E. Bruce Pitman

   Associate Dean for Research and Sponsored Programs

   College of Arts and Sciences

   Professor, Department of Mathematics

   Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

   Department of Mathematics
   244 Mathematics Building
   State University of New York
   Buffalo, N.Y. 14260-2900
   (716)645-6284  ext. 130 
   (716)645-5039  fax
   pitman@buffalo.edu

HOT FLASH 1 : The Center for Computational Research , UB's supercomputing center, is a leading academic supercomputing center. A 64 processor Origin 3000, a 72 processor IBM SP, and several large clusters are available to UB faculty and researchers.

HOT FLASH 2 : The CCR webpage has links to the summer high school workshops in computational science. For graduate students, we have established a Certificate in Computational Science, and a two-semester course in high performance computing. You can also take a look at some of the research projects at the CCR and videos produced in courses and projects.

An interesting article on the sorry state of science education.

Through CCR, we have developed outreach programs for high school science students and teachers. Most recently, we developed a bioinformatics education and curriculum project together with City Honors in Buffalo, Orchard Park High School and Mt. St. Mary Academy in Kenmore. Here are a couple of reports on that project: a Business First article, one from the Buffalo News , and a piece from WBFO.

Professor Pitman works in two distinct areas. One is granular materials, the behavior of particulate material under flow conditions. Very basic questions about these materials are not understood, questions like:
What is a good constitutive model for these materials?
How does deformation proceed?
What causes failure of a sample of material?
What role does interstitial fluid play?
What loads do these materials generate on storage vessels?

A recent effort centers large-scale geophysical mass flows -- avalanches, debris flows, mudslides. Together with colleagues in Geology, Geography and Engineering, we have developed a modeling and computing environment with the goal of better understanding of these flows. The ultimate aim of the effort is to assist scientists and public safety officials in hazard assessment and risk mitigation. The webpage contains other information about this project.

Pitman's other major research interest is renal hemodynamics. Together with colleagues in math and physiology, Pitman has been studying the dynamics of the Tubuloglomerular Feedback system (TGF). TGF acts to regulate blood flow into the nephrons, the primary functional unit in the kidney. It is in the nephrons that blood is concentrated into urine. Bringing together techniques of applied mathematics and advanced scientific computing, the models developed offer insight into the bifurcation phenomenon, oscillations, coupling and entrainment, and provide a framework for understanding some of the results seen in experimental work.

Here are several papers you may want to look at.

The Applied Math Group page contains information about Applied Math research interests of other UB faculty members.

For information on courses I am teaching, or courses I have taught recently, follow me 

Any further questions? E-mail me at pitman@buffalo.edu.

Back to the  Math Department

A link I'm proud of, the granddaddy of all roadraces the Boston Marathon.I've had fun at Boston -- 1996: 3:09:36; 1997: 3:08:24; 1998: 3:09:02; 1999: crash and burn (or 30K of running plus 4 hours in Waltham Hospital's lovely ER). Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.