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.
The math major, who played pick-up games at the Eppley Recreation Center as a freshman, was a reserve on the men’s basketball team as a senior.
Will Clark went to 2017’s Maryland Madness, one of the UMD basketball teams’ preseason fan events, and joked with friends about sneaking into the men’s layup line.
He passed on the prank then, but one year later, he was doing the drill alongside Bruno Fernando and Jalen Smith as his pals cheered from the stands.
During Clark’s junior year, Head Coach Mark Turgeon’s Terps were looking to add some height, the 6-foot-8-inch club player measured up, and now the walk-on is living the dream of just about any club athlete.
Read more: Will Clark's Roundabout Journey to Maryland Basketball
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