By Claire Postlethwaite
The SIAM Activity Group on Dynamical Systems loves a good poster! The Red Sock Award—which recognizes the best poster presentations in dynamical systems by a student or postdoctoral researcher—is traditionally given at the biennial SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems, and the 2023 iteration of the conference (DS23) was no exception. 75 participants presented posters during an evening poster session and dessert reception at DS23, which took place two weeks ago in Portland, Ore. A panel of judges selected five of those posters as recipients of the Red Sock Award, and awardees were honored the following morning.
The Red Sock Award is named in honor of James A. Yorke and his distinctive footwear, and each winner receives $100.00 and a pair of red socks. Red Sock poster prizes have been associated with the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems for well over two decades, and the award was made an official SIAM prize in 2013. The judges for DS23 commented on the outstanding quality of all of the posters at the session, which made it difficult for them to select winners.
The awardees and the titles of their prize-winning posters are as follows:
- Maarten Droste (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): “Determinants of Optimal Metabolic Pathway Choice by Microorganisms”
- Indranil Ghosh (Massey University): “The Bifurcation Structure Within Robust Chaos of Piecewise-linear Maps”
- Andrea Lama (Scuola Superiore Meridionale): “Herdability of Complex Multi-agent Systems”
- Lucia Layritz (Technical University of Munich): “Early Warning Signals of Bifurcations — The Case of \(\alpha\)-stable Noise”
- Daphne Nesenberend (Leiden University): “Pattern Formation in Mechanochemical Models.”
Members of the DS23 Organizing Committee express their thanks to this year’s panel of judges, who braved “gymnasium-like” conditions in the heat and humidity of the exhibition center. The panel comprised the following individuals:
- Kevin Mitchell (University of California, Merced)
- Chris Budd (University of Bath)
- Caroline Wormell (Australian National University)
- Morgan Meertens (University of Auckland)
- Jason Bramburger (Concordia University)
- Rob Sturman (University of Leeds)
- Punit Gandhi (Virginia Commonwealth University)
- Heather Zinn Brooks (Harvey Mudd College)
- James Meiss (University of Colorado Boulder)
- Anna Nelson (Duke University)
- Ulrike Feudel (University of Oldenburg)
- Lauren Smith (University of Auckland)
- Laurette Tuckerman (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
- Alexandria Volkening (Purdue University)
- James Yorke (University of Maryland, College Park)
- Nicolas Verschueren (University of Exeter)
- Stephanie Dodson (Colby College).
The panel of judges was chaired by Priya Subramanian (University of Auckland) and Gary Froyland (University of New South Wales).
Congratulations to the 2023 winners of the Red Sock Award, and to all participants of the DS23 poster session!
Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Lauren Smith (University of Auckland), Gary Froyland (University of New South Wales), Priya Subramanian (University of Auckland), and Zachary Kilpatrick (University of Colorado Boulder) for their contributions to this piece.
Claire Postlethwaite is an associate professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She is currently the program director for the SIAM Activity Group on Dynamical Systems.