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.”

The project is supported by a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Scott Wolpert, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Maryland, will be the principal investigator of a new pilot project aimed at making mathematics departments a more welcoming space for staff, faculty and students. This project is made possible by a $600,000 grant from a National Science Foundation (NSF) program called Inclusion Across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES), which supports the participation of populations that have been historically excluded from the sciences.

Set to formally launch in spring 2024, the two-year project will provide diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training to six representatives of mathematics and statistics departments at the collegiate level in the United States. During the program, participants will launch DEI initiatives that put what they learned into practice.

At many colleges and universities, including UMD, math is the largest teaching unit by number of classroom hours. Wolpert explained that initiatives like this new DEI training program don’t just affect math majors, but the wide range of students who take math courses to meet their degree requirements.“What goes on in math and statistics classrooms is particularly consequential to a student’s experience,” Wolpert said. “We teach, in a sense, all the different parts of campus.”

The framework for this project comes from Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics (TPSE Math), an organization co-founded by William E. “Brit” Kirwan, a professor emeritus of mathematics at UMD and chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland.

TPSE Math, in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s SEA Change initiative, developed a questionnaire that mathematics departments can use to assess their DEI policies and practices. It applies to staff, faculty and students and covers a range of subjects, including mentoring, professional development, representation in the curriculum, support for parents and caregivers, sexual harassment policies and more.

Wolpert, a longtime senior consultant with TPSE Math, explained that this new project will help participants complete the questionnaire in a systematic way.

“There will be trainings on how to get the information to answer these questions, how to answer questions that are qualitative and how to objectively and accurately provide an overview of your department’s environment,” Wolpert said.

Applications for the training program will be open to math and statistics departments from any university or community college in the United States. In addition, the project will recruit six DEI consultants to help guide the conversation at training sessions, which will be held over two successive summers.

Wolpert has taken part in several DEI-centered projects since joining UMD in 1976, including a movement in the 1990s to introduce group work—now commonplace in academia—into calculus courses. Assignments that foster collaboration and communication among students have been shown to promote DEI, Wolpert noted.

During his tenure as associate dean of UMD’s former College of Computer, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences in the early 2000s, Wolpert partnered with the A. James Clark School of Engineering on two NSF-funded projects that aimed to improve the graduation rate of first-generation students in STEM fields.

“Our graduation rate was very close to 100%,” Wolpert said of the success of those projects. “Some of our alumni placed in high-level positions immediately.”

Wolpert said he is excited to join a new project aimed at making math a more positive experience for students.

“The mission of TPSE Math is to affect change in the post-secondary math community and see to it that every student receives math education that is appropriate to their career goals,” Wolpert said. “We hope, through this project, that departments get a more sophisticated understanding of their own atmosphere and initiate a project which has real impact for the student experience.”