Contents

• Introduction
• CAM Management
  • Director and Administrator
  • Committees
    • Admissions committee
    • Field committee
    • Colloquium committee
    • Course committee
    • First-year committee
• Field Nominations
• Faculty Expectations
  • Events and student engagement
  • Advising and mentoring
  • Student funding
  • Special committee service
  • Field votes
  • Committee service
• Annual Timelines

Introduction

The Center for Applied Mathematics is a research center under the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation. It is also the home of the Graduate Field in Applied Mathematics. Faculty in the Center are generally part of the Graduate Field and vice-versa, though it is possible to be affiliated with CAM without field membership. The CAM Director serves simultaneously as a center director and as the director of graduate studies for the field.

As a field, we are subject to general policies of the Graduate School. There are also many field-specific policies and processes, and these are generally documented in the student-facing graduate field handbook. The current document is a faculty-facing description of some aspects of the field, including the administrative structure, the procedure for joining the field, and the expectations of faculty in the field.

CAM Management

Director and Administrator

The CAM Director (David Bindel) is appointed by the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation. The CAM director simultaneously serves as center director and as the DGS for the field of Applied Mathematics. The CAM director also serves ex officio on all the CAM committees.

The CAM Administrator (Philip Rusher) is the sole full-time staff member for CAM. The CAM Administrator serves both as the administrative manager for the center and as the Graduate Field Administrator (GFA).

Committees

CAM has five regular committees that help keep the center activities running.

Admissions committee

The admissions committee works with the CAM director to recommend students for admission and wait-listing. This committee is most active during the month of January. The committee for 2024-2025 is:

• Lionel Levine

• Kyra Gan

• Jaehee Kim

• Tim Healey

Field committee

The field committee works with the CAM director on general field matters, and provides an initial vetting of CAM field nominations. This committee generally consists of fairly senior CAM members, and for 2024-2025 is:

• Alex Vladimirsky

• Gennady Samordnitsky

Colloquium committee

The colloquium committee arranges the CAM colloquium, including selection of a visit day speaker and coordination with the graduate students for the student-selected speaker and the distinguished alum speaker. The colloquium for 2024-2025 is:

• Jane Wang

• Yunan Yang

Course committee

The course committee is responsible for updating the list of recommended focal area courses. The course committee for 2024-2025 is:

• Peter Frazier

• Alex Townsend

• Pete Diamessis

First-year committee

The first-year committee is responsible for advising the CAM director on first-year programming, including helping to run the first-year seminar. The committee for 2024-2025 is:

• Anil Damle

• David Goldberg

• Samitha Samaranayake

Field Nominations

To apply for field membership, the following materials should be sent to the CAM Director:

• A brief nomination from a current CAM field member.

• A 1-2 paragraph statement about the mathematical aspects of your work and the reasons you want to join CAM.

• An enumeration of the CAM Focal Areas in which you have significant background (research projects, graduate courses completed, etc.). CAM members must have a sufficiently broad background to be effective advisors for our Ph.D. students, who are required to take courses in at least 4 Focal Areas.

• Your current CV and links to 2-3 of your more mathematical papers.

Applications are accepted at any time. The review process typically takes at least two weeks (longer during summer and winter breaks) and includes a pre-screening by the CAM Field Committee, a field faculty vote, and confirmation from the Graduate School.

Faculty Expectations

CAM field members are expected to participate in the life of the field in several ways.

Events and student engagement

Because the CAM faculty are distributed across campus, the CAM students have fewer focused opportunities to interact with the CAM faculty than do many students in programs associated with departments. While everyone will not participate in everything, we expect CAM faculty members to take some opportunities to engage with other CAM faculty and with the CAM students. These opportunities include the CAM colloquium, the Bill Sears Blitz, CAM social gatherings (picnics and the holiday party), and CAM graduation.

Advising and mentoring

CAM faculty come from a variety of disciplines and have a variety of advising styles. This makes it particularly important that prospective advisors and advisees communicate clearly about their mutual expectations. We strongly recommend advisors learn about the Faculty Advancing Inclusive Mentoring and regularly revisit discussions with their advisees about mutual expectations for their mentoring. We also expect CAM faculty to annually discuss with students an individual development plan (IDP), as is now required for any graduate student significantly reported on NSF funding. A good resource for IDPs is the Science Careers Individual Development Plan (myIDP). Ideally, CAM students should revisit their IDP and discuss it with their advisors at the time of the annual student progress report (SPR), which are typically due in late April and are required of all CAM students starting from their second year.

In addition to serving on CAM student committees or representing the applied math minor on external committees, CAM field members will sometimes be asked to serve as provisional advisors for first-year students.

Student funding

CAM faculty come from a variety of departments and areas with different levels of funding and norms around sponsored funding of graduate student research. Understanding this, we expect CAM faculty to treat their Applied Math PhD student as they would treat other students in their group, and to communicate clearly about funding with their students and with the graduate field.

Because of MOUs, we expect slightly less than half the CAM students will be funded on TA lines on any given semester. These MOUs help us provide some level of funding stability for students, and we take them seriously. This means that we may sometimes ask advisors if it is possible not to fund a CAM student in a given semester in order to meet our TA obligations. We try to avoid overtaxing students at critical times and to not jeopardize “use-or-lose” funding, but we expect the cooperation of field members in helping to find suitable arrangements each semester.

Sometimes CAM faculty and students request the opportunity to TA for departments with whom we do not have an MOU. These are often good opportunities for all involved, and we try to support such requests whenever it is possible. However, in some cases it may not be possible because of the demands of our MOUs. Early communication about these types of requests increases the chances that the CAM director and administrator will be able to find a solution that accommodates them.

Though students in CAM are funded by research funds and teaching assignments managed by other units, the CAM director is responsible for the negotiation for those opportunities and for the associated guarantee of funding for students in good standing who meet performance expectations in assistantships. Consequently, in processes that might lead to the termination of a student’s funding guarantees due to failing to meet expectation, the CAM director should be involved throughout. In such cases, the director (rather than the special committee chair) has authority over decision about future funding guarantees on behalf of the Center.

Special committee service

CAM field members who serve as the chair for an applied math student or as a minor member representing applied math are responsible for enforcing the academic requirements for the field as laid out in the student handbook. For applied math students, the major requirements are

• Eight graduate courses in mathematics and its applications,
• All taken for a letter grade,
• Covering at least three CAM focal areas,
• At least four of which are numbered 6000 level or above
• With a minimum GPA of 3.0.

Course credit cannot be transferred from other institutions to satisfy this requirement.

A minor in Applied Mathematics is available to Ph.D. students from outside Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. For Ph.D. students minoring in applied mathematics, the student should successfully complete

• Four graduate courses with substantial mathematical content
• All taken for a letter grade
• Covering at least two CAM focal areas
• At least two of which are numbered 6000 level or above
• With a minimum GPA of 3.0.

The four courses taken toward a minor in Applied Mathematics should generally not also be used to fulfill requirements of other majors or minors. Courses used to fulfill requirements of other majors or minors may be considered when counting the number of CAM focal areas in which a student has taken courses. A student who transfers into CAM from another graduate program may petition the CAM representative on the Special Committee to allow at most two courses from a prior institution of graduate study to satisfy the minor requirements. Such transfer requests cannot eliminate the requirement of at least two Cornell applied mathematics courses at the 6000 level or above taken for a grade.

Master’s degree students may obtain a minor concentration in applied mathematics at the direction of an applied math field member who is a member of their special committee.

The courses listed in the field handbook are meant as examples of courses from the different focal areas, and they are not exhaustive. When faculty are uncertain about whether a course is sufficiently mathematical to count toward the CAM requirements, or whether a course belongs to a particular focal area, they should consult with the CAM director.

Field votes

For new field members to join CAM, we need to have field votes. CAM field members are expected to participate in field votes, even if they feel they must register an “abstain” vote. The Graduate School will not process field nominations without enough votes, and low participation can delay students matching with advisors new to the field and forming their special committees. Field members who regularly fail to participate in field votes may be asked to consider leaving the field.

Committee service

Between the five major field committees, active CAM field members should expect to be asked to participate in some committee service for CAM at least once every few years. Volunteers are always welcome, particularly for the admissions committee and the colloquium committee.

Annual Timelines

• Orientation (2024-08-19, 11:45-12:45)

  The orientation event will take place in the CAM space (Rhodes 655). This is primarily an event for the new students to learn about the program, but is also an opportunity for faculty to meet and greet students.

• Call for fall course ads

  Faculty, particularly those teaching new courses or courses that have not been taught for a while, may want to advertise their courses to the CAM students. The call for such course ads will go out around the time that add/drop starts. Course ads will be shared via a Box folder to which faculty and students have access.

• Call for advising interest

  In order to help with advising matches, we will also update our list of faculty who might be interested in advising a CAM student, and whether those faculty have research funding to support such a student. Statements of faculty interest will also be shared via a Box folder to which faculty and students have access.

• Bill Sears Blitz (2024-09-06, 3:45-4:45, CAM colloquium room)

  Faculty and students are invited to give short (two minute) “blitz talks” to advertise their research. Refreshments and an opportunity for conversation in the CAM space to follow.

• Fall picnic (2024-10-05, 11:30 am, Ellis Hollow Community Center)

  The CAM fall picnic will take place on 2024-10-05 at 11:30 am in the Ellis Hollow Community Center. An email will be sent with further information and an RSVP.

• Call for spring support plans

  In October, we will send an email to the field to start to inquire about support plans for any applied math advisees for the coming semester. This is also a good time for advisors to talk to advisees about planning for the following summer.

• Call for summer support opportunities

  When we email the field to inquire about spring support plans, we will also ask faculty if they might be interested in supporting a CAM student for summer research. This could be as the start of an advising relationship or as an independent project.

• Holiday party (tentative: 2024-12-11, 5-7 PM)

  The December CAM holiday party is a time for CAM students and faculty to join informally over food and drink. Time and an RSVP will be forthcoming.

• Call for spring course ads

  In January, prior to the start of add/drop period, we will again send mail to the field to get ads for any courses the faculty would like to put onto the CAM student radar.

• Admissions

  Admissions runs from around January 7 through the end of January. The basic process is that each admissions committee member reads a subset of the folders, and the ones they deem particularly interesting constitute a “long list.” The long list is then read by all committee members and discussed in an in-person meeting of about two hours to get a roughly ranked short-list that the Director uses as the basis for managing offers. Input from the field more broadly is welcome.

• Call for summer/fall support plans and opportunities

  In the middle of the spring semester, we will ask faculty for their plans for student support for the summer and fall semesters. We will also ask faculty if they are interested in supporting a CAM student for a funded summer rotation, and a list of contacts for such possible opportunities will be made available to the CAM students still seeking summer support.

• SPR and IDP

  Student progress reviews in CAM are due in mid-late April. CAM advisors should also plan to check on the status of the students individualized development plans (IDPs) at this time, particularly if the student is funded on an NSF grant and will need to attest that the IDP has been completed. This is also a good time to revisit mutual expectations between advisors and advisees.

• CAM field meeting

  The CAM field will have an end-of-year meeting around the end of classes. All field faculty are invited.

• Graduation (tentative: 2024-05-11, 1-2 PM at 401 Physical Sciences Building)

  Information about the CAM graduation ceremony will be forthcoming. All field faculty are welcome.