Friday, March 27
Speaker: Mihaela Vajiac, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

"Geometry, Analysis, and Algebra: old and new interactions"  Read Abstract...

Monday, March 16
Speaker: Felix Kogan


"NOAA Operational Polar-Orbiting Satellites for Monitoring the Environment and Socioeconomic Acitivites"  Read abstract...

“Ecosystems in a changing world: wetlands, methane, and global change”  Read abstract... 

February 23, 2009
Speaker: Hesham El-Askary, Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Remote Sensing

 “Remote sensing of atmospheric pollution: a case study”  Read abstract...

November 21, 2008
Speaker: Adrian Vajiac, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

"Computational Algebra Techniques in Physics"

Overview: In recent years, techniques from computational algebra have become important to render effective general results in the theory of Partial Differential Equations.  Following the work of D.C. Struppa, I. Sabadini, F. Colombo, and F. Sommen, Vajiac presented how these tools can be used to discover and identify important properties of several physical systems of interest (e.g. the Maxwell equations for Electromagnetism). He concluded with a description of recent and future work in this direction. 

November 12, 2008
Speaker: Paul Chan, Chief Operating Officer, IMSG Corporation

"Is Climate Change Reversible?"

Overview: Climate science is complex and is not easily explained in sound bites or brief newspaper articles. In addition, most climate scientists discuss their topic in a language that the public cannot easily understand. These problems may distract and mislead the public from understanding the basics of climate change and making the right citizen decisions. This seminar clarified and explained:
    -  The forces that drive climate change
    -  How ice ages help us understand current and future climate change
    -  How to take mitigation actions while there are still uncertainties

About the speaker... 
Dr. Paul Chan is a member of the Maryland State Governor's Climate Change Commission Working Group. He conducted climate science research in NASA. He later managed NASA's climate data center and was the Chief Information Officer for the National Weather Service. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer for IMSG Corp., an environmental science company. 

Dr. Chan's current interest is in developing risk assessment and risk management methodology for regional climate-driven hazards by combining climatological and socioeconomic factors. He is also devoted to communicating climate change science to the public.  Dr. Chan has an MBA from the Wharton School and a PhD in Atmospheric Science from the University of Missouri.

November 10, 2008
Speaker: Cyril Rakovski, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science

"Statistical Methods in Genetics and Epigenetics"

Overview: Statistical methods play a vital role in designing and analyzing complex genetic data. Contributions to family and population-based candidate gene as well as genome-wide association studies will be presented. A brief introduction to and results in the emerging field of Epigenetics was given.

October 31, 2008
Speaker: David Pincus, Assistant Professor of Psychology

"Emergent Self-Organization in Interpersonal Dynamics"  Read abstract...

About the speaker...
Dr. David Pincus is a licensed psychologist and assistant professor in the psychology department at Chapman University.  He has published peer reviewed articles in various journals, book chapters, workbooks, and videos applying nonlinear dynamics to diverse topic areas in psychology, and he is an editor and contributor to the book due out this fall from Cambridge University Press, Chaos and Complexity in Psychology:  The Theory of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems.  The applied topic areas of Dr. Pincus’s research include: group and family therapy, self and relationship development, pain management, and child weight management.

October 24, 2008
Speaker: Eyal Amitai, Department of Physics, Computational Science & Engineering 

"Listening to Rainfall 2000 meters Underwater"  Read abstract...

About the speaker...
Dr. Amitai received his Ph.D. degree in Atmospheric Sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.  Since then, he has been working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).  He spent two years on a postdoctoral fellowship with the Universities Space Research Association.  From 1998 to 2002, he was a research faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and from 2003 to 2008 as a Research Professor with the Center for Earth Observing and Space Research at George Mason University.  In July 2008, he joined Chapman University, and plans on moving to Orange Campus next summer.  His research interests include hydrometeorology, radar hydrology, remote sensing of rainfall from space, ground, and underwater platforms.  His research is focused on combining information from a variety of sensors to evaluate and improve precipitation estimates.

October 13, 2008
Speaker: Laura Glynn, new Associate Professor of Psychology

"Programming the Maternal Brain: Influences of pregnancy on maternal stress vulnerability and cognitive function"

September 26, 2008
Speaker: Chrisi Hughey, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

"Life is Complicated! Unraveling the Complication in Agricultural, Environmental and Petrochemical Samples with High and Low Resolution Mass Spectrometry"  Read abstract...

About the speaker...
Dr. Hughey received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Florida State University.  Directly after graduate school, she began her appointment at Chapman University as Assistant Professor of Chemistry.  She has continued to collaborate with colleagues from Florida State but also formed new collaborations with faculty at Chapman in Biology and Food Science.  Over the past six years, Dr. Hughey has developed an active research program at Chapman in which all the work is conducted by undergraduate students.  The group's work has recently been published in Fuel, the Journal of Chromatography A, and the Journal of Food Science with recent submissions to Chemosphere and the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.  Dr. Hughey is an active member of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry (she organizes the annual undergraduate poster session) and ACS (she serves on the OC Education Committee and is advisor to Chapman's ACS Student Affiliate chapter).  She has also received an award from Chapman for Excellence in Teaching.

September 12, 2008
Speaker: Menas Kafatos, Ph.D.

"An Introduction to the Department of Physics, Computational Science and Engineering"

The first Science Forum Series of the 2008-2009 academic year featured Menas Kafatos, of George Mason University, speaking about Chapman University’s new Department of Physics, Computational Science and Engineering and its multi-faceted fields of expertise and interest.

May 8, 2008
Guest Speaker: Professor Alfonso Cariazzo (University of Sevilla)

"Chen’s inequalities in generalized Sasakian-space-forms"

Professor Alfonso Cariazzo, University of Sevilla, reviewed the main facts about generalized Sasakian- space-forms, such as the existence of interesting examples in any dimension, or the possible structures for these spaces. Following, he presented sharp inequalities involving invariants for submanifolds in this setting, with arbitrary codimension and have proven to be a key tool in Submanifolds Theory, providing new very useful information concerning the immersion problem.

May 1, 2008
Guest Speaker: Professor Vincenzo Vespri, University of Firenze

"Harnack inequalities for nonlinear parabolic equations"

Abstract: Vincenzo Vespri, professor at the University of Firenze, discussed recent results obtained in collaboration with Emmanuele DiBenedetto and Ugo Gianazza. In the sixties Moser, using deep Nash ideas, proved Harnack inequalities for nonnegative solutions of linear praboilic equations. The approach, seems to not work in the nonlinear case (for instance in the case of p-Laplacean and porous medium equation). In recent papers published in Calc. Var., Acta Math and Duke Moser’s one based on DeGiori’s function classes. This approach is so flexible that it can be extended to the nonlinear case.

April 29, 2008
Speaker: Hung-Jen (Stewart) Huang, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science

"Bayesian Analysis of Errors-in-Variables Growth Curves with Skewness in Models"

Abstract: Proposed to analyze model data 1) using errors-in-variables (EIV) model and 2) using the assumptions that the error random variables are subject to the influence of skewness through Bayesian approach. The use of EIV in model is necessary and realistic in studying many statistical problems, but their analysis usually mandate many simplifying and restrictive assumptions. Previous studies have shown the superiority of Bayesian approach in dealing with the complexity of these models.
In fitting statistical models for the analysis of growth data, many models have been proposed. We selected an extensive list of the most important growth curves and using some of them in our model analysis. Much research using classical approach has clustered on this area. However, the incorporation of EIV into these growth models under Bayesian formulation with skewness models have not yet been considered or studied. A motivating example is presented and in which we expose certain lacunae in the analysis previously done as well as justify, the applicability of the our general approach proposed alone. In addition, auxiliary covariates, both qualitative and quantitative, can be added into our model as an extension. This EIV growth curves with auxiliary covariates in models renders a very general framework for practical application.
Another illustrative example is also available to demonstrate how Bayesian approach through MCMC (Metropolis Hastings/slice sampling in Gibbs sampler) techniques as well as Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) for model selection can be utilized in the analysis of this complex EIV growth curves with skewness in models.

April 24, 2008
Speaker: Alberto Damiano, assistant visiting professor of Mathematics

"Syzygies, Antisyzygies, and how I defeated the Dirac system in a Singular way"

Abstract: Alberto Damiano, assistant visiting professor of Mathematics, presented an overview from the collaboration with Daniele Struppa, Adrian Vajiac, and Mihaela Vajiac. He introduced a new concept of “antisyzygies”, which constitutes a sort of inverse problem within the framework of algebraic analysis. Usually people start form a (non-homogeneous) system of PDEs, and hunt for the integrability conditions. Instead, the researchers asked themselves the opposite question: Given the compatibility laws, how can the system be reconstructed in some canonical way? What properties can be obtained? In particular, he mentioned the relation between the antisyzygy construction and Hartogs type of phenomena (removability of compact singularities from the solutions). On the computational side, he presented an idea shared by D. Eelbode. The goal is to construct the syzygies for the Dirac system in several vector variables. He showed how to use the computer algebra software, Singular, and the structure of the super Lie algebra osp (1/2) to get the (minimal) free resolution of the system, in just a few command lines.

April 3, 2008
Guest Speaker: Cyril Rakovski, Department of Preventive Medicine, Division of Biostatistics, Keck School of Medicine, USC

"Novel statistical methods for detecting genetic association between phenotypes and multiple genes"

Abstract: Association methods employed for finding deleterious mutations in human populations are categorized into two broad classes with respect to the structure of the analyzed data, case-control and family based. Case-control studies are flexible, powerful and cost-efficient approaches that possess an inherent design disadvantage, susceptibility to inflated rates of false-positive results due to unaccounted population structure and hidden relatedness. Family-based tests for association (FBATs) provide a robust alternative to case-control methods that address the above-mentioned shortcomings by conditioning on the population information. New FBAT extensions for handling multiple correlated genes and a relatedness-adjusted case-control statistical method that accounts for stratified populations are proposed and studied through extensive simulations in various settings. Our results show that in most of the analyzed scenarios the new tests attain higher power than the currently existing approaches.

November 12, 2007
Guest Speaker: Dr. John Pearse

"Clues from old student studies: Changes in the Rocky Intertidal at Hopkins Marine Station, Monterey Bay"

About the speaker ... 
Dr. John Pearse is Professor Emeritus at the University of California Santa Cruz. He is one of the premier zoologists on the west coast, if not the world. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served as president of several very active scholarly naturalist societies, including the California Academy of Sciences, the Western Society of Naturalists, and the International Society of Invertebrate Reproduction. He is currently president of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. His research has made critical contributions to studies of invertebrate reproduction, biological clocks, arctic ecology, kelp forest ecology, and the ecology of the intertidal zone.  

October 18, 2007
Guest Speaker: Sam Stokes from Microsoft Corporation

"How to build a game that will work on the Xbox 360 in an hour or less"

About the speaker ...
Sam Stokes has been working with embedded technology for 20 years, from GPS Navigational Data Unit, to a system that lands commercial aircraft automatically to being a Premier Consultant fro Microsoft, as well being an adjunct Professor from time to time. Sam is currently a technology evangelist for Microsoft Corporation, with a focus on working with professors and students on how to use the Microsoft technology.

October 12, 2007
Guest Speaker: Dr. Paul Dayton

"The Loss of Nature and the Nature of Loss: Sense of Place, Sense of Self, and the Importance of Culture"

About the speaker ...
Paul Dayton established himself early as both an experimental and synthetic ecologist, performing rigorous experiments in intertidal settings, while at the same time identifying and describing large-scale patterns. He carried this approach from his dissertation in the intertidal zone of Washington state to the other worldly subtidal zone of Antarctica, to the storm battered kelp forests of Southern California.
He has been a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla since the early 70's. His dogged attention to a kelp bed in San Diego for more than 30 years has identified patterns and processes that could never be identified by conventional short-term studies. Long-term ecological studies are now sprouting up nationwide, but Dayton's is one of the earliest, and therefore, most valuable.

October 5, 2007
Speaker: Dr. Steven Schandler

"What Brain Imaging tells us about the causes of Alcoholsim" 

About the speaker ...
Professor Schandler joined the Chapman faculty in 1976 and established the Psychology Research and the Behavioral Sciences Computing Laboratories, with funding from private and government grants. These laboratories have successfully trained over one thousand student researchers.
Professor Schandler's primary research examines the factors that promote and maintain alcohol and substance abuse. With over $4.1 million in federal and private grant funding, he has conducted a 30-year research program using brain imaging, psychophysiological, performance and clinical measures to examine whether the risk for alcohol addiction and for nicotine addition are inherited. The research findings have been widely published in national and international journals and books and presented as invited symposia at such international venues as Australia, Denmark, the People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom.