Faculty
Karin Melnick of the University of Maryland, College Park, has been awarded the AMS Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship for Women Scholars for the 2020–2021 academic year.
Justin Wyss-Gallifent - 2020 Employee Dean's Outstanding Lecturer Award Principal Lecturer, Department of Mathematics
Alumni
Sheeba Varghese (B.S. ’94, mathematics; B.S. ’94, secondary education) selected as Top Leadership Trainer of the Year by the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP)
Vaughn Osterman BS’19 is a mathematics alumnus whose research has been published in the International Journal of Number Theory. His fellowship proposal involves research in dispersing billiards. He plans to attend the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall.
Grad Students
Ralph P. Pass III Fellowship: Shin Eui Song and Zachary Greenberg
Patrick and Marguerite Sung Fellowship in Mathematics: Dani Kaufmann and Tessa Thorsen
Mark E. Lachtman Graduate Student Award: Ian Johnson and Yue Fan
2020 SIAM Student Chapter Certificate of Recognition: Brandon Alexander.
Read more: Spring Edition: Math Faculty Members, Alumni, and Students Receive Awards
When you think of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland, you think of excellence. The department has a history of countless Banneker/Key Scholars and Goldwater Scholars, successful alumni (including a Nobel laureate), and award-winning faculty members. The department also runs highly ranked graduate programs in mathematics and mathematical statistics and is a major participant in the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation (AMSC) interdisciplinary graduate program. Below, meet a Ph.D. student from each program.
Read more: Meet Three Ph.D. Students with a Shared Love for Mathematics
A professor who also works at the U.S. Census Bureau gets to explore both theory and application in his dual career
The national Census—that government survey every American household received in April—only comes around once a decade, but the U.S. Census Bureau never stops collecting data about how Americans live. Every month, the bureau surveys millions of individuals, households and businesses about education, employment, internet access, transportation and other topics that reveal the social and economic needs of communities.
Eric Slud is one of the mathematicians who helps make sense of all that data. Slud is the area chief for mathematical statistics in the Center for Statistical Research and Methodology, a research unit within the U.S. Census Bureau. He is also a professor of mathematics at UMD.
An expert in differential geometry finds beauty and harmony in mathematics.
Growing up, Karin Melnick never imagined herself as a mathematician. The daughter of an accountant and an airline pilot with a background in electrical engineering, she was no stranger to the importance of math, but she saw it more as a tool for other fields of study, a prelude to a career as an ecologist or a medical doctor.
That changed during her undergraduate years at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, when the pull of geometry, calculus and theoretical proofs drew her in, and she realized pure mathematics was the field for her.
Read more: Karin Melnick Receives the Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship for Women Scholars
Years ago, when college and career were still far from his mind, a young Michael Nastac watched a television show that would ultimately shape the trajectory of his life. The program was “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.” As Nastac listened to scientist Carl Sagan discuss space and the universe in the context of humanity, it sparked in him an irrepressible interest in mathematics and science.
“Before I saw the show, I didn’t think of math and science as beautiful. But after watching it, it changed the way I looked at the subjects,” explained Nastac, now a senior mathematics and physics dual-degree student at the University of Maryland. “To understand the world around us requires mathematics.”
For the past 4 years, UMD'd Putnam team has ranked in the top 15.
A team of undergraduates from the University of Maryland placed 14th out of 488 teams and earned an honorable mention nod in the 2019 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, popularly called “the Putnam.” For the past four years, UMD’s Putnam team has ranked in the top 15.
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