The Kontner Award is made to undergraduate mathematics majors who have expressed interest in the applications of mathematics to the solution of real world problems in business and industry.

The award was established in 2011 by John and Sabrina Kontner. John received his Bachelors degree from the University in 1984 and his Masters in Mathematics in 1988. Sabrina received her Bachelors degree from the University in 1992.

Award Recipients

• 2025     Samuel Galita, Allen Du
• 2024     Sydney Gravel, Lauren Sherr, Grace Tao
• 2023     Maria Anna Nikolaichik, Diana Yoonjung Shin
• 2022     Elliot Kienzle
• 2021     Yuang Shen
• 2020     Ryan Craver
• 2019     April Nellis
• 2018     Nadia Batkhan, Arianne Schwartz
• 2017     Patrick David Owen
• 2016     Michael Benjamin Roberts
• 2015     Guoqing Wang
• 2014     Geoffrey Ji
• 2013     Alyssa Maccarone and Kevin Smith
• 2012     Justin Kyle Shugarman (first year of the award)

The Strauss Teaching Assistanships are awarded to strong, advanced math majors with excellent teaching ability. Each winner serves as a Teaching Assistant in a section of calculus in the fall and in the spring semester. Interested students apply the previous spring and compete for these assistantships. (See the official listings for more details on amounts and conditions.) The winners are paid at the rate a graduate student in mathematics would be paid to teach the section.

For strong math majors, the Mathematics Department encourages mathematics research activity (for example, through the Math 489 "research interaction teams") and in some cases graduate coursework in mathematics. Students with definite arrangements for such activity while Strauss TAs will be given preference in the spring competition.

Award Recipients

• 2025     Bhavya Rajasekaran, Sofia Fontana, Brooke Guo, Anthony Spinelli, Quinn Carmack, John Dinkel, Anning Cui, Emma Davie
• 2024     Kevin Flanary, Linsen Liu, Quentin Ludet, Dongxing He, Noelle Mitchell, Gary Peng, David Koralov, Jacob Riddle
• 2023     Akash Dutt, Sydney Gravel, Daniel Levy, Sam Lidz, Jacob Riddle, Matthew Schneider, Karthik Sellakumaran  Uma Tikekar, Matthew Tremba
• 2022     Nocholas Baranello, Daniel Levy, Jiatong Liang, Hugh McLaurin, Reynald Oliveria, Raymond Schleien, Matthew Schneider, Uma Tikekar, Karthik Sellakumaran Latha
• 2021     Joshua Batkhan, Leopold Bertholet, Julia Dixon, Mordechai Goldberger, Fucheng Li, Uro Lyi, Caroline Nunn, Johnny Rajala, Melinda Yan
• 2020     Aaron Benda, Julia Dixon, Asher Fink, Jeremy Folsom, Tyler Hoffman, Ekesh Kumar, Jonathan Lin, Siri Neerchal, Samuel Silver, Yunmeng Wu, Ruijie(Frank) Zheng
• 2019     Margaret Brown, Ryan Craver, Alexander Davydov, Conner Gorman, Siddhartha Harmalkar, David Yu Miller, Franklin Olmsted, Nataliya Stepanova, Ryan Synk, Matthew Watson
• 2018     AlFahad AlQadhi, Ryan Craver, Alejandro Diaz, Dat Huynh, Brittany Kuznitz, April Nellis, Avital Ron, Ryan Synk
• 2017     Maddy Alizadeh, Nadia Maria Batkhan, Keaton Ellis, Aaron George, Brittany Kuznitz, Edward Nusinovich, Shihao Sun, Davin Wang
• 2016     Michael Dworken, Emily Anne DeBoy, Joseph Zev Kaplowitz, John Bianco Padgett, Jacob Renn, John Young Shi, Tien-Yuan Yi
• 2015     Michael Dworken, Liam Fowl, Christopher Hollrah, Rouzhen Ma, Jason Schoenfeld, Xinhu Wang, Jin Wu
• 2014     David J. Bekkerman, Christopher Allen Hollrah, Race Ren-Hui Hsu, Daniel T. Kaufman, Meghana Mohan Raja, Rosemary Arabella Smith  
• 2013     Alexander Baden, David Bekkerman, Rohan Bhale, Jacob Brintzenhofe, Charles Davis, Lisa Silverman
• 2012     Rohan Bhale, Amy Hudson, Edward Lister, Alex Sherman, Lisa Silverman, Marco Tapia
• 2011     Joshua Brule, Holman Gao, Edward Lister, Colette Nataf, Andy Zheng
• 2010     David Burstein, Chaohua Huang, Daniel Secrest
• 2009     Jonathan Cohen, Mickey Salins, Jacob Konikoff, Brad Sanders
• 2008     Sean Burke, Lisa Hoffmeister, Joel Witten and (deferred to 2009) Jacob Konikoff
• 2007     Aimee Felts, Christina Frederick, Daniel Marcin, Jesse Sugar-Moore
• 2006     Mohamed Abutaleb, Philip Isett, Daniel Marcin, Samuel Pinkava
• 2005     Stephen Colodner, Jeffrey Donatelli, Erin Lynch
• 2004     Patrick Curran, Joseph Ryan, David Sivakoff, Bianca Viray
• 2003     Patricia Castellanos, Neha Gupta, Juan Lleras
• 2002     Michael Gill, Jonah Kanner, David Moyer, Michael Ostrowski, Jessica Schulte, Ariel Weinberger
• 2001     Jared English, Chad Groft, Jessica Metcalf-Burton, Michael Ostrowski, Michael Thompson
• 2000     Brent Becker, James Bremer, Kristen DeVault, Svetlana Fedotova, Philip Folkemer, Thomas Landers, Jonathan Turnes
• 1999     Jeffrey Brown, Michael Kuta, Bryan Osborn, Daniel Schick, David Spivak, Jonathan Turnes
• 1998     Evelyn Gilmore, Masha Sapper, Cara Stockham, Timothy Strobell, Wesley Yin
• 1997     Kenneth Gosier, David Hamilton, William Holochwost, Sarah Oppenheim, Masha Sapper, Timothy Strobell
• 1996     David Clark, Mark Hess, One Keam (Spring only), Michael Neely, Kevin Scaldeferri, Sudheer Shukla
• 1995     Jeremy Calvert, Theresa Chow, Vishnumohan Jejjala, Melvin Laney, Helen Loennig
• 1994     Peter Calabrese, Geoffrey (Chris) Hruska, Uri Nodelman,Michael Starsinic, Karen Thurber
• 1993     Andrea Dickerson, Mee Kim, Sherman Lo
• 1992     Matthew Baker, Didon Pachner (Fall only), Alan Preis, Michael Swisdak
• 1991     Emiliano Gomez, William (Grady) Miller
• 1990     Ilya Lyubomirsky, Didon Pachner
• 1989     Christopher Monsour, Richard Penn
• 1988     William Hix, Christopher Monsour
• 1987     William Hix, Christopher Monsour

The Dan Sweet Memorial Fellowship is awarded to a full-time student and mathematics major with interests in Applied Mathematics.

This fellowship, originally named Dan Sweet Scholarship, was first awarded in 2005. It is named after Dan Sweet, a professor in the Mathematics Department who served as director of the applied mathematics program and was for many years recognized as one of the very best teachers in the department. Professor Sweet died in 2004.

In Fall 2006 this scholarship was renamed the Daniel Sweet Memorial Fellowship. The fellowship is administered by the Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis and Applications. 

Award Recipients

Daniel Sweet Undergraduate Research Fellowship 

• 2025     Anirudh Satheesh, Bhavya Rajasekaran
• 2024     David Koralov, Quentin Ludet
• 2023     David Koralov, Daniel Levy, Matthew Schneider   
• 2022     Daniel Levy, Matthew Schneider
• 2021     Danial Ludwig, Ruijie Zheng
• 2020     Linden Yuan
• 2019     Tanay Wakhare, John Nolan
• 2018     Tanay Wakhare, John Nolan
• 2017     Aaron George and Jane Gerard
• 2016     Sun Hyun Kim
• 2014     Kevin Diemer Stubbs
• 2013     Rafael Setra
• 2010     Joseph T. Woodworth
• 2008     Kaitlyn Tuley
• 2007     Jesse Sugar-Moore, Christina Frederick.

The Daniel Sweet Fellowship (above) replaced the Daniel Sweet Scholarship (below).

Daniel Sweet Scholarship

• 2006     Sinan Ariturk
• 2005     Stephen Herwig (first year of the scholarship)

This is a merit-based, competitive scholarship whose goal is to support promising students in their pursuit of teaching mathematics in secondary school.

This award was established in 2002. It is funded by the contributions of Denny and Frances Gulick, faculty in the Mathematics Department. The scholarship aims to support promising students in their pursuit of teaching mathematics in secondary school.

Award Recipients

• 2008     Christian Padzursky
• 2007     Matthew Holmes and Laura Stevens
• 2006     Katelyn Busby and Candace Karanovich
• 2005     Madeline Ahearn, Mark Widemeyer
• 2004     Alyssa Manna, Olivia Walters
• 2003     Meghan Carr, Tiffany Murphy, Bethany Miskelly and Alicia Utterback
• 2002     First year of the award: Sebastien Bacle and Shan Susan Hsiung