Fifth Annual Graduate Awards Ceremony

The fifth annual Graduate Awards Ceremony, honoring outstanding graduate students in mathematics who received awards and fellowships during the past year, was held on November 17, 2004 in the UW Club. Mathematics students received a number of fellowships and other awards, including six Academic Excellence Awards, two Teaching Excellence Awards, two Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) fellowships, two McFarlan fellowships, ten Vertical Integration Grants for Research and Education (VIGRE) fellowships, a Graduate Opportunity Research Assistantship (GO-MAP award), five Top Scholar Awards sponsored by the Graduate School, and two Microsoft Scholar Awards.

The Academic Excellence Award recognizes outstanding performance in core graduate mathematics courses and the Ph.D. qualifying exams. Academic Excellence Awards were presented to Zsuzsanna Dancso, Joshua Kantor, Travis Kopp, Leo Tzou, Ursula Whitcher, and Troy Winfree. The Excellence in Teaching Award is given each fall to two of our Teaching Assistants for outstanding teaching performance in undergraduate mathematics courses. This year's Excellence in Teaching awardees are Juliet Anderson and Keir Lockridge. In addition to a certificate, each Excellence Award includes a supplementary academic stipend, funded by endowments created by Carl B. Allendoerfer, Z. William Birnbaum, and Edwin Hewitt, all of whom were distinguished mathematicians and members of the Department.

Sunil Chebolu and Pablo Shmerkin are this year's McFarlan Fellows. The McFarlan Fellowship program, which began in 1992, provides support for graduate students through the income on a bequest given for this purpose by the late Professor Lee McFarlan of the Mathematics Department.

Two of our entering students, Robert Bradshaw and Michael Cecil, were awarded Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation Fellowships this year, bringing to six the total number of ARCS fellowships currently held by mathematics students. The ARCS Foundation is a national organization of women who raise funds for fellowships in science, medicine and engineering. ARCS Fellowships are $15,000 awards, funded over three years at the level of $5,000 annually.

Microsoft Scholar Awards were given to two entering students, Julia Eaton and Jacob Lewis. These $20,000 awards, in the form of yearly supplementary stipends of $5,000 for four years, are funded by a gift from Microsoft Corporation.

Ariana Dundon is the recipient of a Graduate Opportunity Research Assistantship, sponsored by the Graduate Opportunity and Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP), for the purpose of bringing outstanding women and minority candidates to our Ph.D. program. The award provides support, without teaching duties, during three academic quarters.

Top Scholar Awards are recruitment awards made available by the Graduate School to help with the recruitment of outstanding applicants. This year's Top Scholar awardees are Aleksandr Aravkin, Jonathan Cross, Emily Fragerstrom, Ian Langmore, Kurt Luoto, and Dustin Moody.

Ten Mathematics graduate students are VIGRE fellows this year. VIGRE fellowships are funded by a grant from the VIGRE program of the National Science Foundation. Each award provides fellowship support, without teaching duties, during two academic quarters and the summer. Eric Bahuaud, Tristram Bogart, Christopher Hanusa, Dylan Helliwell, Brant Jones, Kris Kissel, Joan Lind, Karl Schwede, David White, and Catherine Williams are this year's VIGRE fellows.

Tom Duchamp