(added on September 8, 2008):

Householder Award XIII

Winner: David Bindel (UC Berkeley) for his dissertation "Structured and Parameter-Dependent Eigensolvers for Simulation-Based Design of Resonant MEMS".

Honorable mentions: D. Steven Mackey (University of Manchester), Ivan Markovsky (KU Leuven) and Emre Mengi (NYU).

Original annoucement:
Nominations are solicited for the Alston S. Householder Award XIII (2008). The award will be presented to the author of the best dissertation in numerical linear algebra submitted by the recipient of a PhD earned between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2007. The term numerical linear algebra is intended to describe those parts of mathematical research that have both linear algebraic aspects and numerical content or implications. Thus, for example, a dissertation concerned with the numerical solution of differential equations or the numerical solution of an optimization problem would be eligible if linear algebra is central to the research contribution. To qualify, the dissertation must have been submitted to fulfil requirements for a PhD degree or equivalent. Candidates from countries in which a formal dissertation is not normally written at that level may submit an equivalent piece of work. The Householder Award, given every three years, was established at the 1969 Gatlinburg Symposium (now renamed the Householder Symposium) to recognize the outstanding contributions of Alston S. Householder, 1904--1993, to numerical analysis and linear algebra. Entries will be assessed by an international committee consisting of

James Demmel (University of California, Berkeley),
Howard Elman (University of Maryland),
Sabine Van Huffel (K.U. Leuven),
Volker Mehrmann (TU Berlin),
Charles Van Loan (Cornell University, Chair).

The candidate's research supervisor (or sponsor) must submit a copy of the dissertation and an appraisal by email to Professor Charles Van Loan: cv@cs.cornell.edu. At least one other letter of recommendation supporting the nomination is required. All submitted materials must be in pdf format and be received no later than February 1, 2008.

The award will be presented at the Householder Symposium XVII, to be held June 1-6, 2008 in Zeuthen (near Berlin), Germany.

Candidates on the short list will receive invitations to the meeting. Previous Householder Award winners were F. Robert (Grenoble) in 1971, Ole Hald (New York University) in 1974, Daniel D. Warner (University of California, San Diego) in 1977, E. Marques de Sa' (Coimbra) and Paul Van Dooren (K. U. Leuven) in 1981 (shared), Ralph Byers (Cornell University) and James M. Demmel (University of California, Berkeley) in 1984 (shared), Nicholas J. Higham (University of Manchester) in 1987, Alan Edelman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Maria Beth Ong (University of Washington) in 1990 (shared), Hong-Guo Xu (Fudan University) and Barry Smith (New York University) in 1993 (shared), Ming Gu (Yale University) in 1996, Jörg Liesen (Bielefeld) in 1999, Jing-Rebecca Li (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 2002, and Jasper van den Eshof (Utrecht University) in 2005.