Paul S. Wang


photo             Professor Paul S. Wang
   Department of Computer Science
   Director of Research
   Institute for Computational Mathematics (ICM/Kent)
   Kent State University
   Kent, Ohio 44242 USA


Brief Bio

A Ph.D. and faculty member from MIT, Paul Wang became a Computer Science professor (Kent State University) in 1981, and is currently a Director at the Institute for Computational Mathematics at Kent. Paul is a leading expert in Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (SAC). He has conducted over forty research projects funded by government and industry, published eight textbooks, many also translated into foreign languages, and released many software tools. He received the Ohio Governor's Award for University Faculty Entrepreneurship (2001). Paul supervised 10 Ph.D. and over 25 Master-degree students. His main research interests include Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation (IAMC), enabling technologies for and classroom delivery of Web-based Mathematics Education (WME), polynomial algorithms, as well as parallel and distributed SAC. He continues to work jointly with experts in other disciplines such as Visual Communication Design and Mathematics Education in research and curriculum development.

Recent Research Accomplishments

In recent years, Professor Wang has been interested in the Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation (IAMC) and Web-based Mathematics Education (WME). Work in this direction include the WME project, the IAMC workshops, the MP mathematical encoding, MeML (the mathematics education markup language), and MESP (the mathematics education service protocol).

His earlier work includes enabling technologies for problem solving environments, the combination of symbolic, numeric, and graphics techniques for scientific computation, and efficient protocols for mathematical data transfer among heterogeneous systems. He was also active in developing algorithms and systems for the automatic generation of numeric codes for finite element analysis. The results are exemplified by the FINGER (finite element generator), GENTRAN (fortran code generator), XGP (interactive mathematical function plotter), and GENCRAY (Parallel Cray Fortran code generator) software systems. Another area of accomplishment is parallel algorithms and systems for symbolic and scientific computation. In this direction, results are represented by the PFACTOR parallel factoring system and the PLIFT parallel p-adic lifting program. His work in advanced user interface for SAC systems produced two prototypes (GI/S and SUI). Work on efficient mathematical data exchange has resulted in the recent MP-1.1.3.

Paul has served as a consultant for the United Nations and for industry. He also served many times as proposal reviewer and panelist for NSF and other funding agencies; He has been continuously funded for his projects to the tune of two or three projects a year. He was also the chairman of ACM/SIGSAM (1987-1991) and editor of ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS, 1988-1990), and program committee chair (International Symposium on SAC, Maui, Hawaii, July 1997).

Paul is also adopting Internet and Web related technologies for mathematical computing. With NSF support, he established SymbolicNet, a World-wide Web site for the SAC community. Paul's current research interest is Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation with the goal of making mathematical computation of all types easily and widely accessible on the Internet and the Web.

Ph. D. Supervised

1. Hui Tan (1986), FINGER: A Finite Element Code Generator

2. Vilmar Travisan (1991), Univariate Polynomial Factorization

3. Naveen Sharma (1992), User-directed Generation of Sequential and Parallel Codes for Finite Element Analysis

4. Ken Weber (1994), Parallel Integer GCD Algorithms and Their Application to Polynomial GCD

5. Mohamed Rayes (1995), Parallel Algorithms and Implementations for Sparse Multivariate GCD

6. Yaser Doleh (1995), The Design and Implementation of a System Independent User Interface for an Integrated Scientific Computing Environment

7. Olaf Bachmann (1996), Chains of Recurrences

8. Iyad A. Ajwa (1998), Parallel Algorithms and Implementations for the Grobner Bases Algorithm and the Characteristic Sets Method

9. Simon Gray (1998), MP: A Protocol for the Efficient Exchange of Mathematical Data

10. Weidong Liao (2003), IAMC Framework: Design and Prototyping

M. S. Students Graduated:

Maja Anderson, Ashish Bhargava, Dan Bennett, David Chiu, David Chrin, Yaser Doleh, Barbara Gates, Robert Hall, Chia-Kai Hsu, Chao-Jen Hsu, Chokchai Leangsuksun, Sam Lin, Carl Powell, Mohamed Rayes, Naveen Sharma, Cora Stackelberg, Trevor Tan, Vilmar Trevisan, Sanjiva Weerawarana, Carl Williams, Douglas Young, Pei Young.

Funded Research

1. NSF Grant MCS-85-04824 Design and Implementation of Computer Algorithms for Symbolic Manipulation; $71,000 (1985 - 1988)

2. Hewlett-Packard Equipment grant: $140,000 in hardware, software and maintenance, (1986)

3. NSF Grant EET-8714628 (in cooperation with The University of Akron); Advanced Computation Techniques in Finite Element Analysis for Engineering Applications, $61,925 (1988), $61,669 (1989), $65,017 (1990)

4. NSF Grant CCR-8714836: Design & Implementation of Algorithms for Symbolic Computation on Advanced Computer Systems; $62,310 (1988), $65,502 (1989), $68,800 (1990)

5. NSF Grant CDA-8820390: Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Instrumentation; $129,488 (1989)

6. DARPA Equipment Grant: The Warp Parallel Computer; $350,000 (1989)

7. Army Research Office Grant DAAL03-91-G-0149: High-level Parallel Programming Tools for Finite Element Analysis; $30,807 (1991), $55,000 (1992), $55,000 (1993), $24,193 (1994).

8. NSF Grant CDA-9211137: Automatic Code Generation Techniques for High-Performance Finite Element Computations (Postdoc Naveen Sharma)
Amount: $44,000 (1992-94)

9. NSF Grant CCR-9201800: Parallel Algorithms and Implementations for Symbolic Computation
Amount: $126,000 (1993-95)

10. NSF Grant CCR-9503650: Efficient Algorithms and System Interface for Scientific Computation
Amount: $105,000 (1995 - 97)

11. NSF Grant CCR-9721343: Parallel/Distributed Symbolic Computation
Amount: $177,778 (1998 - 2001)

12. NSF Grant CCR-0201772: Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation (IAMC) and Web-based Mathematics Education (WME)
Amount: $255,000 (2002 - 2005)

Industrial Activities

  • Information Technology Consulting --- sofpower.com
  • Ohio Governer's Award for University Faculty Entrepreneurship (2001) --- webtong.com

Research Visibility

  • Four-week consulting assignment to Beijing, Lanzhou, and Xian the People's Republic of China, sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, July-August, 1998.
  • Plenary address, Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation, 3rd Asian Symposium on Computer Mathematics (ASCM'98), Lanzhou University, Lanzhou P. R. China, August 6, 1998.
  • ISSAC'97 Program Committee Chair, 1997.
  • NSF proposal review panelist, Washington D.C., Spring 1997.
  • Program Committee Chairman, ISSAC'97, International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, July 21-23, 1997 Maui, Hawaii USA
  • NSF proposal review panelist, Washington D.C., Spring 1996.
  • Design, initiate, evolve, and maintain the NSF sponsored web site SymbolicNet as a world-wide information center for the area of Symbolic and Algebraic Computation.
  • Invited panelist, ARPA-NSF Workshop on ``Scalable Scientific Software Libraries and Problem Solving Environments,'' Sept. 25-27, 1995, Purdue University.
  • Member, site visit committee, Research Partnerships Program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), May 1994.
  • Faculty Visitor, Distributed Computation Group, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore California, January -- August, 1994.
  • Keynote speaker, Parallel Polynomial Operations: a progress report, PASCO'94 Conference, Linz, Austria, (1994).
  • Editor ACM Trans. on Mathematical Software (1987 - 1991)
  • ACM SIGSAM Chairman (1987 - 1991)
  • Proceedings Editor, ISSAC'92 Berkeley, California (1992)
  • Editor, Journal of Symbolic Computaton (2003--)

Books Published

  • An Introduction to Berkeley UNIX, Wadsworth Publishing Co., Belmont, CA, Feb. 1988, ISBN 0-534-08862-7, (528 pp. paper bound)
  • An Introduction to ANSI C on UNIX, Wadsworth Publishing Co., Belmont, CA, Sept. 1991, ISBN 0-534-14232-X, (432 pp. paper bound)
  • C++ with Object-oriented Programming, PWS Publishing Co., Boston, MA, Jan. 1994, ISBN 0-534-19644-6, (480 pp. paper bound with code disk)
  • An Introduction to UNIX with X and the Internet, PWS Publishing Co., Boston, MA, July 1996, ISBN 053494768-9 (556 pp. paper bound with code disk)
  • Java with OOP and Web Applications, Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, September 1998, ISBN 0-534-95206-2, (444 pp. paper bound)
  • Standard C++ with Object-Oriented Programming, Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, July 2000, ISBN 0-534-37131-0, (570 pp. paper bound)
  • Java with Object-Oriented Programming, Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, Aug. 2002
  • Web Design and Programming, (with Sanda Katila) Brooks/Cole, Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, Oct. 2003

Selected Research Publications:

1. GI/S: A Graphical User Interface For Symbolic Computation Systems, (with Douglas A. Young) Journal of Symbolic Computation, Academic Press, Jan. 1988, pp. 365-380.

2. Integrating Symbolic, numeric, and graphics computing techniques, Mathematical Aspects of Scientific Software, The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and Its Applications, vol. 14, Springer-Verlag, 1988, pp. 197-208.

3. Symbolic Derivation and Automatic Generation of Parallel Routines for Finite Element Analysis, (with Naveen Sharma) Proceedings, International Symposium of Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, (ISSAC'88), Springer-Verlag Lect. Notes in Comp. Sci., Vol. 358, 1989, pp. 33-56.

5. ``SUI: A System Independent User Interface for an Integrated Scientific Computing Environment,'' (with Yaser Doleh), Proceedings of the ISSAC'90, Addison-Wesley, Aug. 1990, pp. 88-95.

6. ``Parallel Univariate Polynomial Factorization on Shared-Memory Multiprocessors,'' Proceedings of the ISSAC'90, Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0-201-54892-5), Aug. 1990, pp. 145-151.

7. ``Generating Finite Element Programs for Multiprocessors,'' (with Naveen Sharma), in Proc. of the Fifth SIAM Conf. on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing, Mar. 1991, Houston, Texas.

8. ``A Portable Code Generator for CRAY FORTRAN,'' (with Sanjiva Weerawarana), ACM TOMS, September 1992, pp. 241-255. 9. ``High-level User Input Specifications for Finite Element Code Generation,'' (with N. Sharma), Proceedings, Design and Implementation of Symbolic Computation Systems (DISCO) April 1992, Bath UK.

10. ``The PIER Parallel FEA Program Generator,'' (with Naveen Sharma), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual ASME International Computers in Engineering Conference and Exposition, August 8-12, 1993, San Diego, California, USA, pp. 295-306.

11. ``Symbolic Computation and Parallel Software,'' Proceedings, First International Conference of the Austrian Center for Parallel Computation, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Parallel Computation, Vol. 591, 1991, pp. 316-337.

12. ``Parallel Univariate p-adic Lifting on Shared-Memory Multiprocessors,'' Proceedings, ISSAC'92, July 27-29, 1992, Berkeley, California, USA, pp. 168-176.

13. ``Polynomial Factorization: Sharp Bounds, Efficient Algorithms,'' (with Bernard Beauzamy and Vilmar Trevisan) Journal of Symbolic Computation, Vol. 15, 1993, pp. 393-413.

14. ``Parallelization of The Sparse Modular GCD Algorithm for Multivariate Polynomials on Shared Memory Multiprocessors,'' (with Mohamed Rayes and Kenneth Weber), Proceedings, ISSAC'94, 1994, Oxford, UK, pp. 66-73.

15. ``Chains of Recurrences -- a method to expedite the evaluation of closed-form functions,'' (with Olaf Bachmann and Eugene Zima), Proceedings, ISSAC'94, 1994, Oxford, UK, pp. 242-249.

16. ``MP: A Protocol for Efficient Exchange of Mathematical Expressions,'' (with Simon Gray and Norbert Kajler), Proceedings, ISSAC'94, 1994, Oxford, UK, pp. 330-335.

17. ``Parallel GCD for Sparse Multivariate Polynomials on Shared Memory Multiprocessors'' (with M. Rayes), Proceedings, PASCO'94, 1994, RISC/Linz, Austria, pp. 326-335.

18.``Pluggability Issues in the Multi Protocol,'' (with Simon Gray and Norbert Kajler) Proceedings, DISCO'96, Sept. 18-20, 1996, Karlsruhe, Germany.

19. ``Parallel Polynomial Operations on SMPs: An Overview,'' Journal of Symbolic Computation, Vol. 22, pp. 1-14, 1996.

20. ``Using PVM to Speedup Groebner Bases Computation'' (with Iyad A. Ajwa), Proceedings, Eighth IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, Oct. 16-19, 1996, Chicago, Illinois, USA, pp. 457-461.

21. ``Applying Parallel/Distributed Computing to Advanced Algebraic Computations'' (with Iyad A. Ajwa), Proceedings of IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON '97), July 14-18, 1997, Dayton, Ohio, USA, pp. 156-164.

22. ``PvmJobs: A Generic Parallel Jobs Library for PVM'' (with Hong H. Ong and Iyad A. Ajwa), Proceedings of IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON '97), July 14-18, 1997, Dayton, Ohio, USA, pp. 165-172.

23. ``Tools for Parallel/Distributed Mathematical Computation,'' Proceedings, PASCO '97 (July 20-22) Maui, Hawaii, USA, pp. 188-195.

24. ``Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation: a progress report,'' conference on {\em The Future of Mathematical Communication: 1999} (FMC99), Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), UC Berkeley, California, December 1-5, 1999.

25. ``Design and Protocol for Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation,'' Proceedings, ISSAC'99, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 28-31, 1999, ACM Press, pp. 291-298.

26. ``IAMC Architecture and Prototyping: A Progress Report,'' (with S. Gray, N. Kajler, D. Lin, W. Liao, and X. Zou) Proceedings, ISSAC'2001, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, July 22-25, 2001.

27. ``WME: Towards a Web for Mathematics Education,'' (with N. Kajler, Y. Zhou, and X. Zou) Proceedings, ISSAC'2003, Drexel U. Philadelphia, Penn. USA, Aug. 3-6, 2003, pp. 258-265.

28. ``Web-based Mathematics Education Pilot Project,'' (with Michael Mikusa, David Chiu, Xun Lai, Xiao Zou) Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Information Technology in Education (ITE'04), Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA, September 18, 2004, pp. 132-138.

29. ``Features and Advantages of WME: a Web-based Mathematics Education System,'' (with M. Mikusa, S. Al-shomrani, D. Chiu, X. Lai, and X. Zou) Proceedings of the IEEE Southeast Conference, IEEE, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, April 8-10 2005, pp. 621-629.

30. ``An SVG Based Tool for Plane Geometry and Mathematics Education,'' (with Xun Lai) IAMC 2005 Workshop, July 24 2005, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

31. ``An Approach for Interoperable and Customizable Web-based Mathematics Education,'' (with David Chiu) Proceedings, the Fifth IASTED INternational Conference on Web-based Education, Jan. 23-25, 2006, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, pp. 80-87.