Panel Discussion to Focus on Fractals in Art and Science

The Instructor Exchange Ad-Hoc Committee of the Fairmont State University Faculty Senate will host a Panel Discussion on Fractals in Arts and Sciences. The event will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 27, in Multi-media Room A of the Ruth Ann Musick Library on the shared main campus of Fairmont State and Pierpont Community & Technical College.

Moderated by Dr. Tad Kato, the Chair of the Instructor Exchange Ad-Hoc Committee, the Panel Discussion is sponsored by the Office of the Provost. The theme of the forum will be “Fractals in Science and Arts.” Panelists will introduce the application of the concept of “fractals (self-similarity patterns)” in each field and will extend the discussion to its implication to the notion of “interconnectedness” within and between the disciplines. 

Students, faculty and staff of Fairmont State and Pierpont and members of the local community are invited to attend.

Moderator & Panelist:

• Tadashi Kato (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Fairmont State. He received his Ph.D. from the Ohio University and has been teaching at Fairmont State since 2003. His research interest is in the field of psychophysiology in which he has investigated the electrophysiological effects of various psychophysiological stimuli on human physiological process. One line of his recent research was the examination of the association between fractal dimension of sound waves in the environment and fractal dimension of electroencephalogram (brain wave) and its research results have been presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in 2011. 

Panelists:

• Martina Elfriede Bachlechner (Ph.D.) received her doctorate in physics from the Johannes Kepler University in Austria. After her post-doctorate years at Louisiana State University, she moved to West Virginia. Since 2011, Bachlechner has been a full-time faculty member in the School of Business, Aviation and Technology at Pierpont Community & Technical College. She also collaborated with Dr. Ever Barbero at West Virginia University through which she was involved in Dr. John Sandro Rivas Murillo’s investigation into the fractal structures of silica aerogels and xerogels.

• The music of Composer Daniel Eichenbaum (DMA) has been performed and published throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In addition to composing, he is a devoted teacher, working with students of all ages from the United States and abroad.   He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Fairmont State. From 2005–2007, he was Instructor of Music at Mahidol University in Thailand and also taught master classes in Myanmar. He earned his DMA in Music Composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2011, studying with James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Chen Yi and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long.

• Mahmood Hossain (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Fairmont State. Hossain’s research has revolved around artificial intelligence, data mining and database systems. His doctoral research focused on clustering multiple heterogeneous datasets. The application domain for this research was document clustering. He is currently exploring innovative applications of data mining techniques in different areas, including the mathematical analysis of the association between fractal dimension of sound waves and that of electroencephalogram in collaboration with Kato in psychology.

• Nick LeJeune (MFA) received his Masters of Fine Arts in Arts and Design with a concentration in Intermedia from West Virginia University in 2011. Since 2010, he has been working as an instructor in Electronic Art at the School of Fine Arts at Fairmont State. In this capacity, he has also been assisting in the development of curriculum in the Department of Art’s Studio Art track that focuses on Crossmedia. He finds it fascinating that his installation art pieces sometimes conclude in mathematical patterns that contain the elements of fractal image.

Refreshments will be available to those who attend the forum and a “question-and-answer” session will take place at the end of the forum.

For more information, contact Tad Kato, Ph.D., Chair of the Instructor Exchange Ad-Hoc Committee of the Fairmont State University Faculty Senate, at (304) 367-4759 or Tadashi.Kato@fairmontstate.edu.

Nick LeJeuneTad KatofacultyMartina BachlechnerDaniel EichenbaumMahmood Hossain