Paul Gartside, Adam Leibovich Are Named 2010 Bellet Teaching Excellence Awardees

Paul Gartside

Adam Leibovich

The University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences has named Paul Gartside, a professor in the Department of Mathematics, and Adam Leibovich, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, winners of the 2010 Tina and David Bellet Teaching Excellence Award. The Bellet Award recipients will be honored at a by-invitation-only dinner at 7 p.m. April 7 in the University Club’s Fraternity Grill.

The Bellet Awards were established in 1998 and endowed in 2008 with a $1.5 million gift from School of Arts and Sciences alumnus David Bellet (CAS ’67) and his wife, Tina, to recognize outstanding and innovative undergraduate teaching in the School of Arts and Sciences. A committee appointed by the Arts and Sciences associate dean for undergraduate studies evaluates teaching skills as evidenced by student-teaching and peer evaluations, student testimonials, and dossiers submitted by the nominees. Full-time faculty who have taught in Arts and Sciences during the past three years are eligible. Each award recipient receives a cash prize.

Gartside joined the University in 2000. He was a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford in England from 1993 to 1997 and during that time, from 1995 to 1996, had appointments as a Royal Society postdoctoral fellow at Moscow State University in Russia and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Gartside was a European Union presidential postdoctoral fellow from 1997 to 1998 at the University of Galway in Ireland and a junior lecturer from 1998 to 2000 at Oxford.

In Pitt’s mathematics department, Gartside is graduate director and has served on the Undergraduate Committee since 2007, the Computer Committee since 2001, and the VIGRE (Vertical Integration of Research and Education in the Mathematical Sciences) Planning Committee since 2003. Gartside also was a member of the Graduate Committee from 2001 to 2006 and the Engineering Integrated Curriculum Committee from 2000 to 2006.

Gartside has worked on various Web-based tools to support math research and learning, including MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) and Mozilla’s “Latex for the Web.” He contributed to the development of Alice, a Java and Maple-based math homework system that has vital features not shared by any available commercial system. He also has published eight issues of MathZine, a Web department magazine (www.math.pitt.edu/magazine.html). He has written more than 40 articles that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals.

In addition to his holding fellowships in England, New Zealand, Russia, and Ireland, Gartside received an Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Grant from Pitt in summer 2001 and was coprincipal investigator on a $998,937 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that led to Math 1230—The Big Ideas of Mathematics, a course for undergraduate math majors that he developed with Pitt math colleague Beverly Michael and with Ellen Ansell and Margaret S. Smith from Pitt’s School of Education.

Gartside earned a BA degree, Class I, and a PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 1990 and 1993, respectively.

Leibovich, director of graduate studies in the physics and astronomy department, began teaching at Pitt in 2003. Before that, he held postdoctoral research fellowships at Carnegie Mellon University from 1997 to 2000—with a visiting postdoctoral position at California Institute of Technology in October 1998—and at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., from 2000 to 2002. While at Fermilab, Leibovich also had visiting postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon.

Leibovich’s departmental committee service includes Recruitment; Student Support, as chair; Awards; Planning and Budget; and Web Content. He was a member of the Zaccheus Daniel Fellowship Selection Committee in 2009 and is on the Graduate Program Assessment Committee and, as chair, on the Graduate Curriculum Committee.

The author of more than 40 refereed publications, Leibovich has given talks at conferences, workshops, and schools. He delivered a public lecture titled “Exploring the Standard Model of Particle Physics” at the Allegheny Observatory in 2006. Leibovich served as a judge for the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair in 2009 and the Pittsburgh Public School District Science Fair in 2007.

Leibovich is the recipient of a $411,083 NSF CAREER Grant for Theoretical Applications of Effective Field Theories for Current and Future Experiments, 2006-2011, and is coprincipal investigator with Pitt colleagues E.A Duncan and Ayres Freitas on Investigations in High-Energy Physics, funded for $293,000, 2003-2006, and for $379,930, 2009-2012. Leibovich also received a $100,000 Research Corporation for Science Advancement Cottrell Scholar Award for 2006-2011.

Leibovich earned a BA degree in physics at Cornell University in 1992 and a PhD degree in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1997.