DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE -- Tao Xie, Ph.D. (New Mexico Tech 2006) -- Xie is a computer scientist specializing in parallel and distributed computing and information security. His research interests are security-aware scheduling, high performance computing, cluster and grid computing, parallel and distributed systems, real-time/embedded systems, and information security. He is currently conducting research in energy-saving techniques for high-end computing platforms like clusters and low-end computing environments such as networked mobile embedded systems. He is also developing novel task allocation strategies to find an optimal allocation that minimizes overall energy consumption while confining the length of schedule to an ideal range. DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS Barbara Bailey, Ph.D. (North Carolina State University 1994) Bailey is an applied statistician with applications in the atmospheric, environmental, and ecological sciences. Her Ph.D. is in Biomathematics, a graduate program inside the Department of Statistics where her research focused on nonlinear time series and estimation of dynamical system quantities from data. She was postdoctoral research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. At NCAR, she was part of the Geophysical Statistics Project where her research emphasis was on modeling the spatial and temporal distribution of cloud cover and biogeochemical processes. She has continued and is currently researching the temporal and spatial modeling of environmental processes and the diagnostic and visualization of nonlinear statistical models. Kristin Duncan, Ph.D. (The Ohio State University 2004) Duncan is an applied statistician with research interests in Bayesian modeling, educational assessment, and survey sampling. She is currently working on assessing the fit of item response models such as those used in standardized testing and also on using nonparametric Bayesian modeling for item response. Vadim Ponomarenko, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin 1999) Ponomarenko is a discrete mathematician specializing in interdisciplinary applications of combinatorics. His areas of interest include jump systems, matroid theory, coding theory, monoid theory, discrete dynamical systems, number theory, polymerization dynamics, and mathematics education. His work frequently has components that provide opportunities for undergraduates to do research in mathematics. He is presently researching, together with undergraduates, a generalization of a problem in elementary number theory that was first considered by Diophantus (3rd century CE), popularized by Frobenius (19th century CE) and heavily studied ever since. Samuel Shen, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison 1987) Shen is the new Chairman of Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He is an applied mathematician specializing in statistical climatology and nonlinear waves. His areas of research interest include optimal analysis of climate data for global warming assessment and detection, agroclimatic database and information service, signal analysis for nonlinear and non-stationary processes, and forced water waves. He is presently researching on the uncertainties of the global climate change in the last 150 years in both surface air temperature and precipitation, optimal blending of the data from satellite remote sensing and ground station observations, and North America drought monitoring.