Three of our younger faculty, Maria Cameron, Karin Melnick, and Yanir Rubinstein, have just won prestigious awards. Maria is the recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award for 2012 for her work on "Methods for the Study of Rare Events". "The objective of the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process." Karin is the recipient of an NSF CAREER grant on rigidity properties in geometry. To quote the NSF description, "The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations." Yanir is the recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship for 2013. These fellowships are given annually to the most promising scientists in North America no more than six years from completion of their most recent Ph.D.  "Fellows are selected on the basis of their independent research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become leaders in the scientific community through their contributions to their field." Congratulations to all three of Maria, Karin, and Yanir!

The American Mathematical Society has announced the list of its inaugural fellows. "The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics." Fourteen members of the Maryland Mathematics Department are on the list of inaugural fellows.

They are:

Jeffrey Adams
Stuart S.J. Antman
Joel M. Cohen
Giovanni Forni
Mark Freidlin
William Mark Goldman
Maurice H. Heins, Emeritus
Rebecca A. Herb, Emerita
Ricardo H. Nochetto
Jonathan Rosenberg
Eitan A. Tadmor
Richard Alan Wentworth
Scott A. Wolpert
James A. Yorke

Prof Bill Goldman and the Experimental Geometry Lab have been recently highlited in an article on geometry labs and teaching. Follow the link to read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=deep-spaces-geometry-labs