Clarence Lam, Isaac Mammel and Daniel Yuan earned a No. 4 ranking for UMD among 456 institutions in one of the most prestigious mathematics contests for undergraduates in North America.

On a chilly Saturday in December 2022, 26 University of Maryland undergraduates made their way across campus to a large classroom in the John S. Toll Physics Building. Equipped with only pencils and scrap paper, the group participated in one of the toughest and most preeminent math contests for undergraduates in North America: the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.

The results were announced months later in February and UMD placed fourth—behind only MIT, Harvard and Stanford—out of 456 competing institutions. This is UMD’s best ranking in more than four decades. 

“We were all thrilled with the amazing achievement of our Putnam team,” said Doron Levy, the chair of UMD’s Department of Mathematics. “This accomplishment reflects and significantly increases our ability to attract top talent to Maryland.”

The top three student scores from each institution are added together to determine the winning schools. Participants are assigned a score based on the quality and accurateness of their proofs and calculations. For the 2022 Putnam competition, computer science and mathematics double major Clarence Lam, mathematics major Isaac Mammel and mathematics major Daniel Yuan represented UMD, each ranking in the top 100 out of 3,415 participants.

“It’s a notoriously difficult exam. For context, the median score for the Putnam is usually either zero points or one point out of 120. Each member of this year’s team scored between 50 to 63 points out of 120,” explained Roohollah Ebrahimian, a principal lecturer in UMD’s Department of Mathematics and the university’s Putnam coordinator.

For the Putnam team members, their win came as a pleasant, yet unexpected, surprise.

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting my results to be as good as they were, especially as this was my first time participating,” said Lam, who placed 87th. “There were so many extremely talented students in the competition, from my teammates to the other participants coming from schools like MIT and Harvard.” 

Mammel, who placed 64th, echoed the sentiment: “I was also a little surprised, but I’m happy to see that I’ve improved since my first attempt at Putnam and I’m proud of UMD for coming so far.”  

Yuan, the UMD team’s third member, ranked 46th in the competition. And although not on the UMD Putnam team, computer science major Philip Guo also placed in the top 200 individual scores. 

Any UMD undergraduate can sign up for the competition, which is held every December. Putnam participants sit for an intensive six-hour written examination consisting of 12 complex math problems. According to Ebrahimian, who has coached UMD participants since 2016, test topics range from abstract algebra to calculus to probability.  

To prepare students for the Putnam Competition and other collegiate math events, Ebrahimian teaches a one-credit fall course, MATH 299B: Putnam Express. In this class, students work through problems that were featured in previous Putnam competitions and share their individual approaches to solving the problems. 

“It’s okay and perfectly normal to be wrong,” Ebrahimian explained. “The point of the class is to prompt students to exercise their logical reasoning skills and help them pull from all their experiences in their other math classes. They just need to know how to show what they’re thinking.” 

Students are encouraged to present their solutions to their classmates and explain their logic—even if the solutions are unconventional, incomplete or even incorrect—to illustrate the need for diverse thought processes when tackling concepts. 

“The prep class really fostered creative thinking and a sense of pride in our abilities, which I think is important for any math student,” Lam said. “I’ve been interested in Putnam since high school and for me, the class reaffirmed that competitive math could be fun. Everyone should give both the class and the competition a try because it really changes the way you look at math and problem-solving.”

Mammel, who took the course in fall 2021, credited the class as one reason why he participated in the Putnam Competition again.

“I learned how to be persistent, which is definitely important in this competition and something I advise for all math competition participants. Your first attempt may not pay off and maybe not even your second or third,” Mammel said. “But if you keep trying, you’ll have a shot at least with one problem or learn more about how to tackle it better.” 

Ebrahimian is already looking forward to the next Putnam Competition and plans to increase outreach to potential participants, starting with high school students looking to enter the world of collegiate math competitions. He hopes that more students, including non-math majors, will sign up to test their skills and compete with other undergraduates who share a genuine love of math. 

“We’ve really had some good turnouts in the past few years and usually rank in the top 10 or 15 participating institutions, but it was really exciting to see such a big jump in 2022,” Ebrahimian said. “The goal is now to maintain our momentum going forward.” 

Written by Georgia Jiang

Two summer schools and nine workshops planned for this summer and the next academic year. 

After winter break, we returned to the permanent location of the Brin Mathematics Research Center—a fully remodeled, beautiful space in the Computer Science Instructional Center. 

Our first spring semester workshop brought computational mathematicians and chemists for a meeting on “Rare Events.” Such events occur rarely on the timescale of the system but may affect the system most dramatically. This became a very active area of research due to the adaptation of ideas from data science and machine learning. The workshop was beautifully organized by Maria Cameron (Mathematics) and Pratyush Tiwary (Chemistry and Biochemistry/Institute for Physical Science and Technology).

Our second workshop was organized by Leonid Koralov (Mathematics) and Lenya Rhyzik (Stanford) on “Branching Processes.” Branching processes are mathematical tools used to model the evolution of particle systems with applications in biology, chemistry and other sciences. This workshop attracted a very dynamic group of junior researchers. The workshop was also attended by Henri Berestycki, who will be joining our department as a Visiting Professor for the next five years. 

Abba Gumel (who holds the Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed Chair in Mathematics) and Bill Fagan (Biology) organized a workshop on “Human Behavior and Disease Dynamics.” While it is true that the COVID-19 pandemic is decaying (at least for now), this work is necessary to prepare for the next pandemic. This workshop also featured our alum Simon Levin (Princeton) as a Distinguished Brin MRC Lecturer with a talk on “The Mathematics of Consilience.” 

The month of May started with a workshop on “Partial Hyperbolicity,” an area within dynamical systems. We were very fortunate to have Michael Brin (Mathematics) join us for this workshop. This was no coincidence as partial hyperbolicity is exactly his area of expertise. This beautiful gathering of experts in dynamical systems was organized by Dima Dolgopyat (Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics), Federico Rodriguez Hertz (Penn State University) and Amie Wilkinson (University of Chicago). 

Our last workshop of the semester was on “Frontiers of Numerical Partial Differential Equations.” Organized by Howard Elman (AMSC/Computer Science), Tobias von Petersdorff (Mathematics), and several former students (Andrea Bonito, Enrique Otarola, Abner Salgado, and Shawn Walker), this workshop brought together numerical analysists to celebrate the 70th birthday of Ricardo Nochetto. Congratulations Ricardo! This summer we will host two summer schools on partial hyperbolicity and fluid dynamics. 

For the next academic year, we planned nine workshops and three summer schools. This impact on the research profile of our department is already noticeable. We could not have hoped for a better start for the first academic year of the Brin Mathematics Research Center.

Colleagues, collaborators, students and friends gathered at a four-day conference to honor Nochetto and his remarkable achievements in numerical analysis and scientific computing.

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On May 16, 2023, the University of Maryland’s Department of Mathematics, Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) and Brin Mathematics Research Center kicked off a four-day conference commemorating Mathematics Professor Ricardo H. Nochetto’s 70th birthday and his outstanding achievements in computational mathematics.

Held in Kirwan Hall, the celebratory conference hosted world-class mathematicians who were all impacted by Nochetto’s work. Speakers shared their perspectives on the many branches of mathematics Nochetto helped to advance, particularly highlighting his work in solving partial differential equations (PDEs), which can be used to develop algorithms, as well as analyses and computer simulations used in weather prediction modeling and the manufacturing of novel materials.   

The event also offered a unique opportunity for Nochetto’s current students and postdocs to meet alums he advised and his closest collaborators—a reflection of Nochetto’s continuing scope of influence over his field.  

From Argentina to Maryland

Nochetto’s professional journey as a mathematician started in Argentina, where he received master’s degrees in mathematics in 1976 and electrical engineering in 1979 from the University of Rosario. After completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and University of Buenos Aires in 1983, Nochetto moved to Pavia, Italy, to begin his postdoctoral studies. There, Nochetto says, he enjoyed years of intellectual growth and friendship, starting years-long collaborations with a number of Italian mathematicians, many of whom came across the ocean to be part of his milestone conference at UMD.

“I met Ricardo for the first time almost 40 years ago while he had a scholarship position at the University of Pavia,” recalled Lucia Gastaldi, a professor of mathematics at the University of Brescia in Italy. “It was very inspiring for me to work with him as a collaborator because his approaches to tackling a mathematical problem helped me shape some of my own, but we have also remained good friends over the years. I’m very glad we were able to honor his achievements in person this year.”

In 1986, after his three-year stint in Italy, Nochetto spent a year working in numerical analysis at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. Nochetto joined the UMD faculty in 1987. Since then, he has continued to influence students and peers alike with his mentorship and collaborative efforts; during his career, he authored or co-authored 160 research journal articles and successfully advised 18 graduate students and 22 postdocs who have gone on to make their own marks on the mathematics world. 

In addition to his work in College Park, Nochetto has been active on the international stage, giving plenary talks at prestigious events such as the International Congress of Mathematicians and the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In 2011, Nochetto was named a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellow for his contributions to the study of free boundary problems and phase transitions. The following year, he was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. 

Nonlinear PDEs and free boundary problems are ubiquitous in modern science and engineering. Fundamental research in these areas has led to Fields Medals, one of the highest honors a mathematician can receive. Nochetto's work has been pivotal to important developments in the approximation of such problems.

‘Math research is a team sport…pass the ball’

Thanks to his extensive network of frequent collaborators and colleagues, Nochetto’s graduate students and postdocs have always been able to connect with top-tier mathematicians and access both guidance and resources essential to their research.

One of Nochetto’s former students, Omar Lakkis (Ph.D. ’02, applied mathematics & statistics, and scientific computation), who is now a reader in mathematics at the University of Sussex in England, credits Nochetto as a major contributor to his love for abstract math and his current research trajectory.

“He described to me that modern math research is a team sport, like football. What could be reached by lone players is harder to achieve because different skills are required to finally make a goal,” Lakkis said. “Ricardo’s motto is to ‘pass the ball,’ implying that when you’re stuck on a hard math problem, you should share it with someone else. His teaching goes beyond the lecture hall.”

Many others who worked with Nochetto echoed Lakkis’ sentiment.

“It’s hard to express how Ricardo impacted and continues to impact my career,” said Abner Salgado, a former postdoc of Nochetto’s who is now a professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “It was under Ricardo’s mentorship that I started working on nonlocal problems, singular diffusion problems, fully nonlinear equations and many other topics that to this day shape my research profile.”

Salgado also nostalgically recalled spending Fridays with Nochetto sharing prosciutto and gorgonzola pizza at the Three Brothers Italian Restaurant on Kenilworth Avenue, a local haunt for Nochetto’s research group. 

Figuring out complex mathematical concepts over delicious food and coffee with Nochetto was a shared memory for many of his students and colleagues—one highlighted by the lighthearted ribbing and bantering peppered between math presentations at the conference. Nochetto’s current graduate student Lucas Bouck and Lakkis both referenced Nochetto’s penchant for “religiously brewing coffee” in an Italian ‘moka’ percolator while discussing difficult questions or theories. 

Even Ronald DeVore, a frequent collaborator and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Texas A&M University known for his work in wavelet theory and compressive sensing, admitted that some of his first few in-person meetings with Nochetto also started as conversations over coffee. 

“Ricardo’s involved in a field called adaptive finite elements, which is a way to solve PDEs on a computer. He was one of the first to promote these adaptive finite elements methods, and it’s really proven the test of time,” DeVore said. “I became interested in his work because it was related to what I was working on. With my experiences collaborating with him, I can say that I respect not only the quality of his math but also the quality of his thinking and communication. That is not a pairing that every mathematician possesses.”

DeVore added: “Interestingly, Ricardo was also a postdoc advisor for Andrea Bonito, who is now my colleague at Texas A&M—that really cemented our relationship over the years.”

Building a legacy

As Nochetto reflects on his decades-long career, he believes that the people he met and mentored will become the foundation of his legacy in the mathematics world. Seeing them become independent and masters of their destinies is among his proudest accomplishments. 

“I would like to continue my collaborations with colleagues around the world, to travel and meet new people to learn new ideas,” he said. “There are also a few books and several pending projects with former students and postdocs that I’d like to finish.”

In addition to his academic achievements, Nochetto also shared some personal successes at this major milestone of his life; he’s a proud grandfather to three and looks forward to spending more time with them in the years ahead.

“I have a lot of plans for my math projects, but I really want to devote time to my dear family, which has been a pillar throughout my life,” Nochetto added. “Math and family—thankfully, they both keep me active and alert.” 

Written by Georgia Jiang