For Ken Weiner (M.A. ’69, Ph.D. ’75, mathematics), a knack for math and a passion for teaching led to a 37-year career as a mathematics professor and a game-changing nonprofit that helps at-risk students succeed.

Ken Weiner (M.A. ’69, Ph.D. ’75, mathematics) was always on a path to math—maybe before he even realized it. “It’s a weird thing to say because I was always very good at numbers and I always really liked math, but I honestly never remember making a conscious decision that majoring in math was something I wanted to do,” Weiner reflected. “I swear, I think I kind of woke up one day and I already had 16 credits in math or something like that, and I said, ‘Geez, I guess I'm a math major!’”

Weiner knows now that math was the right path for him all along. From his days as an undergraduate at Brooklyn College to his years in graduate school at the University of Maryland, Weiner charted a course to a long, successful career—as a professor and academic leader who taught math at Montgomery College for 37 years and also as co- founder and president of the board of directors for Future Link. This game-changing Rockville, Maryland, nonprofit provides at-risk young adults with free self-advocacy training, mentoring, paid internships, and career counseling programs to help them reach their academic and career goals.
“We are serving first-generation-to-college students who face economic adversities, but most also have other adversities in their lives,” Weiner explained. “And the mission has always been that these young adults have the potential to succeed, but they just do not have the resources or adults around them who could provide them with the advice and support needed to prepare them for higher education and professional careers.”
For Weiner, now retired, making an impact as a teacher and mentor means everything.

“I was thrilled with my career. I loved teaching. I loved everything about it,” Weiner said.
“To me, the thing that rules the world are relationships, and so throughout my teaching career, a big part for me has been to try not only to teach, but to build relationships with students and make a difference.”

Figuring it out

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Weiner took to math at an early age. “I remember when I was a young kid, my aunts and uncles would come over and they would give me all of these problems, they’d ask me, ‘What’s 28 times 32,’ and I’d have to figure it out,” Weiner recalled. “I started to really like math, and I had a cousin who was a math teacher who ultimately became sort of my mentor.” By the time Weiner finished his undergraduate degree in mathematics and started graduate school at UMD, he thought he was headed toward a career as an applied statistician. But when he started working as a teaching assistant and connected with an inspirational professor in the UMD Department of Mathematics, his perspective began to change.

“I started working with a professor named David Lay, who had been in the department for a number of years, and he was such a sensational teacher,” Weiner said. “I TAed under him for about three years, I loved all his mentorship and it had a huge impact on me. I think it really was one of the things that propelled me to move forward with teaching. ”After more than four years as a TA, Weiner realized he wanted to become the kind of mentor and teacher he saw in Lay. So, a few years after Weiner started his Ph.D., he found himself teaching mathematics at Montgomery College, eventually becoming a full-time professor after he earned his doctorate.
“I just loved everything about the environment and the whole experience. I got so into where I was at Montgomery, it was a great time to be there,” Weiner said. “And before I knew it, I just was sort of part of that culture and happy to be there.”

A new mission

Weiner continued teaching at Montgomery College until he retired in 2008. Then, he worked as a consultant on various college projects, including a task force charged with improving the college’s developmental math program and another project working with local nonprofits that set the stage for his next mission. “United Way, the City of Gaithersburg and the City of Rockville joined together, and they asked the college if anybody could teach all the nonprofits in Montgomery County how to measure outcomes, and so I, together with two colleagues, started doing that,” Weiner explained. “We must have trained 300 nonprofits in just a few years.”
As a result of that work, Weiner joined the board of directors at a transitional homeless shelter, and helped the nonprofit develop a new educational program for at-risk young adults. “We wanted to create a program that would help vulnerable young people avoid chemical addiction and homelessness, which is what that shelter was dealing with,” Weiner recalled. “Kids would age out of foster care at 18 and they would get thrown back into society with no preparation and no ability to navigate the real world and we wanted to help them.”

After some research and a lot of brainstorming, Future Link was born. What started as a small weekly seminar to help kids who needed mentoring and guidance has since grown into a full-on educational and career support program, with individualized services from paid internships, career coaching, tutoring and mentoring to scholarships, training and more—a place, as the program’s motto notes, ‘Where potential meets opportunity.’ For 17 years, Weiner has contributed his time and expertise as a leader, mentor and teacher in the program, and he couldn’t be prouder of what Future Link has accomplished.
“If you look at the program now, 17 years later, we have some 270 adult volunteers, including 150 adults who are doing one-on-one mentoring with students. We've recently created a career coaching program, and there are about 80 volunteers who work individually with each student about to leave college and go into the workplace to prepare them to get a job,” Weiner explained. “Future Link is a long-term commitment to every student that participates in the program to get them through the education they need for the career they're interested in.” For Weiner, who knows from his own experience just how valuable teaching and mentoring can be, making that kind of impact couldn’t be more important. And even now that he’s retired, students still reach out to say thank you.

“One of my former Future Link students is now a policeman in Baltimore. This is a kid that was struggling in El Salvador when he was young and he's now married with two young children and loves what he does,” Weiner explained, “Probably three times a week I get a text from him saying, “I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for what you did for me.” The feeling that you have impacted somebody's life that way, there's just nothing better.”

Written by Leslie Miller

New Brin Endowed Professors Uri Bader and Ron Peled bring a wealth of experience and research to the department.

New Brin Endowed Professors Uri Bader and Ron Peled bring a wealth of experience and research to the UMD Department of Mathematics.

Two internationally recognized mathematicians joined the University of Maryland in fall 2024. Uri Bader and Ron Peled—who hold Brin Endowed Professorships in Mathematics—bring significant research experience to the department, according to  Mathematics Chair Doron Levy.

“Ron Peled is an international leader in the fields of probability, mathematical physics and statistics mechanics. Hiring Professor Peled brought to the department one of the best probabilists in the world,” Levy noted. “Uri Bader is an extraordinary mathematician who works in an area of mathematics related to geometry, number theory, group theory, dynamical systems and functional analysis. This is a remarkably broad area of expertise for a mathematician. Professors Peled and Bader will both provide exceptional research opportunities to our students.”

The new Brin Endowed Professorships in Mathematics were established with a generous gift from UMD Mathematics Professor Emeritus Michael Brin and his wife Eugenia for $2 million, which was fully matched by the Maryland Department of Commerce. The match was made through the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative (MEI), a state program created to spur basic and applied research in scientific and technical fields at colleges and universities. 

With these new endowed professorships, UMD’s Department of Mathematics gained a significant edge in attracting top mathematicians to its next-level mathematics programs.

“Hiring Uri Bader and Ron Peled required Maryland to compete with many top math departments,” Levy said. “The newly established Brin Professorships were instrumental in our ability to attract both of them to Maryland.”

Uri Bader: Finding new territories in mathematics

Bader’s mathematical research is all about exploring connections.

“I like seeing the connections between mathematical objects. Sometimes people describe mathematics as different lands—there is algebra, there is geometry, there is number theory, but I see it as one continent, with no clear borders in between,” Bader explained. “I’m hoping to be an explorer—I’m looking to find new territories in mathematics to explore and this is what keeps me going.”

Known as one of the deepest and most active experts in the area of mathematics that comes from the Furstenberg/Margulis school of ergodic theory and discrete subgroups of Lie groups, Bader studies geometric group theory, dynamical systems, operator algebras, complex geometry and more.

“I’m working at the crossroads of geometry, algebra and number theory and I’m studying group theory, which is the study of symmetry,” Bader said. “Group theory by itself is an interplay of two theories—geometry and algebra. Geometry because you have these geometric objects that you study symmetries of and algebra because you describe symmetries by algebraic means. In my research, I apply these tools to describe number theory.”

Bader grew up in Israel, earning his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and later becoming an L.E. Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago and a lecturer and professor of mathematics at the Technion before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2015 as a professor of mathematics.  

For Bader, his position at UMD opens up a host of new opportunities.

“I have some fantastic colleagues here at UMD and I’m looking forward to collaborations with them, students and visitors,” Bader said. “The wonderful Brin Mathematics Research Center brings many top-notch researchers to UMD and offers an opportunity to invite other scholars to study mathematics together. I can benefit, and I think I can bring a lot, including a new point of view.”

As he advances his research at UMD, Bader hopes his broad experience in mathematics can continue to make an impact—and a difference.

“Every time I’m studying a new mathematical theory, I have this feeling that things are falling into the right place. It’s fantastic and I get excited all over again. I get a kick out of being able to describe mathematical theory so others can get excited about it too,” Bader explained. “What makes me most proud is the people around me and what they do and their success. My mission is not just to be a researcher, but also to be part of the success of my students.” 

Ron Peled: ‘Fired up’ by mathematics

Peled has been inspired by the challenges of math for as long as he can remember.

“I have always been excited about mathematics,” Peled explained. “What fires me up is curiosity. I’m always curious that a simple question is out there, we don’t know the answer and it seems like it’s something I can think about. And if I think hard enough, I can make progress and perhaps I can solve it. Just that fact has always fascinated me.”

With a strong foundation in statistical physics and probability theory, Peled has also made significant contributions in related areas including combinatorics, discrete mathematics and analysis.

“I study phase transition, which is a branch at the interface of probability theory, a mathematical subject that I specialize in, and statistical physics—and this now has some tradition in mathematics,” Peled said. “From a physical perspective, this discipline is about how the properties of materials emerge from the interactions of the microscopic particles that make up these materials. For instance, you boil water and at 100 degrees Celsius it becomes gas. But what happens to it on the microscopic level? This is an example of a phase transition.”

Born and raised in Israel, Peled earned his undergraduate degree from the Open University of Israel, going on to receive his master’s in mathematics from Tel Aviv University and his Ph.D. in statistics from UC Berkeley, where his dissertation received the Herbert Alexander Prize and Citation in Probability. After a Clay Liftoff Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin and a two-year fellowship at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, Peled returned to Tel Aviv University in 2010 to become a professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences. The author of dozens of scientific papers, Peled spent the last two years at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study.

“I’m very excited about the opportunities that the University of Maryland is giving me and I’m very grateful to the Brin family for providing the support for this position. It will certainly allow me to focus more on my research and provide the best conditions for it,” Peled noted. “I’m looking forward to getting to know the other professors, students, and postdocs here and developing a group studying statistical physics and probability theory.”

Peled also sees an exciting future for the Brin Mathematics Research Center at UMD, which was launched to expand the university’s mathematics and statistics research and education programs and support visiting scholars, workshops and symposia, and summer programs.

“They opened the Brin Center here and there are workshops and summer schools all year round, and we think that this will propel the mathematics department here even further,” Peled said. “If one looks at the rankings, Maryland is in the top 20 now and it looks to be strongly improving toward the top 10.”

Written by Leslie Miller

Statistics graduate program director Lizhen Lin works to understand the math behind artificial intelligence and machine learning while guiding the next generation of data scientists at UMD.

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Deep within Kirwan Hall, Mathematics Professor Lizhen Lin is always hunting for patterns—but not the kind found in fabrics or wallpaper. Lin, who began her position as director of UMD’s statistics graduate program in July 2023, is on a quest to understand the hidden mathematical patterns that help artificial intelligence (AI) make sense of the world around us.

“Imagine data existing in a three-dimensional space, much like the world we live in,” Lin explained. “Sometimes, even though the data can appear three-dimensional, it might actually center around something simpler, like a circle, which is one-dimensional. Deep learning methods are particularly good at finding these simpler patterns within a lot of complex data. As a statistician, I want to understand the foundational mechanisms behind how modern AI can process these vast amounts of data so effectively.”

Lin’s research dives deep into AI’s mathematical DNA by studying the fundamental theories that support modern machine learning, combining geometry, statistics and deep learning theory. She specializes in analyzing data with geometric properties and develops sophisticated statistical models such as Bayesian models for analyzing these complex data. These complex models work much like human learning: starting with an initial belief and continuously updating it based on new evidence. Holistically, Lin’s work bridges traditional statistics and mathematics with modern real-world applications. 

As AI and machine learning continue to transform industries ranging from social media platforms to health care, Lin’s research provides crucial insights into how these systems work and how they can be improved through understanding the foundations behind AI and machine learning. 

“Lizhen is a global expert in her field with skills of great interest to those pursuing modern data science,” said Mathematics Chair and Professor Doron Levy. “Her arrival at UMD opens many opportunities for our graduate students, including collaborative research efforts both within our community and beyond.”  

Modernizing statistics at UMD

As Lin looks to the future of statistics and its role in the evolution of AI, she also looks to her past for inspiration on how to better prepare a new generation of statisticians for a rapidly changing world. 

“My love for math was always there, starting from when I was a young girl growing up in China years ago. Numbers always made sense to me,” she said. “No one pushed me to love puzzles and logic, but I would not have been able to get where I am, studying what I study now, without some much-needed support from the people around me throughout my journey.”

For Lin, many of the most pivotal moments in her life and academic career were triggered by encountering the right teacher or mentor at the right time.  

“When I was attending college in China, one of my female professors opened my eyes to the possibility of continuing graduate studies in the United States,” she said. “I would never have imagined such a great opportunity for myself, but her guidance at the time opened these doors I never realized existed.”

That encouragement and guidance set Lin on a path that took her from the University of Arizona for her Ph.D. to Duke University for postdoctoral work and to teaching positions at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Notre Dame before she landed at UMD in 2023. It’s the kind of experience she hopes to share with new generations of statistics students. 

“In mathematics, we often talk about building on foundational work,” Lin said. “It applies to artificial intelligence and its advancement, but it’s also true in mentorship. Every student who succeeds becomes a potential mentor for others, creating a network of support that only grows stronger over time.” 

Looking forward, Lin hopes to continue expanding and evolving the statistics graduate program at UMD. As director, she oversees the recruitment of Ph.D students and curriculum development, and she hopes to increase cross-disciplinary initiatives within the statistics program and the Department of Mathematics. 

She is currently contributing to the development of a new bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence—a field she believes will only grow in importance. Lin’s own journey reflects the expanding appeal of computational fields and their potential to inspire new generations of scientists.

“Over the last few decades, so many students have wanted to get into STEM because of these developments in computer science, data science and AI. This is particularly true for women, a traditionally underrepresented population in the field,” she said. “I want to ensure that statisticians and data scientists here at UMD receive the support they need to push the boundaries of what’s possible in this rapidly changing field.” 

Written by Georgia Jiang