Graduate students in mathematics and mathematics education earned an impressive array of recognitions from the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Mathematics.

(Left to right, top row then bottom: Marie Kramer, Jesse Hulse, Jacob Migdail-Smith, Brian Odiwuor, Hillary Bermudez and Waleed Raja.)

The Graduate School announced the following honors in April 2023:

• Marie Kramer has been awarded a pre-dissertation summer fellowship by the Graduate School. This funding will partially support Marie for the summer as she makes progress on her research program with Professor Lee Kennard.
• Jesse Hulse, Jacob Migdail-Smith and Brian Odiwuor 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.
• Hillary Bermudez, Brian Odiwuor and Waleed Raja have been named Teaching Mentors by the Graduate School. Just 32 TAs from across campus are chosen to serve as small group leaders and mentors at the Teaching Assistant Orientation Program for incoming TAs in the fall.

Nicholas Ng (pictured) was awarded one of the All-University Doctoral Prizes awarded to College of Arts and Sciences students this year. Nick defended his dissertation, titled “On homogeneous closed gradient Laplacian solitons,” in April 2023. According to his advisor Professor Will Wylie, “In the Ricci flow, gradient solitons play a prominent role, but little is known about when solitons to the closed G2-manifolds are gradient. This is the problem Nick has looked into in the main part of his thesis. It has produced one pre-print which he posted to arxiv in February. He gave a talk in our Geometry-Topology seminar on the topic last Fall and a 20 minute invited talk in a JMM special session in December.” Nick will start a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University in Fall 2023.

This is the third year in a row that a dissertation from the Mathematics Department has won the All-University prize. Previous winners include Tim Tribone (now a postdoc at the University of Utah) and Erin Griffin (now an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University).

The Outstanding First-Year Student prize was awarded to Kory Pollicove (pictured) and Dorian Kalir (not 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 Melody Wolff (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 Jianqing Jia (pictured) and Nicholas Ng. Jianqing is currently working with Professor Lixin Shen on sparse data recovery. Professor Shen says, “Jianqing is working with the squared ratio of the L1 and L2 norms. This ratio is neither convex nor concave and is not even globally continuous. He has made some impressive progress on this topic.” See above for more on Nick Ng.

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 Stephen Caviness. Stephen is a Ph.D. student in the School of Education’s Teaching and Curriculum program, working with Professors Nicole Fonger and Charlotte Sharpe.