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George Mason University

Faculty & Staff Directory

Evelyn Sander

  • Professor
  • Director, Graduate Studies

    Contact Info

    Evelyn Sander
    Name
    Dr. Evelyn Sander
    Job Title
    Professor
    Director, Graduate Studies
    Website
    Personal Site
    Office Number
    Exploratory Hall, Room 4408, MSN 3F2

    Affiliations

    Departments

    Research Areas

    • Applied Science
    • Math
    • Data Sciences
    • Modeling
    • Mathematical Design
    • Visualization
    • Computational Methods
    • Mathematical Biology

    Education

    • Northwestern University, B.A, 1990, Honors, Phi Beta Kappa
    • University of Minnesota, Ph.D., 1996, R. McGehee, advisor.

    About

    Along with research and teaching, I run the GMU Math MakerLab, which creates mathematical 3D prints.

    Recent professional service:

    • 2023- ,Co-Director of Graduate Studies
    • 2018-2023 , Editor in Chief, SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems
    • May, 2018, and January, 2019, Capitol Hill Advocacy Visit, with GMU Students, Association for Women in Mathematics
    • 2015-17, Organizer of 2017 SIAM Conference on Applications in Dynamical Systems (DS17), May 21 - May 25 at Snowbird, Utah, with Martin Wechselberger
    • 2017-19, Organizing Committee Member for SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems (DS19), Snowbird, UT
    • 2018, Organizing Committee, Midwest/McGehee Dynamical Systems Conference, November 1-4, 2018, Minneapolis, MN
    • Numerical Measures of Chaos and Regularity, SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems, Snowbird, UT, May, 2019 (with Jim Meiss)


    Recent research:

    • Fall 2014, IBM Visiting Professor, Applied Math, Brown University.
    • January 2014 - June 30, 2014, "Calculus-based STEM learning through the arts," Mason 4-VA Innovation Grant, $20,000.
    • July 2014, Travel Grant, Association for Women in Mathematics, $1736.
    • July 1, 2014 - June 30, 2019, "EXTREEMS-QED: Undergraduate Research in Computational and Data-Enabled Mathematics" (co-PI), NSF Grant Number DMS-1407087 $599,885.
    • Fall 2018, Research Member, Hamiltonian systems, from topology to applications through analysis, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley, CA.
    • September 1, 2019 - August 31, 2024, Simons Collaboration Grant, "Computation and visualization of dynamical structures" $42,000.


    Recent outreach activities:

    • USA Science and Engineering Festival Booth for SIAM, April 2016.
    • Maker Faire NOVA booth "Mathematics in Motion," March 2018.
    • USA Science and Engineering Festival Booth for SIAM, April 2018.
    • Math MakerLab participated in Laurel Ridge Elementary School STEM Night, March 2019.


    For further information, check out my Curriculum Vitae:
    http://math.gmu.edu/~sander/sander_vitae.html

    Current Research

    My research concerns numerical and theoretical methods of dynamical systems. Recent research includes

    • Period-doubling cascades and chaos
    • Quasiperiodicity
    • Turing instabilities in reaction-diffusion equations with local and nonlocal terms
    • Rigorous computation
    • Spinodal decomposition and nucleation for Cahn-Hilliard and diblock copolymer type equations. See Thomas Wanner’s pages on the phase separation phenomena of spinodal decomposition and nucleation.

    Teaching Focus

    Recent courses taught:

    • 2014-15, Fall: Sabbatical. Spring: Multivariable Calculus (3D pilot course), Honors Integral Calculus.
    • 2015-16, Fall: Partial Differential Equations, Linear Analysis (graduate core course), Spring: Integral Calculus, Mathematics of 3D Printing (3D pilot course). Reading courses: Undergraduate thesis and PhD thesis (1.5 fall, 3.5 spring).
    • 2016-17, Fall: Multivariable Calculus, Ordinary Differential Equations (graduate core course), Spring: Elementary Differential Equations, Modern Methods of Applied Math II. Reading courses: Undergraduate reading course (1 fall), Graduate reading course (1 fall, 1 spring), PhD thesis (1 fall, 1 spring)
    • 2017-18, Fall: Elementary Differential Equations, Partial Differential Equations, Undergraduate Seminar. Spring: Elementary Differential Equations. Reading courses: Undergraduate thesis (1 fall, 1 spring), Graduate reading course (1 fall, 1 spring), PhD thesis (1 fall, 1 spring).
    • 2018-19, Spring: Elementary Differential Equations, Introduction to Applied Math. Reading courses: Graduate reading course (1 fall, 1 spring), PhD thesis (1 fall, 1 spring).
    • NEW Fall 2019! Mathematics Through 3D Printing will be offered as a capstone course.

    Student advising last five years:

    • Advisor, Michael Crone, PhD, Math, Dynamics of harvested resources, with emphasis on commercially exploited fisheries, January 9 2015.
    • Advisor, James Trichilo, 2015-16, EXTREEMS Program, joint with Thomas Wanner.
    • Patrick O'Neal, 3D print lab, 2015-16.
    • Advisor, Robert Reznik, PhD, CSI, "Electric Field Effects On Single And Small Networks Of Neurons," January 20, 2016.
    • Advisor, Harout Boujakjian, Kathleen McLane, Conor Nelson, Spring 2016, MEGL Program.
    • Advisor, Arsah Rahman, Fall 2016, MEGL Program.
    • External PhD committee member, Yeyao Hu, GWU (student of Xiaofeng Ren), April 1, 2016.
    • External PhD committee member, Serap Tay-Stamoulas, UMBC (student of Muruhan Rathinam), June 17 2016.
    • Ratna Khatri, 3D print lab, 2016-17.
    • Master's committee, C. Braden Vernet (student of Matt Holzer), December, 2017.
    • Master's committee, Kaitlin McNary (student of Dan Anderson), December, 2017.
    • Advisor, Arsah Rahman, Understanding the behavior of quasiperiodic orbits, 2017-18, EXTREEMS Program.
    • Patrick Bishop, Arsah Rahman, 3D print lab, 2017-18.
    • PhD committee member, Scott Watson (Physics, student of Paul So), April 19, 2018.
    • Advisor, Micheal Belete and Andrew Hornstra, 2018, EXTREEMS Program. Micheal Belete won an Outstanding Poster Prize at JMM19 for his poster "Stable annulus solution for the diblock copolymer equation."
    • Member of the reading committee of the PhD thesis, Elena Queirolo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (student of Jan Bouwe van den Berg), April, 2019.
    • Master's committee, Taylor Stevens (student of Dan Anderson), May 2019.
    • Advisor, Vandana Saini, PhD, Math, December 2020.
    • Advisor, Sayomi Kamimoto, PhD, Math, December 2020.

    Current doctoral students: Patrick Bishop (Math)

    Selected Publications

    • The many facets of chaos. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 25(4), 15300, 2015, DOI:10.1142/S0218127415300116. with J.A. Yorke. Featured article. Cover article.
    • Chaos and its manifestations, SIAM News, 48(7), September 2015, with J. Yorke.
    • Effects of polarization induced by non-weak electric fields on the excitability of elongated neurons with active dendrites, Journal of Computational Neuroscience . 40(1): 27-50, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/s10827-015-0582-4, with R.I. Reznik, E. Barreto, and P. So.
    • Quasiperiodicity: Rotation numbers, Proceeding of The Foundations of Chaos Revisited: From Poincare to Recent Advancements, Chapter 7, 103-118, Springer Complexity, Switzerland, 2016, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-29701-9, with S. Das, Y. Saiki, and J. A. Yorke.
    • Degenerate nucleation in the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook model, SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems (SIADS), 15(1): 459-494, 2016. DOI: 10.1137/15M1028844, with D. Blömker and T. Wanner.
    • Measuring quasiperiodicity, Europhysics Letters. 114 (2016) 40005, with S. Das, C.B. Dock, Y. Saiki, M. Salgado-Flores, E. Sander, J. Wu, and J. A. Yorke.
    • Validated saddle-node bifurcations and applications to lattice dynamical systems, SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems (SIADS), 15-3 (2016) 1690-1733, DOI: 10.1137/16M1061011, with T. Wanner.
    • Generalized Lorenz equations on a three-sphere, The European Physical Journal Special Topics 226 (9) 1751–1764, 2017. DOI:10.1140/epjst/e2017-70055-y, with Y. Saiki and J.A. Yorke.
    • Rigorous continuation of bifurcation points in the diblock copolymer equation, Journal of Computational Dynamics, 2017, DOI:10.3934/jcd.2017003, with J-P Lessard and T. Wanner.
    • Quantitative quasiperiodicity, Nonlinearity, 30 (2017), no. 11, 4111–4140, DOI:10.1088/1361-6544/aa84c2, with S. Das, Y. Saiki, and J.A. Yorke.
    • Solving the Babylonian Problem of quasiperiodic rotation rates, Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems Volume 12, Number 8, December 2019, doi:10.3934/dcdss.2019145, with S. Das, Y. Saiki, J.A. Yorke.

    Awards

    • July 1, 2014 - June 30, 2019, "EXTREEMS-QED: Undergraduate Research in Computational and Data-Enabled Mathematics" (co-PI), NSF Grant Number DMS-1407087 $599,885.
    • Fall 2018, Research Member, Hamiltonian systems, from topology to applications through analysis, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley, CA.
    • September 1, 2019 - August 31, 2024, Simons Collaboration Grant, "Computation and visualization of dynamical structures" $42,000.

    Contact Info

    Evelyn Sander
    Name
    Dr. Evelyn Sander
    Job Title
    Professor
    Director, Graduate Studies
    Website
    Personal Site
    Office Number
    Exploratory Hall, Room 4408, MSN 3F2