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	Ono's Presidential Award a Penn State First
Ken Ono

Ken Ono, the Louis A. Martarano professor of mathematics, has been selected for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)--the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.  Ono is the first Penn State faculty member to receive the award since its inception in 1996.

Ono's award will be conferred during a White House ceremony on 12 April.  The award, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and earmarked for scientists and engineers early in their careers who show exceptional leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge, includes a monetary grant of $500,000 during a five-year period.

"The award means the availability of more resources for research--in terms of computers, travel, and visits to Penn State by renowned mathematicians," Ono said. "This honor also allows me to provide many opportunities for postdoctoral students, graduate students, undergraduates, and even high-school students through outreach programs."

"These are the 'Golden Globe Awards' for the Albert Einsteins and Marie Curies of tomorrow--our nation's most promising scientist and engineering educators," NSF director Rita Colwell said.  According to the NSF, awardees are selected because of their exemplary research accomplishments and their special commitment to the integration of research and education.

Ono became eligible for the PECASE award after receiving a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) last year.  According to the most recent statistics, for 1998, CAREER awardees were selected from more than 1,600 applicants and PECASE awardees from more than 1,100.  Among this year's PECASE awardees, Ono was the only mathematician.

In addition to research support, Ono plans to use the award to enhance his support of several educational outreach activities.  Among them are the National Youth Science Camp, a month-long camp conducted each summer by the National Youth Science Foundation in West Virginia for 100 high-school seniors.  The governor of each state selects two exceptional seniors to serve as delegates at the camp.  Ono coordinates the math portion of the camp.

He also supports Math Club 2000 at State College Area High School.  The group of about 30 students, co-sponsored by math teacher Deb Wells, meets monthly to participate in competitions and listen to guest speakers.  Ono plans to award scholarships to members of the club.

"Some people might not expect a typical mathematician to be this involved in outreach," said Ono, whose educational efforts were featured on National Public Radio in 1998.  "But my work on number theory has extended into other areas, and it's been meaningful and well-received by students."

It's been meaningful to Ono as well.  He says he enjoys his work with the summer-camp students and those he mentors at Penn State--a group that includes three postdoctoral fellows who have accepted job offers, two Ph.D. students with postdoctoral positions for next year, and two undergraduates who have published articles in professional journals and have been accepted by top graduate programs in mathematics.

Another aspect of his outreach activity includes correspondence by e-mail and telephone with students interested in mathematics from all over the country.  Their accomplishments include several top-five finishes in national and international mathematics and science competitions.  One such student, Jayce Getz of Big Sky. Montana, earned second place and $75,000 in the Intel Science Talent Search (formerly the Westinghouse Science Talent Search) earlier this week.

"Sharing the students' successes is the greatest reward," Ono said.  "The thrill of watching the high-school kids win science fairs, the undergrads write their first research papers, the grad students accept their first postdoctoral positions, and the postdocs accept tenure-track jobs is like reliving some of the most thrilling times in my life.  I am privileged to have the chance to play such a role."

Ono, who joined the Penn State faculty in the fall of 1997, is a number theorist whose interests include the theory of partitions.  He has written more than 60 research papers about elliptic curves, molecular forms, and partitions, which is the study of how whole numbers are expressed as sums of other numbers.  For example, seven partitions exist for the number 5: 5, 4+1, 3+2, 3+1+1, 2+2+1, 2+1+1+1, and 1+1+1+1+1.

His work on partitions has led to surprising new perspectives on the deeper structure of connections between partitions and complicated abstract objects in other areas of mathematics.  In many cases, Ono has made these complicated theoretical constructions more explicit by using partitions -- in one instance using them to devise a new method for studying points on elliptic curves.  This is one of the main objects in the recently celebrated proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which for 350 years was the world's most famous unsolved mathematical problem.

The PECASE awards are given to foster innovative and influential developments in science and technology, to increase the awareness of careers in science and engineering, and to recognize the scientific missions of the federal agencies that sponsor the awards, including NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Transportation.

In addition to the PECASE and CAREER awards from the NSF, Ono was granted a five-year, $625,000 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering earlier this year.  In 1999, he received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  He was named a National Security Agency Young Investigator in 1997 and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in 1995.

Ono earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1989 and a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1993.  He held faculty positions in mathematics at Woodbury University in Burbank, California, from 1991 to 1993, at the University of Georgia from 1993 to 1994, and at the University of Illinois from 1994 to 1995.  Ono was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1995 to 1997, when he joined the faculty at Penn State.
 
 

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Last update:   16 March 2000