Yuxi Zheng Named Head of Department of Mathematics

Yuxi Zheng, a professor of mathematics at Penn State University, has been appointed as the head of the Department of Mathematics. He succeeds John Roe, a professor of mathematics who served as head since 2007.

In his research, Zheng studies partial differential equations, an area of mathematics that has applications in all branches of sciences. Zheng's focus is on hyperbolic partial differential equations, which typically are used in aerodynamics, materials research, astronomy, weather forecasting, and some financial, life, and social sciences.

Zheng's previous honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, which he was granted in 1995. He has published over 70 mathematical articles in premier journals such as Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Archive for Rational Mechanics, Physica D, and Communications in Mathematical Physics. He has published a monograph called Systems of Conservation Laws, and he has contributed several chapters to mathematics and physics textbooks. He has served as editor of the journals Dynamics of Partial Differential Equations and Communications on Pure and Applied Analysis, and as managing editor of Methods and Applications of Analysis. He has presented many invited talks at scientific symposia in the United States and in Canada, Japan, Germany, China, and several South American countries.

At Penn State, he is a popular teacher, and he has taught an especially popular graduate-level mathematics course with a record number of doctoral students. He has directed five doctoral students, one of whom will serve as a department chairman at another university in six months.

Zheng joined the Penn State faculty in 2001. He served as associate head for administration in the Department of Mathematics from 2003 to 2006 and from 2009 to 2010. From 2010 to 2012, Zheng was at Yeshiva University in New York to help the institution successfully establish a doctoral program in mathematics. He earned a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1990, and a bachelor's degree at Shandong University in China in 1983.