MAA Writing Awards
Nonlinear Oscillators at Our Fingertips
Year of Award: 2008
Award: Lester R. Ford
Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 114, (2007), pp. 14-28
Summary:The paper focuses on a relatively simple representative phenomenon and develops a mathematical model that reproduces key features.
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About the Author(s): (from The American Mathematical Monthly, (2007)) Andrew Cohen received a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Indiana University in 2002. He is currently an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research interests lie in investigating the building blocks, or features, that underlie perception and exploring how multiple features are combined to determine higher-level cognitive decisions in tasks of perceptual classification, recognition memory, judgment, and identification.
Tanya Leise who received her Ph.D. from Texas A&M in 1998, is a visiting assistant professor of mathematics at Amherst College. While her previous research focused on the dynamics of accelerating cracks in elastic and viscoelastic media, she has recently developed an interest in the dynamics of coupled nonlinear oscillators in the contexts of rhythmic motion and chronobiology. She is currently most interested in adjusting the circadian rhythm of her 5-year-old daughter, that is, in getting her to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
