 |
|
COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy
|
| Pomona College Professor of Mathematics Vin de Silva, along with a colleague from the University of Illinois, was recently named to Scientific American’s SciAm 50, a yearly list of the top 50 science and research contributors and innovators in the nation. |
Collaboration leads to recognition
When Pomona College Professor of Mathematics Vin de Silva and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Robert Ghrist started collaborating back in 2004 on adding flexibility to wireless sensors, the two professors did not foresee their work being eventually recognized by a top national publication.
Yet the January issue of Scientific American found the work of the duo worthy of more than just a mention as both Mr. de Silva and Mr. Ghrist were named to the magazine’s 2007 SciAm 50, an annual list of the top 50 science research and industry individuals who led important advances in ’07.
The research of the two professors was included in the category “Untethered Future,” where the Apple iPhone and MIT researcher Marin Soljacic’s work on delivering wireless electricity were also recognized.
“They sent me an e-mail that said we were named to the list,” Mr. de Silva recalled. “It was a complete surprise and it is really nice. Something like this helps us as well because it helps with what we’re trying to push.”
According to the Scientific American, the award winners who are recognized “have the potential to contribute much to human health, consumer electronics and numerous other fields than if they were simply offering another antidepressant that tweaked serotonin levels or ratcheting up the speed of a microprocessor.”
Like his Pomona College colleague, the word “surprise” was also what Mr. Ghrist used in describing his initial reaction to the news.
“It’s a delightful surprise,” Mr. Ghrist said. “More importantly, it’s great that “mathematics” is being recognized by the broader science community as an endeavor every bit as dynamic, innovative, and relevant to life as other scientific fields.”
The main idea used in the research is “homology”—a branch of the theory of topology concerned with separating space into geometric parts and with the study of the number and interrelationships of the components. Applied to the research of Mr. de Silva and Mr. Ghrist, the sensors themselves become the geometric parts as the professors have used mathematical homology to develop new algorithms—specific instructions for completing a task from an initial to end-state—to determine if randomly distributed sensors in a network leave holes in coverage or if the sensors’ ranges overlap. (story continues below)
 |
|
COURIER photo/Gabriel Fenoy
|
| Pomona College Professor Vin de Silva has collaborated with Professor Robert Ghrist of the University of Illinois to improve wireless sensors through the application of mathematical homology. |
Mr. de Silva credits his colleague for coming up with the main focus of the project and views the technical side of the research as where his contributions have been the most effective. The collaboration also includes contacts of the two professors, with Mr. de Silva’s contacts having a mathematics background and Mr. Ghrist’s contacts having a robotics background.
“We met at a conference in Ontario, Canada and he was already familiar with some of my other work,” the Pomona College professor said. “He had the main idea between trying to connect mathematics and robotics. I am familiar with the math needed for this and there is a lot I can provide from the technical side.”
According to Mr. Ghrist, Mr. de Silva’s technical knowledge was apparent from the moment the two first met.
“He mentioned in passing a technical lemma he had proved, but never written down, not knowing what it is good for,” Mr. Ghrist explained. “I remarked that it was almost exactly something I had needed for a certain problem. Vin is the kind of researcher who can talk with anyone, and anyone who talks with Vin comes away better educated.”
From then on, the two worked together on the algorithms, a process that featured a significant amount of trial and error in the beginning stages of their collaboration before the eventual breakthrough.
“It took a while to prove the theorem—it was more work than we thought at first,” Mr. de Silva pointed out.
As the research continues, Mr. de Silva and Mr. Ghrist will look to develop a new protocol that will allow sensors to repair the small gaps in coverage if a sensor accidentally shuts off. Yet Mr. Ghrist sees another consideration in the equation.
“The broader goal of the work that Vin and I respectively do is a transfer of ideas from ‘pure’ mathematics—algebraic topology in particular— to engineering applications like sensor networks,” Mr. Ghrist explained.
Mr. de Silva also hopes that their research will help others to recognize the crossover potential between mathematics and robotics.
“We wanted robotics people to be aware that these kinds of [mathematical] techniques exist, and we want the mathematicians to be aware that their work can apply [to fields like robotics],” he said.
—Landus Rigsby
