, and other scientists and engineers. The society advances the fields of applied mathematics and computational science by publishing a series of premier journals and a variety of books, sponsoring a wide selection of conferences, and through various other programs.
Horn, who is also a program director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation, says her goals as a member of the Board of Trustees include cultivating and growing SIAM’s public awareness efforts in the mathematical sciences.
“SIAM has always been a strong voice supporting the interaction of the mathematical sciences and other disciplines, promoting connections with industry, and encouraging collaboration,” says Horn. “Often the most challenging mathematical problems arise at the intersection between the mathematical sciences and other fields. SIAM must continue and strengthen its goals of teaching the public how the mathematical sciences provide many of the necessary tools to understand problems in engineering and the physical and biological sciences.”
She also notes that SIAM needs to continue to be an advocate of interdisciplinary training and promote careers in the mathematical sciences to young people. “The next generation of scientists will not simply work within the mathematical sciences, but will pursue questions in collaboration with other areas of science. These professionals will benefit from a common language and understanding of the challenges involved in interdisciplinary work. Providing students at all levels with opportunities to see the wide variety of fascinating problems that can be addressed using mathematical concepts is critical to convincing students to pursue careers that build on a solid mathematical foundation.”
In addition to her new position with SIAM, Horn is also a member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), the SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory, the SIAM Activity Group on the Life Sciences, and the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB).
Horn received her Ph.D. and M.S. in applied mathematics from the University of Virginia, and her B.S. in mathematics, with a chemistry emphasis, from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include control of distributed parameter systems, optimal control, nonlinear analysis, partial differential equations, and applications in the biological sciences and medicine.