MPS Announces New Scientific Advisory Board Members
The Division of Mathematics and Physical Sciences is pleased to announce the appointment of two new members to the Scientific Advisory Board: Robin Pemantle and Mark Trodden.
Robin Pemantle received his PhD from MIT in 1988 and has been at the University of Pennsylvania since 2003 where he is the Merriam Term Professor of Mathematics.
Pemantle’s research focuses on two areas. Within probability theory, the research concerns discrete probability models, including random graph theory, processes with reinforcement, statistical models and random walks. The other research area, analytic combinatorics in several variables (ACSV), is the subject of a textbook with Mark Wilson and Steve Melczer (second edition, 2023 expected)
Pemantle is also interested in Mathematics Education from an early age, growing up with an insider’s view of an alternative school, and teaching mathematics to grades 5-8 during his college years and before. He has given talks and written articles on math education and is currently writing two books on the subject in collaboration with Henri Picciotto.
Pemantle has held a Sloan Fellowship, a Presidential Faculty Fellowship, the Rollo Davidson Prize, and a Lilly Teaching Fellowship. He was a top five finisher in the Putnam Competition, has been a Simons Fellow, and is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a Fellow of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics.
Mark Trodden is the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics and co-Director of the Center for Particle Cosmology at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2014-2022. He is a theoretical physicist, who has worked broadly in cosmology, gravity, and particle physics, and particularly in the areas of overlap between these subjects.
Trodden received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1995 and held postdoctoral positions at MIT and at Case Western Reserve University. He became an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in 2000, and was promoted to Professor, holding the Alumni Chair, in 2007, before moving to Penn in 2009. He has held visiting positions at Cornell University, at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and as a Sir Thomas Lyle Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Trodden is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the American Physical Society, and of the Institute of Physics (UK). He has served as a member of the US High Energy Physics Advisory Panel and is a member of the Committee on Science and the Arts of the Franklin Institute. He sits on the editorial board of Physics Letters B and is an editor of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
The Simons Foundation and Mathematics and Physical Sciences Division thanks Horng-Tzer Yau, Harvard University; Dmitri Kharzeev, Stony Brook University; and Eva Andrei, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, whose terms as board members have concluded, for their work and guidance.
