Nine current students and recent alums of the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) received prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, which recognize outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Across the university, 22 current students and recent alums were among the 2024 fellowship winners announced by the NSF.

Two recently graduated from the Department of Mathematics:

• Marcus Benyamin (B.S. ’17, mathematics; B.S. ’17, chemical engineering)
• Siri Neerchal (B.S. ’21, mathematics; B.S. ’21, history)

Benyamin is a chemical engineering Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin and Neerchal is a Ph.D. student in sociology and social policy at Harvard University.

NSF fellows receive three years of support, including a $37,000 annual stipend, a $16,000 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees, and access to opportunities for professional development.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.

Since 1952, NSF has funded more than 60,000 Graduate Research Fellowships out of more than 500,000 applicants. At least 42 fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates and more than 450 have become members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Three undergraduates in the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) have been awarded 2024 scholarships by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which encourages students to pursue advanced study and research careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics. Over the last 15 years, UMD’s nominations yielded 49 scholarships—second in the nation only to Stanford.

Junior physics and mathematics double-degree student Yash Anand, sophomore atmospheric and oceanic science (AOSC) and physics double-degree student Malcolm Maas, and junior biological sciences and mathematics double-degree student Jerry Shen are among 438 Goldwater Scholars selected from 1,353 nominees nationally. Goldwater Scholars receive one- or two-year scholarships that cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

“The Goldwater Scholarships awarded to Yash Anand, Malcolm Maas and Jerry Shen are a result of their years of diligent effort, commitment, and seizing the research and extracurricular opportunities available at Maryland,” CMNS Dean Amitabh Varshney said. “These experiences have distinguished them among the nation's top STEM candidates.”

The Goldwater Foundation has honored 82 UMD winners and five honorable mentions since the program’s first award was given in 1989.

“Our 2024 Goldwater winners are reflective of the tremendous young research talent that is incubating at UMD,” said CMNS Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Robert Infantino, who has led UMD’s Goldwater Scholarship nominating process since 2001. “They continue a legacy of winners that have gone on to leading graduate programs and are pursuing careers that greatly impact science and society.”

Yash Anand

Anand, a student in the Gemstone program in the Honors College, has been investigating quantum materials in UMD Physics Professor Johnpierre Paglione’s lab since 2021.

He has grown, characterized and fine-tuned several new quantum materials that have unusual magnetic and physical properties. As part of this work, he spent time at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator facility. To fill in the long periods it takes to grow these materials, Anand took on another project studying the properties of sperrylite, the natural source of platinum. His work in Paglione’s lab resulted in two co-authored papers submitted for publication and a presentation at the 2024 American Physical Society March Meeting.

“Yash’s efforts in quantum materials synthesis and characterization have helped us advance several extremely promising avenues, including a new project on high-entropy alloys that is forging a path to a new research avenue for our team that will likely form the basis for future grant proposals,” said Paglione, who also directs the Maryland Quantum Materials Center. “His contributions have shown strong potential and have supported several facets of our research program, and I am excited to see where this work takes him next.”

Anand joined UMD Physics Associate Professor Zohreh Davoudi’s group in April 2023 to study the speed limit at which information propagates in a quantum system. More recently, he joined UMD Physics Professor Jay Sau’s group to analyze a proposed theory on non-linear quantum mechanics using phonons in crystal lattices.

A Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar, Anand received the Angelo Bardasis Scholarship from the Department of Physics. He serves as treasurer of UMD’s Society of Physics Students chapter.

After graduation, Anand plans to pursue a Ph.D. in condensed matter physics.

“I am particularly interested in magnetic structures, such as skyrmionic bubbles, due to their potential to introduce innovative approaches for data storage and transfer, thereby advancing current electronic systems,” he said. “I also want to study the evolving field of superconductivity and the use of superconductors to reduce energy dissipation and cost of medical equipment.”

Malcolm Maas

In high school, Maas helped build the first global tornado climatology database. He gathered and processed historical data for over 100,000 tornadoes that occurred around the world. The project’s website raked in 160,000 page views during its first year.

When Maas arrived at UMD, he joined a group of AOSC students installing and managing a micronet—a small-scale network of weather sensors—across the university’s campus. Five weather stations now provide minute-by-minute updates on the temperature, wind speed, pressure, dew point and rain rate on campus. Maas helped create the data collection system and user-friendly graphs to visualize the data, which are displayed on the UMD Weather website.

When the university and the Maryland Department of Emergency Management installed their first weather tower as part of the Maryland Mesonet in October 2023, they asked Maas to quickly adapt his micronet visualization tools to work with the mesonet data. The eight towers operational now around the state—with more than 70 planned in total—help to advance localized weather prediction and ensure the safety of Maryland's residents and visitors.

Since December 2022, Maas has been working with AOSC Assistant Professor Jonathan Poterjoy on fundamental challenges associated with environmental prediction and validation of atmospheric modeling systems. Specifically, he is quantifying the degree to which commonly used data assimilation methods shift models away from physically plausible solutions due to commonly adopted but incorrect assumptions.

“I have been very impressed with Malcolm’s level of understanding of the abstract concepts we are working with and his ability to take the lead on a project,” Poterjoy said. “Malcolm always comes to me with excellent questions and directions for our research and he has demonstrated an impressive depth of knowledge for such a young scientist.”

Last summer, Maas participated in the undergraduate summer intern program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and worked on a project with Kostas Tsigaridis, a research scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Maas used an extremely large dataset of Earth system model simulations to explore the effects of volcanoes on climate and atmospheric sulfur. Using machine learning, he developed a tool to estimate where unidentified historical eruptions happened based on ice core data. He has two papers in preparation on this work, which has been presented at three conferences.

For his Gemstone honors research project, Maas and 11 teammates have been working with UMD Mechanical Engineering Professor Johan Larsson to optimize the shape of marine propellers.

Outside of class, Maas plays the pipe organ, advocates for infrastructure with the Student Government Association, serves as webmaster for UMD Weather and is a member of the Ballooning Club. He received a National Merit Scholarship, a President’s Scholarship and the Angelo Bardasis Scholarship from the Department of Physics.

After graduation, Maas plans to pursue a Ph.D. in atmospheric science.

“I’m excited about applying advanced data science methods to problems in the physics of the

atmosphere,” he said. “Modern atmospheric sensing and simulation capabilities continue to increase in fidelity and the power of implementing sophisticated big-data processing techniques grows accordingly.”

Jerry Shen

Shen began his research career in high school with John Strang, director of the Gender and Autism Program at Children’s National Hospital. He developed a psychometric measure to quantify gender identity that is available in the public domain for use by clinical providers and researchers. Shen co-authored a paper on the work in The American Psychologist.

Since 2021, he has been working in Maureen Goodenow’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using bioinformatics to identify genetic and immunogenic factors that contribute to HIV viral suppression. Shen submitted for publication a co-authored paper on this work, which was presented at the 2024 Congress on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of the premiere international HIV conferences. He is also preparing a paper on his work exploring how THC and tobacco use can modulate gene expression in people with HIV.

“Jerry is thriving as a developing researcher in a real-world environment,” said Goodenow, chief of the Molecular Host and HIV Interactions Section in the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “He is intellectually curious and highly motivated to understand all aspects of the projects and to integrate across-disciplines approaches.”

Since 2022, Shen has been working with UMD Physics Professor Wolfgang Losert and UMD Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor John Fourkas to explore the role of surface characteristics in modulating the assembly of actin filaments, which are proteins that keep cells connected. Using advanced computer vision techniques, Shen showed that cells can mechanically sense their environment through subcellular actin dynamics localized to the surface of nanotextured ridges. This work, which he presented at the 2024 American Physical Society March Meeting, is motivated by a desire to better understand cancer cell dynamics—a crucial element for developing new therapeutic strategies.

Shen was named a Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar and received a Banneker/Key Scholarship and M3 Math Modeling Challenge Silver Technical Prize. At UMD, he volunteers as an EMT and hospital patient care advocate. He is also the founder and president of UMD’s American Physician Scientist Association, treasurer of the UMD Science Olympiad and a member of a group called Science Competitions Advocating for Learning Equity.

After graduation, Shen plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in molecular medicine with a focus on cancer therapeutics.

“Designing cancer therapeutics requires careful consideration of biochemical, immunological and patient care-related factors,” Shen said. “My Ph.D. training will provide me with the skills to evaluate the efficacy of treatments and the M.D. will equip me with the skills to apply these treatments effectively in a clinical setting, taking into account factors such as treatment timing, patient responses and drug side effects.”

We very excited to report that our Putnam team ranked 8th, honorable mention, among 471 institutions in the 2023 Putnam math competition.
Our team members this year were Vincent Trang, Daniel Yuan, Omar Habibullah, and Andrew Parker. Vincent Trang ranked 43rd and Daniel Yuan ranked 64th among 3,857 participants.

NASA Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor Katherine Calvin (B.S. ’03, mathematics; B.S. ’03, computer science) will share her story with graduates and their families at the CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony in May.

When Katherine Calvin (B.S. ’03, mathematics; B.S. ’03, computer science) was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2024 CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony at the University of Maryland, she couldn’t help thinking back to the day she graduated from UMD, 21 years ago.

"Since I received the invitation, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my own graduation—what it was like to be graduating and what I wish I had known then,” Calvin said. “I remember rushing to finish finals, being both excited and nervous for the next step, which was moving to California for grad school, and being glad I had one last summer with my friends and family in Maryland. I wasn’t sure where I would go after grad school and certainly didn’t expect to become NASA’s chief scientist.”

Calvin’s career journey has indeed taken her to places she never expected. In January 2022, she was appointed chief scientist and senior climate advisor at NASA, becoming the first person ever to serve in that dual role. The position puts her at the forefront of NASA’s climate change initiatives, advising NASA leadership on the agency’s science programs and strategic planning and offering recommendations to guide the agency’s climate-related science, technology and infrastructure programs.

A distinguished Earth scientist, Calvin spent 16 years conducting climate studies at the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI), a partnership between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and UMD. Her latest role at NASA reflects her ongoing personal commitment to addressing the challenges of a changing climate.

“When it comes to my goals as a scientist, I really relate to NASA’s mission: NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery,” Calvin explained. “My work on climate change has focused on understanding and informing for the benefit of all and more recently inspiring the next generation.”

Research with meaning

Always a lover of the outdoors, Calvin grew up with an inquisitive mind and a special appreciation for nature and the environment. As an undergrad at UMD, she was drawn to mathematics and computer science. Then, when she headed to Stanford for graduate school, she took her undergraduate skill set in a new scientific direction, studying the complex changes in our planet’s climate.

“I started researching climate change in grad school,” Calvin said. “By spending a lot of time outside, I developed a deep appreciation for nature and an awareness of weather. Climate change was an opportunity for me to bring together my technical skills with something that mattered to me. “

In 2008, after earning her M.S. and Ph.D. in management science and engineering at Stanford University, Calvin joined JGCRI, where her research contributed to a model for analyzing and exploring the relationships between human and Earth systems in the context of climate change. She also worked on the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model, which is used to analyze the past, present and future state of the Earth system. The math and computer science skills Calvin mastered at UMD played a key role in her work.

“The research involved developing and using mathematical models to understand human and Earth systems, and I helped implement mathematical equations describing energy, water, land and climate in computer code,” Calvin explained. “Math and computer science serve as common languages among the sciences, so by writing down a problem in a mathematical equation or a block of computer code, other scientists can understand it.”

Calvin has co-authored more than 150 publications, contributing to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment in 2014 and reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In July 2023, she was selected as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 7th Assessment Cycle.

With decades of data on Earth, atmospheres and other planets, NASA research offers a unique perspective on changing conditions, strategies to address sustainability issues and future climate initiatives. Interpreting and sharing that data is part of Calvin’s mission.

“NASA’s climate research includes observations, models, applied science and technology development. As senior climate advisor, my job is to help connect climate research within NASA and communicate that research externally to other agencies, international partners and the public,” Calvin said. “I led the development of NASA’s climate strategy, which summarizes some of NASA’s contributions to climate research and outlines opportunities for the future. I was also involved in developing NASA’s Earth Information Center, which provides information about how Earth is changing.”

For Calvin, the goal is to give people the information they need to understand and respond to the changing climate in their communities.

“We know the planet’s climate is changing and this has impacts on our daily lives, but we are at a point where we need to go beyond collecting data and move toward making sure it can be easily used,” Calvin said. “We want to make sure people can take our data and use it when they are making decisions, whether it’s about climate mitigation, adaptation or planning.”

Beyond inspiring

More than two years into her job, Calvin finds her work and colleagues beyond inspiring.

“NASA is an amazing place to work,” she said. “I’ve had many exciting experiences in the last two years, including attending my first satellite launch, experiencing the annular eclipse and seeing the Earth Information Center open. The best part of each of those experiences has been the people. I’m continually inspired by our scientists and the work that they do.”

Calvin has come a long way since her days at UMD—she’s done groundbreaking climate research, traveled the world, even hiked Kilimanjaro—and she’s always looking ahead to the next challenge. As she brings that spirit, her experiences at NASA, and her passion for science and the environment to the 2024 CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony, she hopes to inspire this year’s graduates to keep learning, keep asking questions and enjoy the journey, even if it doesn’t take them exactly where they expected.

“One of my former professors once told me that it’s okay not to know what you want to do in the future,” Calvin explained. “Just make the best decision each step of the way.”

The model theory expert joins the university from UCLA.

Artem Chernikov joined the University of Maryland's Department of Mathematics on August 1, 2023, as a professor and holder of the Michael Brin Endowed Chair in Mathematics. He joined UMD from UCLA.

“I’m excited to join UMD,” Chernikov said. “Maryland has a long tradition in model theory, a subject experiencing tremendous growth and deepening connections to other areas of mathematics in recent decades. The excellent mathematical logic group, the significant expansion of the department along with the opening of the Brin Mathematics Research Center, and very motivated students all make UMD a great place to be right now. I particularly enjoy the collaborative aspect of research in mathematics, and the resources provided by the Brin Chair will help increase the visibility of the group, bring young talent as postdocs and visitors, and establish closer ties with the other logic groups on the East Coast.” 

UMD Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Michael Brin and his wife Eugenia, a retired NASA scientist, established the endowed position. 

“Endowed chairs are among the most generous and critical gifts in higher education and serve as vital support of academic excellence,” said Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD's College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS). “As the holder of the Michael Brin Endowed Chair in Mathematics, Artem Chernikov will serve as a model for outstanding research and teaching.”

Chernikov’s research interests lie in a branch of mathematical logic called model theory, which focuses on how mathematical objects can be defined in formal language and what structural properties this imposes. His foundational work in pure model theory expanded the scope of Shelah classification in several directions, for NIP structures and tree properties in particular. He also worked with numerous collaborators on connections to topological dynamics (proving the Ellis group conjecture) and combinatorics (developing tame hypergraph regularity and recognizing algebraic structures from questions in Erdős-style geometry), computer science (proving a model theoretic counterpart of Warmuth conjecture on compression schemes) and valuation theory.

Chernikov, who grew up in Russia, was educated in several countries. He received his M.A. in 2009 from Humboldt University in Berlin and his Ph.D. in 2012 from Université Claude Bernard–Lyon 1, in France. Following postdoctoral positions at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Université Paris Diderot–Paris 7, he moved to the U.S. in 2015 to become an assistant professor at UCLA.

“I grew up in a town above the polar circle, but mathematics allowed me to travel all over the world for research and conferences, from South Africa to South Korea and beyond,” Chernikov said. “In my interactions with students, and even through public outreach, I try to showcase the beauty of mathematics.”

He rose from assistant professor in 2015 to professor in 2022 and was named director of the UCLA Logic Center.

Chernikov has received many awards, including a Simons Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship and the Sacks Prize (for the best doctoral dissertation of the year in mathematical logic around the world).

He teaches courses on model theory, mathematical logic, combinatorics and linear algebra; has supervised 19 graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs; and has served on 17 Ph.D. student thesis committees. Chernikov has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and given over 140 invited conference and seminar talks.

“Maryland has a long history of being a powerhouse in mathematical logic. The appointment of Artem Chernikov as Brin Chair solidifies the standing of our logic group as one of the best logic groups in the country,” said Doron Levy, chair of UMD’s Department of Mathematics.

Chris Laskowski, an expert in mathematical logic who has taught at the University of Maryland for 34 years, has been named a 2023 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Established in 1978, the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher title is awarded to a select number of faculty members who have blazed trails in their classrooms and their areas of expertise. Honorees receive $5,000 to support their professional activities and are asked to give a public presentation on a topic relevant to their fields.

Doron Levy, chair of UMD’s Department of Mathematics, described Laskowski as one of the “leading logicians of his generation.”

“His groundbreaking research has always been intertwined with his passion for teaching, mentoring and education at all levels, from high school students to postdocs,” Levy said. “I am very happy to have a colleague that has done so much to promote the reputation of the University of Maryland and its Department of Mathematics.”

Laskowski earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1987. He went on to complete a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined UMD in 1989, where he has been ever since.

He is widely known for his mathematical logic research—particularly a paper called “The uncountable spectra of countable theories” that appeared in the Annals of Mathematics in 2000. In that paper, Laskowski and his co-authors determined that every countable theory in mathematics can be sorted into 13 distinct “species” of spectra with shared properties.

“This was the capstone of years of work that mathematician Saharon Shelah started,” Laskowski said. “We can now say that among all theories, there are precisely 13 different strata.”

Laskowski also specializes in an area of research called Borel complexity, which assesses the complexity of first-order theories. In 2022, he received his largest grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a three-year project aimed at computing the Borel complexity of every mutually algebraic theory, which has applications in computational learning.

This fall, he will teach a new graduate class of his own design—MATH818E: “Model Theory Via Unary Expansions”—based on his years of research.

“The course is going to be a compendium of more than 10 papers of mine over the last 15 years or so, including ones I’ve published and a couple still in preparation,” he said.

Laskowski has been enamored with this field of research ever since he took a mathematical logic course in graduate school, an experience that prompted him to drop his computer science major and pick up math instead.

In addition to his research and classes, he is a representative of the Association for Symbolic Logic as well as a 30-year member—and former chair—of the organizing committee for the Maryland High School Mathematics Competition. From 1999 to 2019, he also evaluated high school projects submitted to the Intel Science Talent Search competition.He has mentored seven postdoctoral fellows, 16 Ph.D. students, and countless undergraduate and high school students throughout his career.

For Laskowski, it’s exciting to be named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and, more importantly, to have the chance to continue doing what he loves most. He enjoys the “theater” of teaching a packed room of students, especially his favorite large lecture course, MATH 241: “Calculus III,” an introduction to multivariable calculus.

“I find the students, most of whom are not math majors, to be very bright and interested in the subject,” Laskowski said. “I really love teaching and find it very invigorating—I’ve devoted a lot of my life to it.”