The Graduate School announced the following honors in April 2024:

(Left to right, top row then bottom: Marie Kramier, Chelsea Sato, Karie Schmitz, Jianqing Jia, Brian Odiwuor, Stephen Caviness.)

• Mathematics graduate students Marie Kramer and Jiaqing Jia were awarded Summer Dissertation Fellowships, and Karie Schmitz was awarded a Pre-dissertation Summer Fellowship by the Graduate School. This funding will partially support Karie, Marie, and Jianqing for the summer as they make progress on their research programs with Professors Lee Kennard, Lixin Shen and Jianxuan Liu, respectively.
• Mathematics Education graduate students Brian Odiwuor and Stephen Caviness were also awarded Summer Dissertation Fellowships, to support their summer research under the supervision of Professors Duane Graysay and Joanna Masingila, respectively.
• Jianqing Jia, Marie Kramer and Chelsea Sato have won Outstanding Teaching Assistant awards. These University-wide awards are given only to the top 4% of all TAs on campus, to recognize their excellence as recitation leaders and primary instructors in mathematics courses.

The Outstanding First-Year Student prize was awarded to Michael Vance (pictured). The Outstanding First-Year Student prize is awarded to a graduate student in their second year of graduate study at SU, for their performance in coursework and graduate exams in their first year. The prize recognizes students whose performance and dedication to their studies make them a strong role model for their fellow students.

The Outstanding Performance in Coursework or Qualifying Exams prize was awarded to Ben Kaufman (pictured). The Outstanding Performance in Coursework or Qualifying Exams prize is awarded to a graduate student in their second year or later for their performance in coursework or graduate qualifying exams. The purpose is to recognize students whose performance and dedication to their studies make them a strong role model for their fellow students.

The Kibbey Prize is awarded annually by the department in recognition of outstanding achievement in the Ph.D. program in mathematics. This year’s winners are Jianchen Wei (pictured above, left) and Jesse Hulse (pictured above, right). Jianchen is a PhD student of Professor Lixin Shen, working on research centered around the development of a data-driven model for tracking fluid particles. Jesse is co-advised by Professors Dan Coman and Loredana Lanzani, and has worked on problems in both potential theory in one complex variable and pluripotential theory in two complex variables.

The Exner Prize is awarded annually by the department in recognition of outstanding achievement in the Ph.D. program in mathematics education. This year’s winner is Hillary Bermudez. Hillary is a Ph.D. student in the School of Education’s Teaching and Curriculum program, working with Professor Duane Graysay. Her research examines the impact of self-explanation tasks, designed based on principles from variation theory, on undergraduate students’ strategies for reading and understanding mathematical proofs.