Phi Beta Kappa recognizes CAAM’s Mark Embree

Phi
Beta Kappa recognizes CAAM’s Mark Embree

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Not many people
are wild about numbers. Fewer still are truly thrilled at
the prospect of talking to someone — even an unfamiliar
reporter — about eigenvalues or matrices.

Fortunately for
his students, Mark Embree is the rare exception. Embree,
assistant professor of computational and applied mathematics,
is the winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize for 2004.

The prize, which
includes a $2,000 award, is given annually by the Rice chapter
of Phi Beta Kappa, the national fraternity whose members
were the top students in their graduating classes. The award
is designed to recognize young faculty and is open only
to assistant professors.

After just a
few short minutes, anyone can see that numbers and equations
are more to Embree than ink on a page or chalk on a board.
They are wondrous, lifelike things that flow, change, move
and react.

“I have
a lot to learn about teaching,” Embree said. “I
believe I had an inside track for this award because I teach
linear algebra and numerical analysis, the fundamental tools
of scientific computing.

“These fields
are both mathematically elegant and widely applicable,”
he said. “It’s a joy to tell students about them
and show how they work.”

Embree said he
tries to make his classes more exciting with lots of firsthand
examples that illustrate the power of scientific computing.
During a Rice News interview last week, Embree called up
an example on his desktop computer. It’s a colored
chart that represents the values of a matrix, and the colors
in half of the picture are gradually transformed from fiery
red to cobalt blue as the algorithm governing the simulation
goes through progressive iterations.

Embree joined
Rice’s faculty in 2002 after doctoral and postdoctoral
studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He said
one of the reasons he chose to come to Rice was its reputation
as a great undergraduate teaching university with excellent

students.

“A sophomore
approached me at the start of my second semester here, saying,
‘I realized this summer that I hadn’t done any
undergraduate research yet, and I’ve been wasting my
money,’” Embree said. “What teacher wouldn’t
love that kind of drive and enthusiasm?”