math-news
Getting Stuff Done: Thomas Yassmin
Balancing football and academics was challenging, but Yassmin performed this balancing act well, earning a spot on the PAC-12 Academic Honor Roll multiple times during his five years at the U.
Yassmin has advice for other students balancing busy schedules: "You've just got to prioritize certain things. There are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made. Sometimes weekends are just not the weekends you want to have, or your friends ask you to come over and you just have to suck it up and put your head down for a couple hours and get your work done first before you do anything else. Little things add up, an hour here, an hour there, dedicating times where it's undistracted work. By the end of the week, it accumulates. I think that's the thing, just sacrificing certain amounts of time to make sure you get your stuff done first."
Yassmin was fortunate to have had some stellar professors, especially Lajos Horvath, from whom he took multiple classes, and Tom Alberts, his project advisor. They understood his unique position and helped him navigate the balancing act between athletics and math. Yassmin expressed that he probably wouldn't have made it through his MStat degree without them.
Read the rest of Thomas's story by Angie Gardiner at math.utah.edu.
Math Faculty Retiree Jim Keener
Math Faculty Retiree Jim Keener
THE RETIREMENT OF DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR JIM KEENER LEAVES AN UNFILLABLE HOLE IN THE WORLD-RENOWNED MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY PROGRAM THAT HE DID SO MUCH TO BUILD.
Or at least would if he was not planning to continue to provide wisdom and insight to students and faculty alike from his office where the door (and minds) is (are) always open.
Jim joined the University of Utah faculty in the Department of Mathematics in 1978 and started a research program that set the standard for mathematical biology by combining creative modeling built on the devilish details of complex biological phenomena with development of the new mathematics needed to understand those models and answer biological questions. His highly influential work on spiral waves emerged from his interest in cardiac arrythmias, and his perhaps even more influential work on ranking (which inspired the first version of Google’s original PageRank algorithm) emerged from his interest in college football.
His three books, Principles of Applied Mathematics (1988), Mathematical Physiology (with James Sneyd, and winner of the 1998 Association of American Publishers’ “Best New Title in Mathematics”), and the new Biology in Time and Space: A PDE Modelling Approach (2021) are paragons of exposition and laid the foundation for the rigorous and deep applied mathematics that underlie any serious quantitative study of biology.
Jim is the visionary leader for the U’s graduate program in mathematical biology. The success of this program reflects his own strengths: inspiring mentorship, biological and mathematical breadth, the joy of collaboration, ability to communicate with both mathematicians and biologists, and the taste to identify and solve important problems. The reach of this program is extraordinary, with graduates holding leadership roles in research universities, liberal arts colleges, industry, and in the mathematical biology community. Students in the program today have a built-in international network of friends, colleagues and mentors.
Like most people who get this much done, Jim is fun to be around. His “cabin parties” are legendary, although what actually happens there can never be revealed. Dinner with Jim is a delightful mix of challenging debate and convivial laughs. His joy in inquiry and in people builds on a deep spirituality and love of nature that underpin the wisdom that we look forward to sharing for many more years.
by Fred Adler
Professor of mathematics and Director of the School of Biological Sciences
Of Honeybees and Carbon Emissions: SIAM Modeling Competition
Of Honeybees and Carbon Emissions
LAST NOVEMBER, THE U’S STUDENT CHAPTER OF THE SOCIETY FOR INDUSTRIAL AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS (SIAM) HELD A MODELING COMPETITION FOR UNDERGRADUATES.
Teams chose one of three modeling problems that were based on real-world situations and worked together to analyze the problem, generate figures and results, and write a report about their findings.
The reward for the winning team was their registration fee, paid-in-full, for the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) in February 2024. The U’s SIAM student chapter hosted this competition to help participants prepare for the MCM and give them confidence in their abilities as scientific modelers.
Two teams participated in the contest, one with two members, Maxwell Archibald and Jack Perry, and another team with three members, Joshua Villarreal, Garrett Iverson and Dominic Cinaglia. Archibald and Perry studied the population dynamics of honeybees and won first place with their thorough and well-organized report while Villarreal, Iverson and Cinaglia looked at CO2 levels and their correlation with climate change which won second place for their strong statistical analysis and informative report. The judges were so impressed with the quality of both teams’ submissions they decided to fund both for the MCM in February.
The U SIAM student chapter is extremely grateful for the financial support of the Department of Mathematics, without which the chapter would not have been able to fund these five deserving students.
Aaron L. Fogelson
In late March SIAM also announced the 2024 Class of SIAM Fellows. The group includes Aaron L. Fogelson, professor of mathematics, recognized for pioneering work on mathematical modeling and numerical methods for platelet aggregation and blood clotting. Through their various contributions, SIAM Fellows help advance the fields of applied mathematics, computational science, and data science. Read more about Fogelson’s recognition here.
Distinguished Professor: Davar Khoshnevisan
Khoshnevisan’s research in probability theory spans three sub-concentrations: mathematical statistics, multi-parameter random processes, and stochastic partial differential equations. These topics are mathematically sophisticated yet have immediate applicability in engineering and applied sciences. His work in mathematical statistics is used in high dimensional data analysis, while his research in stochastic partial differential equations has been used to model the intermittency properties of sunspot phenomena over time. His work on multi-parameter random processes led to the resolution of several long-standing conjectures on fractal properties of random fields, some of which dated back to the 1930s.
A prolific author of over 135 research papers that have been cited over 1,800 times, fully one-quarter of Khoshnevisan’s articles have appeared in Annals of Probability or Probability Theory and Related Fields, the most well-regarded journals in the field.
Additionally, Khoshnevisan is known as an excellent expositor. His textbook Probability is used in graduate-level probability courses across the country, and his monograph Multiparameter Processes is the standard in the field. His upcoming book Gaussian Analysis is intended for beginning researchers. He has also served in an editorial role for several prestigious journals.
Related to his publications, Khoshnevisan has received numerous accolades in recognition of his prodigious research output and his professional service, including in 1998 the Rollo Davidson prize. In 2015 he was made a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and in 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Then, in 2018 he was recognized as a Medallion Lecturer at the Institute of Mathematical Statistics’ annual conference.
Of special note is Khoshnevisan’s mentorship of young mathematicians. At least 50 of his research articles are jointly authored with his postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. At the U, Khoshnevisan has directly supervised 14 postdoctoral fellows, 10 PhD students, and nine master's of statistics students.
Khoshnevisan has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation since 1997, with his most recent grant extending into 2026. This is a remarkable achievement given the exponential increase in probability research during that period and is an extraordinary validation of his research program. Equally impressive is that he was able to maintain his research funding while taking on the additional responsibilities of department chair. In 2020 alone, while chair and managing the pandemic, he published five remarkable articles on spatial ergodicity of solutions to stochastic partial differential equations. Already this work is being recognized as fundamentally important in the field.
“I am thrilled that Davar Khoshnevisan has been selected as a Distinguished Professor for the 2023-24 academic year,” says Department Chair Tommaso de Fernex. “This is a great accomplishment and well deserved recognition.”
by Tom Alberts
Goldwater Scholars 2024
Two College of Science students awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for 2024-25
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship is a prestigious award given to undergraduate sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers. Goldwater Scholars often go on to hold distinguished research and leadership positions across many disciplines. For the 2024-2025 academic year, 438 scholarships were awarded to college students across the country. At the University of Utah, two undergraduate students have earned the honor of becoming Goldwater Scholars: Muskan Walia and Nathan Patchen.
Nathen Patchen
Biochemistry
“Biochemistry was a great way for me to combine my love of biology and chemistry and understand not only how things work, but why,” says Nathan Patchen about what motivated him to pursue research in that field. Patchen was awarded the Goldwater Scholarship for his work in Yang Liu’s lab, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.
Patchen describes his research as broadly being focused on DNA damage repair. He says “[w]e have access to revolutionary gene editing tools that, when used in conjunction with advanced imaging techniques, allow us to explore how cancer cells undergo DNA damage repair as never seen before. Personally, I am doing this by implementing a modified CRISPR-Cas9 that allows us to capture time-resolved images after damage and then produce data about the kinetics of repair.”
After graduating from the U, Patchen hopes to pursue an MD/PhD to practice medicine while continuing his research on gene editing and aging. Outside of his time in the lab, he enjoys being active through swimming, biking, and running as he trains for an IRONMAN 70.3 in St. George, Utah in May.
Muskan Walia
Mathematics
Philosophy
“Mathematics is at the cusp of interdisciplinary research” says Muskan Walia. During the College of Science ACCESS Scholars research program, she reflected on her academic interests and goals. She explains, "I wasn’t interested in studying any discipline in a vacuum or in isolation. Rather, I wanted to work on mathematics research that centered justice and informed public policy.”
The majority of Walia’s undergraduate research sprouted from her time in ACCESS where with the help of Fred Adler in the mathematics department at the College of Science, she began to adapt an epidemiological SIR model to predict the number of cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. Since then, she has created other models to further answer her questions about disease. These include a “... model of disease progression within an infected individual, a model of an antigen test, and a model of symptoms to evaluate how testing can be used to limit the spread of infection.”
“Ultimately, I want to lead a team that utilizes mathematical principles to tackle the most pressing social justice related questions of our time.” Walia is one of 57 awardees honored this year who intend to pursue research in mathematics or computer science. Besides innovating mathematical models, Walia enjoys spending time outside bird watching with her mom and gardening with her grandmother.
By Lauren Wigod
Science Writer Intern
2024 Class of SIAM Fellows: Aaron L. Fogelson
Utah Symposium in Science & Literature
U Fulbright Scholar Semi-Finalists 2024
The University of Utah is proud to announce that nine students have been selected as semi-finalists for the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Three are affiliated with the College of Science in the Fulbright area of Research.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, this nationally competitive program supports academic exchanges between the United States and over 140 countries around the world. Selected program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or serve as English Teaching Assistants abroad. See us.fulbrightonline.org.
For 2024-2025, the University of Utah submitted 19 Fulbright applications. Its cohort of semi-finalists represents multiple schools and colleges, including the College of Education, College of Humanities, College of Science, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, David Eccles School of Business, and the Honors College. The group includes two students who intend to enter graduate programs, three students who proposed research projects, and four students who aim to serve as English Teaching Assistants. Projected countries include Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Making it to the semi-finalist round is a significant accomplishment for these students and means that their applications have been forwarded by the Fulbright National Screening Committee to the Fulbright Commission or U.S. Embassy in the host country for final review. Finalists will be notified later this spring, with the timing of notifications varying by country.
Below are the three finalists from the College of Science all in the category of Research.
Marina Gerton (B.S. in Biology and Chemistry, December 2023) aims to undertake a research project at the University of Costa Rica under the mentorship of Mario Espinoza that focuses on the secret life of snappers--insights from fish movements. Gerton got an early start in science. She graduated from West High School in Salt Lake City where she participated in the 2018 University of Utah Science and Engineering Fair with her project "Mucoadhesive HA-based film releasing metronidazole to treat bacterial vaginosis." Her ambition is to pursue a PhD in marine science, specifically focusing on conservation research.
"While I had a slightly different focus when I first started in the lab," she says, "I’m now working on using paper and plant waste products (think recycled paper, yard clippings, agricultural waste, etc.) as, essentially, a food source for this really interesting bacteria Teredinibacter turnerae." Currently working in Eric Schmidt's lab in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, she says that "one of the most interesting aspects of her research is that the bacteria she works with live in symbiosis with another organism, shipworms, and actually grow within specialized host cells in the shipworms’ gill tissue." It’s especially interesting, she states, as we know this species produces various compounds of medicinal interest, and "we’re still able to see production of those compounds when it’s grown on these waste products."
Gerton loves boxing and swimming, but is quick to say that she loathes running "with a passion." She also claims that watching commercials for Best Friends or the WWF can make her cry. (She avoids them along with pineapple on her pizza.) Finally, what would she do if she had more time outside of academics? One word: bake.
Moses Samuelson-Lynn (HBS in Math, BA in German, Spring 2024) aims to research “A New Set of Efficient Initial Variables for Cluster Algebras of Finite Mutation Type” at the Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Germany. His main interest is in pure mathematics, especially number theory, analysis, geometric graph theory, geometric group theory and algebraic geometry.
His undergraduate research has led him to multiple presentations at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. His ambition is to earn a PhD in pure mathematics with the goal of becoming a research professor.
Samuelson-Lynn lives in West Valley City and he enjoys playing piano, bicycle riding, chess, origami and programming. In addition to his Fulbright aspirations, he will be joining a research team in Germany over the summer of 2024 directly after graduation. He will be investigating applications of subatomic-scale sensitivity of nitrogen vacancy centers in ultra-pure diamond at GSI Helmholtz in Darmstadt, Germany. He is completing an honors thesis on the classification of surfaces and is a member of the university German club. UPDATE (4/3/2024): Moses Samuelson-Lynn has been announced as a finalist and will now be participating in the program as Fulbright scholar. Congratulations!
Catherine Warner (HBS, Math'19; Ph.D. in Math, Spring 2025) is a graduate student in the mathematics department where she anticipates earning her PhD in 2025. She aims to undertake a research project titled “Semiduality Groups: An Analog of Duality Groups” at the University of Sannio in Italy.
Werner's path to mathematics wasn’t exactly obvious. "I began undergrad as a biomedical engineering student," she says. "And even before that I mostly played golf throughout my earlier schooling while secretly reading classical philosophy in my free time," She quickly realized that engineering wasn’t enough. "I realized that ever since my early reading as a child, I’m used to expecting some deeper structures to reality, some sort of a deeper meaning. I just didn’t know how to find it."
Following the completion of her undergraduate degree, and partly pushed by that curiosity "and partly for lack of anything better to do," she adds, "I signed on for abstract math. I did so with hesitation because it seemed to me to be airy, lacking contact with reality. But the more I pursued geometric group theory, the more I became fascinated. Because I realized something pretty fundamental: One of the ways of finding hidden structures of the world is math — the amazing pursuit of the human mind, attempting to penetrate and order reality by following the structure of the mind itself." UPDATE (3/21/2024): Catherine Warner has been announced as a finalist and will now be participating in the program as Fulbright scholar. Congratulations!
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Fulbright alumni from the United States and around the world have gone on to achieve distinction in government, science, the arts, business, philanthropy, and education. Among the ranks of Fulbright alumni are 62 Nobel Prize recipients, 78 MacArthur Foundation Fellows, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 41 current or former heads of state or government.
Fulbright semi-finalists from the University of Utah were advised throughout the application process by the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships (ONCS) housed in the Honors College. ONCS staff members assist outstanding students and alumni in developing competitive applications, preparing for interviews, and securing University endorsements for a variety of prestigious nationally competitive scholarships, including Fulbright.
You can learn about all of the Fulbright semi-finalists at the U here.
The 2025-2026 Fulbright competition will open on April 2, 2024. To learn more, contact Alison Shimko, the University of Utah’s Fulbright Director and the Associate Director of ONCS, at alison.shimko@utah.edu or consult nationallycompetitivescholarships.utah.edu.
Rhodes Scholar Finalist
Rhodes Scholar Finalist: Eliza Diggins
February 27, 2024 |
The University of Utah is proud to announce that Eliza Diggins, a senior Honors student double-majoring in physics and applied mathematics, was selected as a finalist for the 2024 Rhodes Scholarship.
One of the oldest and most celebrated awards for international study in the world, Rhodes Scholarships provide tuition and living expenses for two or three years of graduate study at the University of Oxford. Along with “outstanding scholarly achievements,” Rhodes Scholars must demonstrate “character, commitment to others and to the common good, and the potential for leadership in whatever domains their careers may lead.”
Diggins, who hails from Sandy, Utah, is a cross-disciplinary researcher in astrophysics and epidemiology. She is completing an Honors thesis titled “Constraining Modified Gravity Using Galaxy Cluster Dynamics” and has worked throughout her undergraduate career to couple mathematical and computational skills with observational data and statistical method. She plans to carry these skills forward in a graduate program in astrophysics, where she intends to investigate the dynamics of galactic and extra-galactic systems and become a more holistically skilled researcher, capable in both theory and observation.
In addition to excelling in her coursework, Diggins has contributed to research projects and labs run by College of Science faculty, Daniel Wik, associate professor of physics and astronomy; Frederick Adler, professor of mathematics and director of the School of Biological Sciences; as well as Melodie Weller, assistant professor, School of Dentistry. These faculty members celebrated Diggins’ “drive, scientific curiosity and collaborative nature,” “the tremendous energy and enthusiasm” she brings to her academic work, and her “ability to convey mathematically intensive and innovative research.” Along with her selection as a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, Diggins received a nationally competitive Goldwater Scholarship, an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) award, a Wilkes Center Scholarship (awarded by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy in the College of Science) and a Thomas J. Parmley Scholarship for Outstanding Undergraduate Student from the Department of Physics & Astronomy. Finally, Diggins serves as the inaugural chair of the Physics & Astronomy Student Lecture Series and was selected to present her research at the American Society for Virology conference and to members of the Utah state government at Research on Capitol Hill (ROCH).
“Diggins’ research on the gravitational properties of X-Ray emitting intra-cluster medium and Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), galaxy evolution, and plasma dynamics answers important galactic questions and will allow her to contribute to the scientific community in myriad ways, ensuring that she will contribute to the future of scholarship about not only our world, but our universe as well,” says Ginger Smoak, director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships. Smoak also celebrated Diggins’ community work and how it “aligned with Rhodes Scholarship values, including a commitment to others and to the common good.”
Diggins taught English to low-income immigrant adults through the Adult Education Program at Guadalupe School in Salt Lake City and facilitates a transgender friendship circle for Encircle, a local nonprofit committed to advancing the well-being of LGBTQ+ youth, young adults, and their families. Her community recommenders praised her as one of the “brightest, most authentic, and committed people” they had met and stated that “her dedication transformed lives.”
For Diggins, competing for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship was “a difficult but illuminating experience.” She felt honored, she explained, “to meet and build relationships with the other Rhodes candidates, each of whom brought unique and interesting perspectives and qualifications.” Overall, she found the experience “instructive in forcing me to think very deeply about various aspects of my life.”
Per the Rhodes Trust, more than 2,500 students began the application process this year; 862 were ultimately endorsed by 249 different colleges and universities; 240 applicants from 90 different colleges and universities reached the finalist stage of the competition. Since 1904, the University of Utah has had 23 Rhodes Scholarship recipients, including Sabah Sial in 2023 (see https://nationallycompetitivescholarships.utah.edu/student-spotlights/sabah-sial/).
Diggins was advised throughout the Rhodes Scholarship application process by the University of Utah’s Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships (ONCS) housed in the Honors College. ONCS staff members assist outstanding University of Utah students and recent alumni in developing competitive applications, preparing for interviews, and securing University endorsements for a variety of prestigious nationally competitive scholarships.
To learn more, see https://nationallycompetitivescholarships.utah.edu/
This story originally appeared in @TheU.
May 20 2024 — The U’s Marriott Library announced recipients of the 2024 Alison Regan Library Thesis Award. Eliza Diggins was one of three. These students were chosen for their exceptional senior theses in the fields English, of physics and astronomy, and chemistry. Each student received $1,000 in recognition of their outstanding work. Read more about this honor in @ the U.