Citizenship American Role Mathematician | Name Nancy Kopell | |
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Born November 8, 1942New York City ( 1942-11-08 ) Thesis Commuting diffeomorphisms (1967) Known for Computational neuroscience Awards MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada, Noether Lecture Notable awards Sloan Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship | ||
Big ideas for busy people 2013 nancy kopell
Nancy Jane Kopell (born November 8, 1942, New York City) is an American mathematician and professor at Boston University since 1986. She held visiting positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France (1970), MIT (1975, 1976-1977), and the California Institute of Technology (1976). She is one of the few mathematicians that focuses on the field of applied biomathematics. The focus of her research includes use of mathematical models to analyze biological and neurophysiological features of neuron firing. The techniques Kopell uses include extensions of invariant manifold theory, averaging theory, and geometric methods for singularly perturbed equations. From the peak of her career in 1990, she has contributed to over 200 published research articles in the field of biomathematics. Her current interests include topics such as: how does the brain produce its dynamics physiological mechanisms, how do brain rhythms take part in cognition sensory processing, attention, memory, motor control, and how can pathologies of brain dynamics help to understand symptoms of neurological diseases Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, epilepsy as well as alternate states of consciousness anesthesia. She collaborates widely with experimentalists and clinicians in order to conduct research on these topics.
Contents
- Big ideas for busy people 2013 nancy kopell
- Early life and education
- Academic career
- Honors and memberships
- Selected publications
- Prestigious lectures given
- References
Early life and education
Kopell was born on November 8, 1942 and grew up on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. Her father was an accountant and her mother and older sister also majored in mathematics. In 1963, she graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. From a young age, she was exposed to mathematics. Her mother was a mathematics major, her father worked as an accountant, and her older sister studied math.
As a child, she had a severe eye problem which taught her how to cope with being "different." This ability to cope would help her successfully deal with feelings of marginalization she would later experience as a female scientist. She attributes her professional success to this ability as well as the support she received from mentors throughout her career. Her high school teachers encouraged her to go into the mathematics field.
During her undergraduate education at Cornell University, she registered for a mathematics honors program and was the only female participant. She considered several majors, such as economics and chemistry, but chose to major in math. Kopell graduated from Cornell with an A.B. in 1963.
She then decided to attend graduate school in order to "find an alternative to the more traditional life her family expected for her." Kopell originally applied to programs on the East Coast and was admitted to all of them except for one; however, after being encouraged by another student, she chose to attend school on the West Coast instead. She was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, with a fellowship and graduated with an M.A. and a Ph.D. in 1967. At Berkeley, she did well on her exams and was known as the "bright female." However, she struggled in the early stages of her dissertation work and switched supervisors to Stephen Smale. Smale suggested a problem which Kopell almost singlehandedly solved, leading to her thesis in the field of dynamical systems which catapulted her career.
Academic career
After completing her graduate education, Kopell accepted an instructorship at MIT. There, she met collaborator Lou Howard, who she published several articles with. She later met her husband, Gabriel Stolzenberg, at Boston University.
While Kopell did her thesis work in theoretical mathematics, she later switched to applied mathematics.
In 1969, she joined Northeastern University as faculty, becoming a full professor in 1978. In 1986, she became a professor of mathematics at Boston University where, in 2009, she became the first woman at Boston University to be named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor. She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1990 for her work developing methods of dynamical systems to attack problems of applied mathematics. She is currently Director and Co-Founder of the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, which consists of a group of over two dozen labs, mostly in the Boston Area, working on brain dyanmics and their cognitive implications. She is also Co-Director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet).
Her research interest is the dynamics of the nervous system: how the brain produces its dynamics (physiological mechanisms), how brain rhythms take part in cognition (sensory processing, attention, memory, motor control), and how pathologies of brain dynamics can help to understand symptoms of neurological diseases (Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, epilepsy) as well as alternate states of consciousness (anesthesia).