Alberto Bressan is Named Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Mathematics
Alberto Bressan, professor of mathematics at Penn State, has been named Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Mathematics for his excellence in research. The chair is one of the highest honors awarded to Eberly College of Science faculty members. As part of this appointment, Bressan will receive research funds from an endowment given to Penn State by the Eberly Family Trust. In 1986, the Eberly Family Trust gave $10 million to establish a chair in each department in the Eberly College of Science, to create endowments for biotechnology, and to provide funding for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. At that time, the gift was among the largest donations made to the campaign to raise private support for Penn State.
Bressan's research interests fall within the broad area of nonlinear analysis, which includes such topics as nonlinear partial differential equations, optimization problems, the mathematical theory of control, and differential games. He is highly regarded for his work in the field of hyperbolic conservation laws, where he has established fundamental properties of solutions and the convergence of vanishing viscosity approximations.
Bressan has written two books. The first one, titled "Hyperbolic Systems of Conservation Laws: The One-Dimensional Cauchy Problem," was published by Oxford University Press in 2000. The second one, titled Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Control, was co-authored by Benedetto Piccoli and appeared in 2007 within the book series of the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Bressan also has authored more than 120 scientific papers. He currently serves on editorial boards for 17 international journals, including Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems, Journal of Differential Equations, and SIAM's Journal on Mathematical Analysis.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in November of 2003, Bressan was a professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy from 1991 to 2003 and an associate professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1986 to 1990. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Padova in Italy in 1978 and his doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1982. In 2006, Bressan received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in Mathematics, Mechanics, and Applications from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. This prize is among the highest awards reserved for Italian citizens for achievements in the arts, music, literature, history, philosophy, medicine, and physical and mathematical sciences.