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This Give Day 2021, generous donors have the opportunity to transform our students' lives. Please consider supporting one of the Department of Mathematics gift challenges.

Math Department Challenge

Thanks to a generous gift from Val Chan '92 to establish this challenge, any gift received will support outstanding academic programs, the pursuit of new knowledge, as well as our talented students and faculty. Your contribution will also allow flexibility to address the greatest needs within the department, including graduate student recruitment and community building.

Eric C. Ruliffson Scholarship in Mathematics

Help support math students and honor the memory of Eric Ruliffson (B.S., mathematics, ’68). Eric excelled at problem-solving at UC Davis, which helped him to achieve life-long personal and professional success. This scholarship was established to support mathematics students, like Eric, to help them succeed. Once 15 gifts to this fund are received, $25,000 from Erica Ruliffson Schultz and Bryan Schultz will activate on Give Day.

Rishidev Chaudhuri is an applied mathematician. He joined UC Davis in 2019 with a joint appointment between the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. His research deals with themes such as noise and variability in the brain, computation via dynamics in recurrent networks, and more. He plans to use the Sloan Fellowship funding to study how noise and randomness might play a role in neural computation, and to develop techniques to extract structure from experimental recordings of the activity of populations of neurons, and attempt to apply the resulting data to test and refine theories of decision-making.

Laura Starkston joined UC Davis in 2018. She is a pure mathematician specializing in low-dimensional topology. Her Sloan Fellowship work will focus on several research questions relating to symplectic 4-manifolds and singular submanifolds. In addition to the Sloan Fellowship, she is the recipient of a 2020 Hellman Fellowship and a 2021 Faculty Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation.

Congratulations Rishidev and Laura!

Jesús De Loera has been awarded the Farkas Prize for 2020. The prize is awarded annually by the INFORMS Optimization Society, part of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

The prize was awarded to Prof. De Loera "in recognition of his pioneering work at the intersection of discrete mathematics, optimization and algebraic geometry."

The Society further explains in its award announcement: "Professor De Loera's research includes fundamental results on topics including the complexity of interior-point methods for linear programming, the Hirsch conjecture for network flow polytopes, use of Gröbner and Graver bases for discrete optimization and the theory and application of triangulations. His research is noted for the successful computational implementation of methods based on complex mathematical theory, including the enumeration of lattice points in polyhedra and the application of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz to combinatorial optimization. Professor De Loera is also well known as an outstanding expositor and mentor whose infectious enthusiasm draws other researchers to work in areas where they might otherwise not dare to venture."

Congratulations Jesús!

• Incoming graduate student Ashleigh Adams was granted the National Science Foundation's prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship. According to the Foundation, the fellowship "recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution."
• Fifth-year student Jianping Pan, whose research is on algebraic combinatorics, was awarded the Professors for the Future fellowship for 2020-21. The Professors for the Future program, managed by UC Davis Graduate Studies, "is a year-long competitive fellowship program designed to recognize and develop the leadership skills of outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have demonstrated their commitment to professionalism, integrity, and academic service."
• Katy Jarvis, a student in her final year in the graduate program whose research is on mathematical models for muscle contraction and other biological processes, received the UC Davis Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2020-21, a "12-month fellowship open to continuing doctoral students who are in the final stages of their doctoral work demonstrating strong potential for university teaching and research."
• Black Jiang and Eli Moore received a Summer GSR award from UC Davis Graduate Studies, offering financial support for their research activities during Summer 2020.
• Xiaotie Chen, Chengyang Wang and Jack Wesley received the College of Letters and Science Dean's Summer Fellowship for 2020.

From the UC Davis statement: When fall quarter instruction starts Sept. 30, the campus plans to offer most courses remotely, though some courses will also be available in person, depending on health guidelines and instructor preference. As well, in-person instruction will occur for the small number of courses that cannot be delivered remotely, such as those requiring live performance and hands-on experiences.

At this time, we anticipate that math classes will be held remotely.