Peter Kramer

Dr. Kramer received his B.A. in Physics from Princeton University, and earned his Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University under the supervision of Professor A.J. Majda.  Dr. Kramer took a three-year Courant Instructor and NSF postdoctoral research fellow position at the Courant Institute at New York University, before joining the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Rensselaer as an assistant professor in 2000. Dr. Kramer's research focuses on the application of ideas and techniques from probability theory and differential equations to model and analyze complex systems which evolve in time and involve too many variables to represent explicitly in a practical computational model.  The effects of the unresolved variables on the quantities of interest are treated in a statistical fashion.  Current areas of research include transport within biological cells, the swimming dynamics of irregular colonies of flagellated cells, statistical modeling in environmental science, and the statistical inference of neuronal network topology from firing data.  This work is in collaboration with scientists and engineers at Arizona State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, as well as at Rensselaer. Dr. Kramer supervises the preparation of undergraduates at Rensselaer for the annual Mathematical and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling, and supports the organization of the Mathematical Problems in Industry Workshop (2000-present).