Renewed NSF funding provides fellowships for nonlinear-systems grads

By Bill Steele

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed funding for the Cornell IGERT Program in Nonlinear Systems. The award of $3,338,800 will provide two-year graduate fellowships of $27,500 a year for 30 students, over five years, beginning with 12 new students next fall. The funds also will provide computer services and general support. This is an extension of a previous five-year program launched in 1998.

IGERT is NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program, to train a diverse group of scientists and engineers for a broad spectrum of career options. Over 100 programs at doctorate-granting institutions are involved, including a second IGERT program at Cornell in Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity.

Students will pursue doctorates in a variety of disciplines tied together by shared mathematical methods for the analysis of nonlinear systems. Nonlinear systems are those in which the parts interact so that the behavior of the whole system is more than the sum of its parts. An example is the combined effects of multiple AIDS drugs: Simultaneous treatment with several drugs is far more effective than would be thought from the results observed with individual drugs.

Nonlinear problems appear in fields ranging from physics, mechanical engineering and computer science to the life sciences, sociology and finance. Interest has grown rapidly over the past few decades, partly because computers have made it possible to create simulations of them by constantly recalculating the various parts of the system. Mathematical ingenuity is still required to avoid endless recalculation.

Over 40 Cornell faculty members are affiliated with the IGERT program, which has four focus areas: