Mathematics students honored as UW medalists

April 2008: Mathematics students Chad Klumb and Ting-You Wang have been awarded the UW's Freshman Medal and Junior Medal respectively. These medals are awarded to students who have had the strongest academic record in their class for the previous year. For further details, see this article in University Week.

Nate Bottman wins Goldwater Scholarship

April 2008: Nate Bottman has been awarded a 2008 Goldwater Scholarship. This is but the latest in a series of honors Nate has earned. Information about the scholarship and a list of the 2008 scholars may be found here.

Ginger Warfield wins 2008 PIMS Education Prize

April 2008: Ginger Warfield has been awarded the 2008 PIMS Education Prize. This award is given yearly to a member of the PIMS community who has made a significant contribution to education in the mathematical sciences. Further information about PIMS and the Education Prize may be found here.

Chris Hoffman awarded AMS Centennial Fellowship

March 2008: Chris Hoffman was awarded an American Mathematical Society Centennial Fellowship. The primary selection criterion for the fellowship is the excellence of the candidate's research. For more information and a list of past awardees, see this link.

Jim Morrow receives 2008 Haimo Award from MAA

January 2008: Jim Morrow has received the 2008 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College University Teaching of Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America. Click here to read the award citation and Morrow's response.
Click here for a University Week profile of Jim Morrow.

SAGE wins prize in international software competition

December 2007: The open source software SAGE, based in our department and led by William Stein, has won first prize in the scientific software category of the 2007 Trophees du Libre. Further information can be found in an article by David Joyner and William Stein on the significance of open source software for mathematics, a UW news release, and the UW Daily article.

Jeff Eaton awarded Marshall Scholarship

November 2007: Jeff Eaton has been awarded a Marshall Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. For his PhD he plans to develop mathematical models to understand the spread of infectious disease epidemics such as the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Jeff entered the UW through the Academy for Young Scholars at age 16. His freshman year he was named the outstanding student in the Math 134/5/6 Honors Calculus course. He has participated in the Department's summer REU program, participated twice in the Mathematical Modeling Contest, and has been a facilitator the Math Fair program the Department runs at local elementary schools. He was a Gates Fellow during 2006-07, and spent the academic year working at a Demographic Surveillance Site in South Africa.

Jeff plans to graduate in June 2008 with Bachelor's Degrees in Mathematics and Sociology, a Master's Degree in Statistics, and a minor in Music.

See the UW Daily article for further information.

Nate Bottman adds Davidson Fellowship to his awards

August 2007: Nate Bottman has been named a Davidson Fellow. Other awards received by Nate during the past year include the UW Freshman Medal, an Outstanding Winner designation at the 2007 Mathematical Contest in Modeling as a member of a UW team, and a Math in Moscow Award from the American Mathematical Society. Here's a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about Nate.

Zhenqing Chen elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

August 2007: Zhenqing Chen was named Fellow of the IMS in recognition of his research on the Dirichlet form approach to Markov processes, reflected Brownian motion and stable processes. See the IMS press release for additional information.

Victor Klee (1925 - 2007)

August 2007: Vic Klee passed away on August 17, 2007 in Lakewood, Ohio. Klee was a distinguished member of our department for nearly 54 years. He will be sorely missed.
See this page for more information.

Ioana Dumitriu wins Leslie Fox Prize

June 2007: Ioana Dumitriu has won the 2007 Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis.  Information on this biennial competition, the prize and past winners may be found here.

Nick Reichert awarded Dean's Medal in the Natural Sciences for 2007

May 2007: The College of Arts & Sciences has named Nick Reichert the Dean's Medalist in the Natural Sciences for 2007. Nick joins Kathy Temple (2000), Thomas Carlson (2002), Jeff Giansiracusa (2003), Terri Moore (2004) and Eliana Hechter (2006) in a distinguished line of six Mathematics majors who have received the Dean's Medal in the last eight years. After graduating from UW with simultaneous Bachelor's and Master's degrees, Nick will attend the mathematics PhD program at Princeton University.

With two wins in 2007, UW Math has seven MCM wins in six years

March 2007: Two teams of UW undergraduates were declared Outstanding Winners in this year's Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The team of Sam Burden, Aaron Dilley, and Lukas Svec were Outstanding Winners, and also won the MAA Award. The team of Nate Bottman, Wes Essig, and Sam Whittle were Outstanding Winners. Of the 949 teams that participated in the MCM this year, 14 were designated Outstanding Winners. We have had seven Outstanding Winners in the last six years. Having been inspired by the standard set by Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, do we now dare to turn to John Wooden's record? This year's results are available at 2007 MCM Results.
Click here for a related article in University Week.

Gunther Uhlmann's work on invisibility cloaking

January 2007: Every child's dream of becoming invisible leaped forward last year toward becoming a reality. A cloaking device has set the mathematical community buzzing about how to make invisibility not just possible, but practical. Invisibility cloaking and the contributions of Gunther Uhlmann to the mathematics of this area are the subject of an article in University Week.

Ginger Warfield receives Louise Hay Award

January 2007: Ginger Warfield has been awarded the 2007 Louise Hay Award. This award, given by the Association for Women in Mathematics, recognizes outstanding achievement in mathematics education. University Week has published a profile of Warfield in recognition of this award and her many contributions to education in mathematics.  Please see this page for the citation of the award and Warfield's response.

Eliana Hechter awarded the Dean's Medal in the Natural Sciences

May 2006: The College of Arts & Sciences has named Eliana Hechter the Dean's Medalist in the Natural Sciences for 2006. This marks the third time in four years that this honor has been awarded to a Mathematics major. Also a recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship (see below), Eliana will continue on to pursue a PhD at the University of Oxford.

Nick Reichert awarded Astronaut Scholarship

May 2006: Mathematics undergraduate Nick Reichert has been awarded an Astronaut Scholarship. The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, established by the Mercury 7 astronauts, annually awards a fellowship to a student in each of 18 universities, including the University of Washington. Each institution selects two nominees in a university-wide competition, and the Foundation makes the final selection. Increasing Nick's honor is the fact that the Scholarship is seldom awarded to an undergraduate, nor to a student whose department name does not include the prefix "astro!"

Jim Morrow to receive Distinguished Teaching Award

May 2006: Professor Jim Morrow has been selected to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award of the Pacific Northwest section of the Mathematical Association of America. This adds to the list of awards that Professor Morrow has earned for educational excellence, including the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Education Prize in 2005 and the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003.

Biesel, Eaton awarded Goldwater Scholarship

March 2006: Owen Biesel and Jeff Eaton have both received the 2006 Goldwater Scholarship.  Owen, majoring in Mathematics and Physics, and Jeff, majoring in Mathematics, Statistics, and Sociology, along with former recipients Anna Schneider (2005), Noah Giansiracusa (2004), and Eliana Hechter (2004) comprise the five Mathematics students currently at the UW to earn this prestigious scholarship. 

Eliana Hechter awarded Rhodes Scholarship

November 2005:Mathematics major Eliana Hechter has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at the University of Oxford. Eliana plans to pursue a PhD (or DPhil in Oxford-speak) in mathematics at Oxford.

Eliana entered the University of Washington at the age of 14 through the Early Entrance Program. She took the accelerated honors sequences Math 134/5/6 and Math 334/5/6 in her first and third year at UW. She is taking the year-long graduate level courses in algebra and real analysis during her senior year. She participated in the department's Research Experiences for Undergradutes program last summer, supported by a Phelps Fellowship. She is currently doing research on the dynamics of cell division, and working on her senior thesis in homological algebra with John Palmieri. Eliana received a Goldwater Scholarship in 2004; just a week ago she was selected for a Marshall Scholarship, which she will decline in favor of the Rhodes Scholarship. Click here for a recent Associated Press article about Eliana Hechter and her achievements.

Article by President Emmert: We Did the Math

September 2005: The Department of Mathematics is the subject of the lead article by UW President Mark Emmert in the September issue of Columns, the University of Washington Alumni Magazine. Click here to read the article: We Did the Math.

Jim Morrow receives two new awards: PIMS Education Prize, and College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professorship

May 2005: Jim Morrow has been awarded a College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Distinguished Professorship for the 2005-06 academic year.

Morrow has also received the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) Education Prize, the goal of which is to recognize those who have "played a major role in encouraging activities which enhance public awareness and appreciation of mathematics, as well as fostering communication amongst the various groups and organizations concerned."

Math Department challenges Lance: Fifth MCM win in four years

March 2005: A team of undergraduates has continued our streak in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The team of Ryan Bressler, Braxton Osting and Christina Polwarth were designated Outstanding Winners in the 2005 contest and also received the INFORMS Award. We now have five Outstanding Winners in the last four years in a bold challenge to the standard set by Lance Armstrong on the Tour de France. The results are available at 2005 MCM Results.

Math Department wins 2005 Brotman Award

March 2005: The Department of Mathematics has been selected to receive the 2005 Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence. The Brotman Award is the University's undergraduate teaching excellence award for departments and other instructional units. The Math Department has been praised for a range of accomplishments including its reform of precalculus and calculus instruction, the introduction of the ACMS major in collaboration with the other mathematical science departments, the reform and expansion of the Mathematics undergraduate degree program, as well as the successes the students in these programs. General information about the Brotman Award may be found here.

Branko Grünbaum Awarded Steele Prize by AMS

January 2005: Branko Grünbaum was awarded the 2005 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition. Presented annually by the American Mathematical Society, the Steele Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics.

Grünbaum was honored for his book, Convex Polytopes. The prize citation states: "[This book] has served both as a standard reference and as an inspiration for three and a half decades of research in the theory of polytopes. That theory is currently very active and enjoys connections with many other areas of mathematics, including optimization, computational algebra, algebraic geometry, and representation theory. Much of the development that led to the present, thriving state of polytope theory owes its existence to this book, which served as a source of information for workers in the field and as a source of inspiration for them to enter the field. Despite the passage of time, Convex Polytopes retains its value both as an exposition of the theory and as a reference work. Springer-Verlag's decision to issue a second edition in 2003, consisting of Grünbaum's original text plus notes by Volker Kaibel, Victor Klee, and Guenter Ziegler to describe newer developments, will extend the book's influence to future generations of mathematicians."

UW awarded VIGRE Grant

April 2004: UW Departments of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics are to be awarded a second five-year VIGRE grant by the National Science Foundation in order to expand the work we have been doing under a current VIGRE grant. The grant will fund undergraduate research, graduate fellowships and postdoctoral fellowships to facilitate vertical integration, integration across departments, as well as increased cooperation with the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS).