The Department of Mathematics celebrates the recognition of two professors on achieving a Simons Fellowship: Mladen Bestvina and Yekaterina Yuryevna Epshteyn.

The Simons Fellows in Mathematics program, offered by the Simons Foundation, provides tenured faculty in mathematics with a monetary award to extend a sabbatical from one term to a full academic year for related research expenses. Fellows are expected to focus intensively on high-level theoretical research during this leave, using the extended time to make significant advances in their fields. To qualify, applicants must hold a tenured, primary mathematics department appointment, be eligible for sabbatical leave and have institutional approval for a year-long research leave.

Mladen Bestvina

Originally from Croatia, Mladen Bestvina earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Zagreb before completing a Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee in 1984. After beginning his academic career at UCLA, he joined the U in 1994. His research lies in topology, with a focus on geometric group theory—an area that explores algebraic structures through geometric and topological methods.

As a Simons Fellow, he values the honor and the opportunity to participate in programs at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge and SLMath in Berkeley. Outside of mathematics, he enjoys biking, hiking, and playing chess.

 Yekaterina Yuryevna Epshteyn

“Katya” earned her undergraduate degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2000 before immigrating to the United States as a refugee. She completed her Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, followed by an NSF-RTG postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University.

Her current research focuses on two major areas: the development of mathematical and computational models for microstructure evolution in polycrystalline materials, and the design of robust, structure-preserving algorithms for hyperbolic balance laws and related systems with uncertainty. These efforts not only address fundamental mathematical challenges but also have wide-ranging applications in engineering and the physical sciences. This past May she helped organize and host the annual NSF CompMath meeting at the U. 

As a Simons Fellow, she is honored to receive support for her first sabbatical after 15 years at the U. The fellowship offers valuable opportunities for her including focused research, travel, collaboration with colleagues, and exploration of new directions. She is deeply grateful to her mentors, collaborators, and students. Beyond mathematics, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, engaging in outdoor activities, and exploring the arts.

In the constant chaotic communication of the modern day it is vitally important to find promising individuals and raise them above the noise. That is the role of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER program: to find talented researchers and give them funding to catapult their work to new heights.

Anna Little has earned her place amongst those recipients, which includes her colleague Harold Bloom, receiving a grant of $550,000 to advance to the next stage of her career.

A Duke University alumna, Little received her Ph.D. in mathematics there before moving on to a teaching position at Jacksonville University. In an ambitious gamble she left that tenure track position for a research postdoctoral researcher appointment at Michigan State, which clearly paid dividends by setting the groundwork for research she’s being rewarded for today here at the U. 

Little’s work focuses on using geometric methods for high-dimensional data analysis, a particularly useful subject. While current technology allows us to collect huge amounts of data, it is often difficult to analyze that data in numerical form. But analyzing it geometrically can circumvent this issue, visually presenting shapes and patterns amongst the chaos. It is an approach that can be applied to many forms of data, and as Little describes, it really helps break up the “noise.”

“If you’re trying to take a picture of a molecule, you’re going to have a lot of noise in that data,” Little explains, defining that “by noise I mean measurement errors, random shifts or rotations. You’re trying to extract data from a complicated setting.” Noise of this kind is often unavoidable and can start corrupting data, but that’s where the math comes in to repair those gaps. 

On top of this high dimensional analysis, Little is also interested in inverse problems and signal processing. In particular, the analysis of mathematical models inspired by biological applications such as cryo-electron microscopy.

While she isn’t looking for these patterns inside the noise, she often spends her time assisting others to take a break from their own noisy lives. In an initiative that was also supported by her award, she led a retreat for doctorate students and postdocs. In such a highly strenuous field like STEM it can be challenging to find time to take care of oneself, leading to unsustainable performance. Little explains that “It’s important to work smart, to avoid burning out, and to understand one’s limits.”

Whether it be the noise of her research or the noise of life, Anna Little is taking the steps to both overcome it and help others do the same. And thanks to this award she’ll be able to continue to do so for many years to come.

My grandma was a teacher, and my mom studied teaching, so I grew up surrounded by educators. In high school, Math was my favorite subject.

The Department of Mathematics is hiring a bumper crop of new faculty members for the 2025-26 academic year. Two of them are profiled here:  Petar Bakić and Daniel Sinambela.

Finding the right questions
Petar Bakic

Petar Bakic

Petar Bakić, a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Originally from Zagreb, Croatia, Bakić graduated from the University of Zagreb and pursued a career in academia in research and teaching. For him, mathematics is finding the right questions to ask rather than seeking the answers to them.

His work centers on representation theory — a field in mathematics that employs linear algebra concepts (such as matrices) for studying the symmetries of spaces. It provides a concrete way to understand abstract algebraic structures by expressing them through linear transformations of vector spaces. Though it is inherently abstract, it connects to other applicable fields including harmonic analysis, geometry, number theory, and physics.

Abstract math researchers are often unheralded, as the complexity and nature of their research means it is not broadcasted to the general public to the same degree as other research fields. However, Bakić is part of a broad research community that is conducting research at an unprecedented rate — helping to advance our collective understanding and to push the frontiers of mathematics.

Beyond the research lab, Bakić enjoys being outdoors and exploring Utah. The Wasatch is a particular favorite for him to go hiking and on bike rides. Above all for Petar Bakić though, are activities involving friends and colleagues. 

by Ethan Hood

The Department of Mathematics is hiring a bumper crop of new faculty members for the 2025-26 academic year. Two of them are profiled here: Chris Miles and Tim Tribone.

Tim Tribone

Finding the right Level

Tim Tribone

Everyone learns in different ways. Some are great at memorization, others visualization.  Where one person learns well in a group another will thrive on their own. This can lead to roadblocks in subjects like math, as it can be tricky to approach students at a level they understand and in a way they mesh with. If overcome it reveals a massive strength of the field: teaching problem-solving and pattern-recognition skills that are useful anywhere. But the process of getting there, of finding that level students are at, can be a complicated challenge. 

Enter Tim Tribone, who among other things has led undergraduate research focused on the mathematics behind card games, taught classes at every level and worked with students exploring virtual reality as a pre-calculus teaching tool.

Tribone has a knack for finding new approaches to meet a student’s needs and interests, a skill that developed from r his own educational journey. Originally a music major, he eventually shifted towards math following the guidance of a mentor. He would continue working his way to a Ph.D. from Syracuse University before taking  a postdoctoral researcher position here at the U.

Along the way, Tribone has learned the importance of helping students at the level they currently are. For his undergraduate researchers he’s learned from his music major experience to create an environment that shows them what a career in math is like. But for his students in business math it’s far more important to treat math like a toolbox, focusing more on direct use and applications so a student can recognize, for example, why an Excel equation isn’t working. 

This sort of teaching is Tim Tribone’s focus moving forward as he takes a faculty position at the U. He enjoys working with postdocs, faculty and undergraduates in research, but he’ll be devoting the lion’s share of his time to teaching. Any student can learn and excel in mathematics, you just need to find the right level for them to do so.  

Blazing a New Trail
Chris Miles

Chris Miles

As technology evolves and industries grow, education must adapt to prepare the next generation for these upcoming opportunities.This requires bringing in new instructors to teach new classes, a rare and exciting opportunity to design entirely new curriculums. The new bioinformatics major is one such initiative, a trailblazing endeavor that new math faculty Chris Miles will soon be joining. 

Or perhaps “rejoining” would be the better word to use here as Miles is one of our own alumni. A first-generation student originally from Pennsylvania, he’s returning to the U after teaching at both New York University and UC Irvine. Called back in part by the aforementioned new major, he explains that “It’s an exciting chance to build something new here; it’s a perfect project- based subject to design classes around.” 

When asked to describe his vision for these new classes, he says that “In this field, you often have biological data from an experiment and have to figure out what to do with it. I want to expose students to that process, present data and encourage them to figure out how to use it. There’s no right answer!” That’s the beauty of a new degree, there’s no tradition that must be adhered to, so you truly get to design whatever works best.

On top of helping to pioneer the bioinformatics curriculum, Miles will also continue his research in “mathematical biology,” which includes the applications of mathematical modeling and AI with biological data. Machine learning allows researchers to survey all data in a set simultaneously and find patterns or equations: in the study of cells, these equations work to help us understand why cells work so well despite being built by seemingly random and disorderly molecular building blocks. Miles describes a field of two extremes where “some researchers will write equations for what they think is true of biology while others let AI decide.” He continues with,“I think it's fun to walk between the two extremes and take the best aspects of both.”

On a new path using new tools, adaptation is mandatory to succeed, but that’s an expertise Chris Miles brings to the table. He looks forward to teaching aspiring students in the upcoming semesters, pushing forward on this exciting new frontier of interdisciplinary discovery.

The Department of Mathematics is hiring a bumper crop of new faculty members for the 2025-26 academic year. Two of them are profiled here: Uri Shapira and David Schwein.

Knowing your audience: Uri Shapira

“When wearing the teacher’s hat and not the researcher’s, I believe it is my job to give service. I do not look at myself; I look at the people in class that I currently serve. It’s an attitude that says ‘Ok, let’s look and see what is best for this audience.’”

This is the approach that Uri Shapira takes towards teaching his classes. He’s well aware there is no one-size-fits-all approach that students can learn from, as different students are going to learn in fundamentally different ways. As Shapira describes, a biologist doesn’t need to understand the history of a formula or how it was developed. They just need to know how to use it as a tool. So give them the tool, teach them how it works and where to apply it. 

But a math major would benefit from that history, understanding what the original problem was and how a new tool was created to solve it. And by understanding that process —how such discoveries came to be — students will  be better suited to make their own breakthroughs in the future.

It’s a refreshing and realistic approach to teaching, inspired by a lifetime of exposure to mathematics. Introduced to the subject by his older brother, Shapira would go on to graduate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem then spend his postdoc at ETH Zurich, which paved the way for a faculty position at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He brings over a decade of teaching experience, paired with research into how questions in number theory can be approached with the tools of dynamical systems. 

Be it the researcher or the teacher, Uri Shapira fully devotes himself to playing whichever role is before him. After a lifetime of being inspired by mentors and colleagues, he looks forward to contributing to the U’s math community in kind, to learn, to research and to provide the invaluable service of teaching.

Community and Utility: David Schwein

We’ve all heard the stereotypes about math: That it’s a study exclusively for prodigies, that it’s an isolated career. And then there is the classic complaint of “When am I going to use this?” 

But in reality, such complex studies need communication and communities to work alongside them. As for utility, the problem-solving skills math develops are incredibly useful to any walk of life. 

These are the kind of ideals David Schwein hopes to impart to his students.

An assistant professor at the University of Utah, Schwein is fresh off a postdoctoral research journey across Europe, starting at Cambridge and ending at the University of Bonn in Germany His research primarily deals with symmetry, using the Langlands program to study connections between the representation of p-adic groups, number theory and Galois theory. Across this educational arc he’s traveled to almost 20 countries, giving him a wide range of exposure to how math is approached across the globe.

This experience is not unique in the world of math, as Schwein describes “an interesting and stimulating community in this field, all across the globe, that is all working on various aspects of a single problem”— an international network of professional puzzle solvers who can (and usually need) to work together to pursue new breakthroughs. It’s an aspect of the field that often goes unnoticed in what he calls the stupor of complicated lectures, which Schwein hopes to avoid. “You’ve got to break students out of that stupor and get them communicating about ideas, coming up with examples,” he says. “It helps if they’re a little skeptical, questioning how something can be true. I’m looking forward to helping students see the beauty and structure of math, how it’s another science that tells us about the real world.”

With experience teaching both introductory and high-level courses in multiple cultures, Schwein is well equipped to start teaching number theory and complex analysis in the fall. Having grown up in Denver, Colorado, he’s happy to return to his roots in the Rocky Mountains and is eager to explore the beautiful natural environments Utah has to offer. 

As the National Science Foundation marked its 75th anniversary, a national meeting on computational mathematics held at the University of Utah offered a glimpse into the next 75 years of discovery.

Cholera kills thousands of people and infects hundreds of thousands every year—and cases have spiked in recent years, leaving governments with an urgent need to find better ways to control outbreaks.

Current public health guidelines discourage treating cholera, a severe diarrheal disease caused by waterborne bacteria, with antibiotics in all but the most severe cases, to reduce the risk that the disease will evolve resistance to the best treatments we have.

But recent disease modeling research from University of Utah Health and the Department of Mathematics challenges that paradigm, suggesting that for some cholera outbreaks, prescribing antibiotics more aggressively could slow or stop the spread of the disease and even reduce the likelihood of antibiotic resistance.

The results are based on mathematical modeling and will require further research to confirm. But they represent a first step toward understanding how antibiotics could change cholera spread. Co-authors include Cormac LaPrete, Jody Reimer and Frederick Adler from the math department's mathematical biology group.

“This might be an underused opportunity for cholera control, where expanding antibiotic treatment could have population-level benefits and help control outbreaks,” said Lindsay Keegan, research associate professor in epidemiology at U of U Health and senior author on the study published Wednesday.

Putting the brakes on outbreaks

Key to the researchers’ discovery is the fact that antibiotics make people less infectious. Medication is generally reserved for people who are most severely infected because moderate cases quickly recover with rest and rehydration. But while antibiotics may not help most individuals feel better faster, they reduce the amount of time someone is infectious by a factor of 10.

“If you recover naturally from cholera, you will feel better in a day or two, but you’re still shedding cholera for up to two weeks,” explained co-author Sharia Ahmed, assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, who worked on the study as a postdoctoral researcher in Keegan’s lab. “But if you take an antibiotic, you still feel better in about a day, and you stop releasing cholera into your environment.”

This means that treating moderate cases with antibiotics could slow outbreaks or, in some cases, stop them in their tracks. Even though a higher percentage of people with cholera would be using antibiotics, fewer people would get the disease, so that less antibiotics are used overall.

Cumulatively, lower antibiotic use lowers the risk that cholera evolves antibiotic resistance—which is “a big concern in the field,” Keegan said. “Cholera is exceptionally good at evading antibiotics and developing resistance. It’s not just a theoretical problem.”

The researchers mathematically modeled the spread of cholera under a variety of conditions to see which cases could benefit from antibiotic use. The key variable is how likely someone is to spread the disease to other people, which in turn depends on factors like population density and sanitation infrastructure.

In cases where cholera spreads more rapidly—like in regions with higher population density or without reliable access to clean drinking water—treating moderate cases of cholera with antibiotics wouldn’t slow the spread enough to balance out the risks of antibiotic resistance.

But if spread is relatively slow, the researchers found, using antibiotics for moderate cases could limit spread enough that, in the long run, fewer people catch the disease and fewer people are treated with antibiotics. In some cases, they predict, antibiotic use could stop outbreaks entirely.

Cholera cases are on the rise

Figuring out better plans for managing cholera is especially urgent because outbreaks are on the rise. Cases and deaths have spiked by about a third in the past year, likely related to mass displacement and natural disasters. As the climate shifts and extreme weather events become more frequent, disruptions to infrastructure could lead to cholera outbreaks in countries that haven’t previously experienced the disease.

The researchers emphasize that further work is needed before their work could motivate changes to how governments treat cholera. Scientists need to see whether the results hold up in more complex simulations that incorporate factors like cholera vaccines, and they need to figure out rules of thumb to quickly estimate whether or not the disease will spread slowly enough for aggressive antibiotic use to be a good call.

“The takeaway is not, ‘OK, let’s start giving people antibiotics,’” Keegan said. “This is a first step at understanding antibiotic use as a possibility for outbreak control.”

“If the results continue to be this compelling,” Ahmed added, “and we can replicate them in different settings, I think then we start talking about changing our policy for antibiotic treatment for cholera. This is a really good example of using data to continually improve our policy and our treatment choices for even well-established diseases.”

These results were published April 30 in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology as “A theoretical framework to quantify the tradeoff between individual and population benefits of expanded antibiotic use.” Co-authors include Cormac LaPrete, Jody Reimer and Frederick Adler of the U’s Department of Mathematics and School of Biological Sciences, and Damon Toth and Valerie Vaughn of the Department of Internal Medicine. The research was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (grant numbers 1U01CK000675 and 1NU38FT000009-01-00) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (grant number 5K08HS026530-06).