Congratulations to Dr. Irena Lasiecka, distinguished university professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics who has been selected as a 2015 Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Dr. Lasiecka joins Bela Bolllobas and Jerome Goldstein from the Mathematics Department who have been recognized as AMS fellows in prior years. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. The society recognized Dr. Lesiecka for her contributions to control theory of partial differential equations (PDEs), mentorship, and service to professional societies. More information on this prestigious honor can be found on the American Mathematical Society website.  (http://www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/ams-fellows)

Dr. Lasiecka’s induction into the AMS Fellows program represents one of the many national and international honors she has received for her research on PDEs and related control theory. She received the 2011 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics W.T. Idalia Reid Prize for contribution to differential equations and control theory and the 2004 Institute for Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Fellow for contribution to boundary control theory. She was in the original Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) list of the 250 most highly cited mathematicians worldwide. She has been key note speaker at five national and international conferences since joining the University of Memphis in August 2013. Finally in 2013 while on faculty at the University of Virginia, she was recognized as one of the Top 26 Women Professors in Virginia.

Dr. Lasiecka has advised twenty-four Ph.D. students and fifteen postdocs who have pursued successful research careers academia, the private sector, and governmental sectors. As chair of the mathematics department, she hopes to use the strong research reputations of her faculty to bring more attention to the graduate program in mathematics at the University of Memphis and to grow external funding for graduate students. Additionally, she hopes to strengthen the interdisciplinary connections between math, computer science, physics, and the Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS). The University of Memphis is proud to have Dr. Lasiecka as a member of our faculty.