MATHEMATICA APPLICANDA Vol. 44(1) 2016, p. 221–222 doi: 10.14708/ma.v44i1.1544
Biography of the Guest Editor
F. Thomas Bruss studied Mathematics in Saarbr¨ucken (Ger- many), and, with a delegation grant from Saarbr¨ucken, in Cambridge(UK) and in Sheffield(UK). He holds the Diplom- Mathematiker as well as his doctorate Dr. rer. nat. in Math- ematics of the University of Saarbr¨ucken. His scientific career began in 1977 at the University of Namur. In 1978 he received the docteur l´egal Dr. en sc. and obtained tenure as First assistant a year later. His time in Namur also included visiting positions at the University of Zaire (1981) and at Strathclyde University Glasgow (1984). He then moved to the United States, first as Visiting Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara, then as Adjunct Professor (Feodor-Lynen) fellow at the University of Arizona, and then as Visiting Associate Professor at UCLA.
In 1990 Thomas returned to Europe as Professor of the Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Independently, he obtained the inscription sur liste des professeurs of France. In 1993 he was appointed chair of Math´ematiques G´en´erales and Probabilit´es of the Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) where he has stayed ever since. Since then he also held visiting positions at the University of Antwerpen, the University of Namur and the Universit´e Catholique de Louvain. Now, retired from the chair of Math´ematiques G´en´erales, Thomas continues as Professeur de l’universit´e of ULB, and as Invited Professor of the Universit´e Catholique de Louvain.
Prof. Bruss has made several important contributions to optimal stopping, in- cluding the 1/e-law of best choice (1984), Pascal processes (with LCG Rogers 1991), the odds algorithm (2000), or the solution of the last-arrival problem (with Marc Yor 2012). He also has strong interests in the theory of branching processes, as e.g.
in bisexual Branching Processes and Resource-dependent Branching Processes (with Duerinckx 2015) as well as in various questions related with the theory of stochastic processes, as for instance the monotone subsequence problem (with Freddy Delbaen 2001, 2004).
Thomas has served twice as head of the ULB Mathematics Department. He is also active in the national science foundations of Belgium, in the Belgian Statistical Society, the Belgian Mathematical Society, and the Coll´ege Belgique. He is an elected member of the Tˇunissteiner Kreis (Germany), a fellow of the von-Humboldt Foun- dation (Germany) and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (USA).
Thomas is also renowned for his outreach activity, with articles published in journals such as Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Pour la Science, Le Soir and Die Welt, as well as for his appearances on radio and television for expertise in probability. He has received several national and international distinctions and awards.
In 2011 F. Thomas Bruss was honoured Commandeur de l’ordre de L´eopold of Belgium.
The ftb2015 Conference
The conference ftb2015 was a forum for presentations in probability and mathe- matical statistics and brought together Thomas Bruss’ main co-authors and scholars in their field. It was organized by
Professor Siegfried H¨ormann, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles Professor Christope Ley, Universiteit Gent
Professor Davy Paindaveine, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles Professor Yivik Swan, Universit´e de Li´ege
Professor Thomas Verdebout, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles with Christophe Ley and Yvik Swan being the main organizers.
The invited speakers and invited discussants of ftb2015 were
Katsunori Ano, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan Freddy Delbaen, ETH Z¨urich, Switzerland
Uwe Einmahl, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium,
Thomas S. Ferguson, University of California at Los Angeles, USA Alexander Gnedin, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Rudolf Gr¨ubel, Leibniz Universit¨at Hannover, Germany Marc Hallin, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Davy Paindaveine, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Giovanni Peccati, Universit¨at Luxemburg, GH Luxemburg L.C.G. Rogers, University of Cambridge, UK
Ludger R¨uschendorf, Universit¨at Freiburg, Germany Johan Segers, Universit´e Catholique de Louvain, Belgium J. Michael Steele, University of Pennsylvania, USA Yvik C. Swan, Universit´e de Li´ege, Belgium
Krzysztof Szajowski, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland Mitsushi Tamaki, Aichi University, Japan
Jef Teugels, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Richard Weber, University of Cambridge, UK
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