Assistant Professor Jacob Bedrossian has been awarded a prestigious 2015 Sloan Research Fellowship.  The size of the award is $50,000 over a two-year period, in support of the Fellow's research.  Congratulations, Jacob! Another winner this year in mathematics is alumnus Andrew Snowden, who was an undergraduate honors math major at Maryland, graduating in 2004. And still another winner (in Computational & Evolutionary Molecular Biology) is alumnus Cole Trapnell from the University of Washington,  who got joint BS degrees in CS and mathematics from Maryland in 2005 before going on to a PhD at Maryland in computer science.

William "Brit" Kirwan joined the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland just over 50 years ago. On March 10th there will be a one day golden anniversary conference.

More information about the conference can be found on the CMNS website.

Speakers will include Peter Duren, University of Michigan, Charles Fefferman, Princeton University, Mark Green, UCLA, Edward Saff, Vanderbilt, Uri Treisman, UT Austin, and Larry Zalcman, Bar Ilan (and formerly from Maryland).

Two more UMd math faculty have been elected Fellows of the American Mathematical Society: Professor John Benedetto and Professor Emeritus Karsten Grove.  You can read the prize citations here.

Former department chair Raymond Johnson is being honored by the Association of Rice Alumni
and The Association of Rice University Black Alumni (ARUBA) on November 8, 2014. In recognition of the 50th anniversary of Dr. Johnson's groundbreaking enrollment as the first black student to attend Rice University, he will be presented with special recognition from the City of Houston and the State of Texas.

The Maryland Math Department is sponsoring two one-day meetings in November, 2014, both joint with Johns Hopkins in Baltimore:

• JHU-UMD Algebra and Number Theory DayAlgebra and Number Theory Day, to be held November 8th. Speakers include Benjamin Howard (Boston College), Allen Knutson (Cornell University), Andrew Snowden (University of Michigan), and Kirsten Wickelgren (Georgia Tech).
• Metro Area Differential Geometry Seminar (MADGUYS)  #1, to be held November 14th. Speakers include Otis Chodosh (Stanford University), Jim Isenberg (University of Oregon), and Valentino Tosatti (Northwestern University).

Professor Doron Levy has been named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for his research in mathematical biology. See http://www.gf.org/about-the-foundation/the-fellowship/ for more information about the fellowship.