NASA Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor Katherine Calvin (B.S. ’03, mathematics; B.S. ’03, computer science) will share her story with graduates and their families at the CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony in May.

When Katherine Calvin (B.S. ’03, mathematics; B.S. ’03, computer science) was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2024 CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony at the University of Maryland, she couldn’t help thinking back to the day she graduated from UMD, 21 years ago.

"Since I received the invitation, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my own graduation—what it was like to be graduating and what I wish I had known then,” Calvin said. “I remember rushing to finish finals, being both excited and nervous for the next step, which was moving to California for grad school, and being glad I had one last summer with my friends and family in Maryland. I wasn’t sure where I would go after grad school and certainly didn’t expect to become NASA’s chief scientist.”

Calvin’s career journey has indeed taken her to places she never expected. In January 2022, she was appointed chief scientist and senior climate advisor at NASA, becoming the first person ever to serve in that dual role. The position puts her at the forefront of NASA’s climate change initiatives, advising NASA leadership on the agency’s science programs and strategic planning and offering recommendations to guide the agency’s climate-related science, technology and infrastructure programs.

A distinguished Earth scientist, Calvin spent 16 years conducting climate studies at the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI), a partnership between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and UMD. Her latest role at NASA reflects her ongoing personal commitment to addressing the challenges of a changing climate.

“When it comes to my goals as a scientist, I really relate to NASA’s mission: NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery,” Calvin explained. “My work on climate change has focused on understanding and informing for the benefit of all and more recently inspiring the next generation.”

Research with meaning

Always a lover of the outdoors, Calvin grew up with an inquisitive mind and a special appreciation for nature and the environment. As an undergrad at UMD, she was drawn to mathematics and computer science. Then, when she headed to Stanford for graduate school, she took her undergraduate skill set in a new scientific direction, studying the complex changes in our planet’s climate.

“I started researching climate change in grad school,” Calvin said. “By spending a lot of time outside, I developed a deep appreciation for nature and an awareness of weather. Climate change was an opportunity for me to bring together my technical skills with something that mattered to me. “

In 2008, after earning her M.S. and Ph.D. in management science and engineering at Stanford University, Calvin joined JGCRI, where her research contributed to a model for analyzing and exploring the relationships between human and Earth systems in the context of climate change. She also worked on the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model, which is used to analyze the past, present and future state of the Earth system. The math and computer science skills Calvin mastered at UMD played a key role in her work.

“The research involved developing and using mathematical models to understand human and Earth systems, and I helped implement mathematical equations describing energy, water, land and climate in computer code,” Calvin explained. “Math and computer science serve as common languages among the sciences, so by writing down a problem in a mathematical equation or a block of computer code, other scientists can understand it.”

Calvin has co-authored more than 150 publications, contributing to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment in 2014 and reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In July 2023, she was selected as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 7th Assessment Cycle.

With decades of data on Earth, atmospheres and other planets, NASA research offers a unique perspective on changing conditions, strategies to address sustainability issues and future climate initiatives. Interpreting and sharing that data is part of Calvin’s mission.

“NASA’s climate research includes observations, models, applied science and technology development. As senior climate advisor, my job is to help connect climate research within NASA and communicate that research externally to other agencies, international partners and the public,” Calvin said. “I led the development of NASA’s climate strategy, which summarizes some of NASA’s contributions to climate research and outlines opportunities for the future. I was also involved in developing NASA’s Earth Information Center, which provides information about how Earth is changing.”

For Calvin, the goal is to give people the information they need to understand and respond to the changing climate in their communities.

“We know the planet’s climate is changing and this has impacts on our daily lives, but we are at a point where we need to go beyond collecting data and move toward making sure it can be easily used,” Calvin said. “We want to make sure people can take our data and use it when they are making decisions, whether it’s about climate mitigation, adaptation or planning.”

Beyond inspiring

More than two years into her job, Calvin finds her work and colleagues beyond inspiring.

“NASA is an amazing place to work,” she said. “I’ve had many exciting experiences in the last two years, including attending my first satellite launch, experiencing the annular eclipse and seeing the Earth Information Center open. The best part of each of those experiences has been the people. I’m continually inspired by our scientists and the work that they do.”

Calvin has come a long way since her days at UMD—she’s done groundbreaking climate research, traveled the world, even hiked Kilimanjaro—and she’s always looking ahead to the next challenge. As she brings that spirit, her experiences at NASA, and her passion for science and the environment to the 2024 CMNS Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony, she hopes to inspire this year’s graduates to keep learning, keep asking questions and enjoy the journey, even if it doesn’t take them exactly where they expected.

“One of my former professors once told me that it’s okay not to know what you want to do in the future,” Calvin explained. “Just make the best decision each step of the way.”

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.”