Introduction to Mathematics

　　 　　

Subject Overview

The development of mathematics in Northwest A&F University can be traced back to the mathematics teaching group in 1934 when National Northwest A&F College was established. The Master’s Degree program of Applied Mathematics of Northwest A&F University was established in 1998. The first enrollment of master’s degree candidates started in 2000 and this program was approved as the first-level discipline of Master of Mathematics in 2017. Through the efforts of several generations and more than 80 years of teaching and scientific research practice, this program has gradually formed a new pattern with the characteristics of “closely combing with the mathematical practice in the process of agriculture and forestry research, carrying out applied mathematical theory and method research” and the strength of basic mathematical theory research has been constantly enhanced.

The Research Directions and Characteristics of the Discipline

Combined with the existing advantages and characteristics of mathematics, this discipline has broken the boundary of secondary disciplines to promote the development of inter-disciplines and has condensed the research direction, gathered talents and built up a foundation on the basis of the first-level discipline to gradually form 3 secondary disciplines as the main research objects, including basic mathematics, applied mathematics and probability and mathematical statistic.

1. Basic Mathematics

Aiming at the zero problem of integral function (which has an important connection with Riemann conjecture), the complete monotonicity, the operator theory, the supercongruence problem, the integral function theory, the elliptic function theory and other theories in the field of international basic mathematics, basic mathematics has formed its own characteristics and advantages, especially in the number theory direction. Great progress has also been made in stochastic delay differential equations, convex geometric analysis, algebraic superstructure theory, cryptography, computational geometry and inverse problems, non-local operator spectrum theory, algebraic representation theory.

2. Applied Mathematics

Mathematical modeling and research, which is involved in population ecology, agricultural insect pest control, animal science, infectious disease and other practical problems, has gradually formed its own research characteristics. In addition, inspiring research achievements have been made in the related theory and algorithm of ill-posed inverse problem, the network dynamics, and various performances of interconnection network graph in graph theory research, including the partial differential equation theory and its application, the random simulation algorithm and its application, the numerical linear algebra and its application, the artificial intelligence, the fuzzy mathematics theory and its application, the hyperspectral remote sensing image restoration, etc.

3. Agricultural Data Modeling and Analysis

Through the multivariate statistical analysis method, the model construction and analysis of biological and ecological data and the comparison and analysis of the structure and function of DNA sequence and protein sequence have formed their own research characteristics in the field of gene function mining based on big data acquired by high-throughput sequencing technology. In addition, based on the natural theory, some fruitful research achievements have been made in such aspects as heuristic algorithm-intelligent computing method, scale conversion of multiple agricultural remote sensing data, game model method for decision-making problems in rural economic and financial market, data statistical analysis method and its application of rural economic and financial trend prediction.

Scientific Research Teams and Achievements

With the rapid development of the discipline construction and the implementation of the strategy of strengthening the school with talents, this discipline has established a teaching staff with rich teaching experience, extensive scientific research background, and reasonable age structure. Among them, there are 6 professors, 21 associate professors, 18 supervisors for postgraduate students, including one selected as “Shaanxi Science and Technology New Star”, and 3 teaching and research teams. Relying upon the discipline construction, an applied mathematics research institute and a mathematics laboratory have been established. In the past five years, teachers of this discipline have undertaken 11 projects supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China and 15 provincial and ministerial scientific research projects, completed 8 monographs and published more than 60 SCI and EI papers as the first author (or corresponding author), which included 1 article in Transactions of American Mathematical Society, 2 in Journal of Differential Equations, and 1 in SIAM Journal on Applied Systems. The teacher staff has undertaken 11 projects supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China and 15 provincial and ministerial level and other projects. The total number of research fund amounts to 3 million RMB. One teacher has been approved as “Science and Technology New Star” of Shaanxi Province.

Postgraduate Cultivation

The length of schooling is 3 years, with a maximum of 4 years. The coverage of national scholarship, academic scholarship, social scholarship, research assistant post allowance is 100%. According to the graduate training program of Northwest A&F University, after completing the credit requirements, under the guidance of their supervisor or supervisor group, academic postgraduate students should comprehensively determine the research topics of their dissertations based on the needs of scientific research, students’ personal knowledge structure, research interests and other factors. Once the research topics are determined, under the guidance of their supervisor or mentor group, students should look up and read relevant literatures related to their research topic to learn about the research status quo, the research trend and the existing problems at home and abroad, to make clear the basis and significance of research topic, to determine the research method and technical route to complete their learning, research and paper defense during the period of academic years.

In 5 recent years, 40 graduate candidates have been enrolled and 52 have graduated, who have obtained M.S degree. Among them, one student has been awarded the first prize of National Postgraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling, 5 students national Scholarship and 5 students president scholarship. 18 SCI and EI papers have been published. After graduation, some of them went to key universities for further doctoral studies, some were engaged in teaching and research in universities or scientific research institutes, and some chose to work in data processing, software development, management or other related work in a company.