Stony Brook, NY – August 22, 2013
Prof. David Gu, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University, was selected to receive the prestigious 2013 Morningside Gold Medal of Applied Mathematics during the International Congress of Chinese Mathematician (ICCM) in Taipei, Taiwan. Prof. Gu was recognized for his work in computational mathematics and was the only scholar in applied mathematics to receive the award this year. During the ceremony, in addition to the gold medal, he received a certificate and a cash award of $25,000.
The ICCM is a triennial event that brings together Chinese and overseas mathematicians to discuss the latest research developments in both pure and applied mathematics. The Morningside Medal is the most prestigious award for young Chinese mathematicians. It honors mathematicians of Chinese descent, under the age of 45, for their exceptional achievements in pure and applied mathematics. Both the ICCM and the Morningside Medals are modeled after the renowned older quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), and the Fields Medal.
Dr. Gu’s fundamental contributions are to the interdisciplinary field focus on Computational Conformal Geometry, which combines modern geometry and computer science. Through collaboration, Prof. Gu, developed discrete theories and computational algorithms in Computational Conformal Geometry, and applied them to a range of engineering solutions involving computer graphics, visualization, vision, geometric modeling, networking and medical imaging.
“Receiving this award is a tribute to David’s outstanding interdisciplinary work across mathematics and computer science and the promise he holds for the future,” said Dennis Assanis, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs.
Upon receiving the award, Dr. Gu thanked colleagues from the Department of Computer Science for their “mentorship, consistent support, and encouragement”, in particular, Prof. Arie Kaufman for his mentorship and guidance in medical imaging and visualization; Prof. Hong Qin for collaboration in geometric modeling; Prof. Jie Gao for insight related to wireless sensor network; and, Professors Dimitris Samaras and Klaus Muller for computer vision and visualization support.
David Gu is an associate professor, with tenure, in the Department of Computer Science. He received his Ph.D from the Department of Computer Science at Harvard University and B.S. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. In addition to the Morningside Award, Dr. Gu has received the Department’s Research Excellence Award and the National Science Foundation’s Early Career Award.