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October 2025
Shkoller to lead COMPASS team at UC Davis
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced a new round of Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program Centers (PSAAPCs). One of them, led by the University of New Mexico's Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) involves a collaborative team of universities including UC Davis. The universities will establish a Center for Optimized Modern Parallel Adaptive System Software (COMPASS). The goal of these more focused aspects of the program is to oversee specific research topics in either a science or engineering discipline or an Exascale enabling technology, prioritizing strengthening national security and working towards vital breakthroughs in large-scale simulation science. At UC Davis, operations will be overseen by Professor Steve Shkoller. Way to go, Steve!
September 2025
Schilling and Equations in the Sand
In a recent article entitled "Equations in the Sand," Greg Watry explains the work of Anne Schilling for UC Davis' Letters and Science Magazine. Inspired by equations her father wrote in the sand on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean while vacationing from his job at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), Schilling embarked on a lifelong pursuit of mathematical understanding that has led her into an exploration of stationary distributions, Markov Chains, and Open Access programming.
September 2025
Petrack awarded Best Poster at DNA31
GGAM graduate student Josh Petrack has won a Best Student/Postdoc Poster Award at the 31st International Conference on DNA, Computing and Molecular Programming (DNA31). The poster explained joint work with David Doty (from the Computer Science Department) that has been posted on the arXiv under the title "Exactly simulating stochastic chemical reaction networks in sub-constant time per reaction" (PDF).
August 2025
Mossman named Simons Dissertation Fellow
Lauren Mossman, graduate student with the Graduate Group of Applied Mathematics, has been named among the first class of Simons Dissertation Fellows in Mathematics. The award was inaugurated last year to commemorate James Simons and supports graduate students during their final years of study. Mossman's award recognizes and supports her work on ecosystem dynamics and species interactions where her innovative modeling techniques offer insight into habitat change and resilience. The award provides $30,000 in support to the student over two years along with a small amount for the university. Congratulations Lauren!
August 2025
Krener recognized with Quazza Medal
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Art Krener has been selected as the 2026 winner of the Quazza Medal, which is awarded every three years by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). It is one of the most prestigious awards in control theory, and awarded for lifetime contributions. Krener was recognized "for fundamental contributions to the analysis, estimation, control, and optimization of nonlinear systems." The medal will be officially presented at the 23rd IFAC World Congress in Busan, Korea, August 2026.
August 2025
Iyer awarded NSF CAREER grant
Sameer Iyer received an NSF CAREER grant (8/1/2025-7/31/2030). The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program provides the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
July 2025
Casals awarded MCA Prize
At the Mathematical Congress of the Americas in Miami (MCA2025) in July, Roger Casals was awarded one of the MCA Prizes. Every four years, the MCA prizes are awarded to only 5 mathematicians, who are no more than 12 years post Ph.D., who are either working or completed their graduate studies at an institution within the Americas.
June 2025
Casals on Seeing Mathematics
Mathematics is all around us. In a recent article for UC Davis' Letters and Science Magazine, Greg Watry features the work of Roger Casals, illustrating observations on "The Mathematics of Daily Life." Inspired by a caustic created by light falling through a window, Casals contemplated singularities and the mathematical tools to describe and understand them. In Casals words, “Everything seems very smooth, but at some point, a transition happens ... The theory of singularities helps us understand these transitions.”
May 2025
Rohit Thomas wins L&S Teaching Award
Winners of the 2025 College of Letters and Science Teaching Award have just been announced and Rohit Thomas is among them! The award recognizes outstanding teaching, both inside and outside the classroom. Rohit is one of the drivers behind our weekly pedagogy hangouts, which have been a treasure trove of insight about teaching for many of us. Thank you for teaching us how to teach, as well as teaching your students how to do mathematics. Keep up the good work!
April 2025
Starkston named 2025 Dean's Faculty Fellow
In an effort to encourage professional development for our faculty, the Dean's Office has created the Dean’s Faculty Fellows Program. The program honors outstanding achievements in early career faculty from across the college. The award was launched in 2020 and comes with a stipend to support research activities. One of this year's awardee's is our own Laura Starkston! Dean's Faculty Fellows give a public lecture during the second year of their fellowship, and this will surely an event worth attending. Congratulations Laura!
January 2025
Theater performance on Emmy Noether
On April 9, at 6pm, UC Davis will host a play on the life of Emmy Noether at our Wyatt Theater. The play, entitled "Diving into Math with Emmy Noether," is a joint production by portraittheater, Vienna and Freie Universität Berlin. The performance is part of portraittheater's USA Tour 2025, so don't miss this opportunity to see a play about a famous mathematician. Go as a group, a ring, or a noetherian ring!
October 2024
Surf's up! The intersection of water and math
As many of us know, Steve Shkoller's life revolves around surfing and mathematics. To see how these two passions build on each other, take a look at Greg Watry's discerningly written feature in UC Davis' Letters and Science Magazine. “The best wave you can get as a surfer is what’s called getting barreled, where the wave pitches over you and the crest falls in this cylindrical shape. You’re inside that cylindrical tube and then the wave crashes and when that wave crashes, that’s a singularity.” — Shkoller
September 2024
Luze Xu wins INFORMS award
Together with an international group of collaborators, postdoctoral scholar Luze Xu has won the INFORMS Optimization Society 2024 Young Researchers Paper Prize for the paper "On the column number and forbidden submatrices for $\Delta$-modular matrices." SIAM J. Discrete Mathematics, Vol 38, No 1, pp. 1-18, 2024. The group of authors comprises Joseph Paat (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada), Ingo Stallknecht (Isha Foundation, India), Zach Walsh (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Auburn University, USA), and, of course, Luze Xu (Department of Mathematics, University of California, Davis, USA). Congratulations to Luze and collaborators!
September 2024
Professor Schilling receives Graduate Mentoring Award
The 2024 UC Davis Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Awards have been formally announced and Anne Schilling is among the recipients! She follows in the footsteps of Rishi Chaudhuri, Jesús de Loera, Zhaojun Bai, and Eugene Gorskiy, who received this award in the past two years. In the words of Grad Studies: "Every year, outstanding individuals are recognized for their dedication to guiding and mentoring graduate students. Their exceptional guidance and unwavering support have profoundly impacted the lives of those they have mentored." Congratulations to Anne!
May 2024
De Loera recognized with T. Christine Stevens Leadership Award
The T. Christine Stevens Award, named after one of Project Next's cofounders, is awarded by the MAA to recognize persons who have made significant and sustained contributions to cultivating leadership skills within the mathematical sciences. This year, Jesús De Loera has been honored with this award in recognition of his ongoing efforts in training a new generation of leaders in mathematics, and, more specifically, for providing tiered mentoring and networking opportunities for Latinx and Hispanic early career researchers. In the words of Jesús De Loera: "Currently, too much mathematical talent is wasted. Mathematicians need to lead the change and help more people enjoy Mathematics." Congratulations, Jesús!
May 2024
Vazquez elected Fellow of AAAS
Mariel Vazquez has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She was selected based on her contributions in both outreach and research. Her research spans a broad area of mathematics including low-dimensional topology and knot theory with a view towards applications in molecular biology. She is part of the 150th cohort of inductees, and one of ten at UC Davis. Congratulations, Mariel!
April 2024
Jacob and co-authors win 2024 Frontiers of Science Award
Adam Jacob, as one of the co-authors of a paper entitled "(1,1) forms with specified Lagrangian phase : a priori estimates and algebraic obstructions," CJM vol. 8 (2020) no. 2 article 4 by Tristan C. Collins, Adam Jacob, Shing-Tung Yau, has been selected by the International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS), as a recipient of the 2024 Frontiers of Science Award (FSA) in Mathematics.
The FSA was inaugurated in 2023 during the first ICBS. As an FSA award recipient, Jacob is invited to the ICBS to accept the award in person in July 2024, in the Great Hall of People of China in Beijing. The award includes $25,000 divided among the authors of a winning paper. Inaugurated in 2023, the first round of FSAs was conferred on one hundred thirty-two awards in three subjects: Mathematics, Theoretical Physics, and Theoretical Computer and Information Sciences.
In addition, a paper by Jaroslav Trnka entitled "The Amplitudohedron," Journal of High Energy Physics, volume 2014, article 30 (2014), has been selected as the FSA recipient in Theoretical Physics. Trnka is part of QMAP, associated with many Department members.
We applaud our colleagues for this recognition of their research.
April 2024
Arsuaga's research featured in L&S Magazine
The UC Davis College of Letters and Science regularly publishes an online magazine to showcase the lives, contributions, and achievements of UC Davis College of Letters and Science faculty. A recent edition of L&S Magazine features an in-depth look at the work of our very own Javier Arsuaga entitled "Math All the Way Down," describing the intersection of mathematics and molecular biology and how that's driven his research. Take a look and be inspired!
February 2024
Shkoller and Fraas to speak at ICMP 2024
The XXI International Congress of Mathematical Physics, scheduled for July 1-6, will be taking place in the beautiful city of Strasbourg, France, and speakers have been announced. We are delighted to see that Steve Shkoller will be a plenary speaker and that Martin Fraas will be an invited speaker in the session on Many-body Quantum Systems & Condensed Matter Physics. According to the official ICMP2024 website: "The International Congress on Mathematical Physics, on its three year cycle, is the most important conference of the International Association of Mathematical Physics, currently presided over by Kasia Rejzner. It will be a major event, where new results and future challenges will be discussed, illustrating the richness and vitality of Mathematical Physics. We highly encourage/appreciate your attendance and contribution to ensure the success of this meeting." Strasbourg is easily reachable by train (about 2 and half hours from CDG airport) in addition to having its own minor international airport (SXB), so you might just be able to fit this into your travel plans!
January 2024
Alex Wein wins NSF CAREER award
Alex Wein has won a prestigious NSF CAREER award. He explains: "I'm very grateful to receive this funding, which will support two lines of research that I'm excited about. The first involves understanding fundamental tradeoffs between statistical resources (e.g. quantity of data) and computational resources (e.g. runtime) in large-scale statistical inference problems. The second involves finding optimal algorithms for various inference problems on tensor-valued data (e.g. an n-by-n-by-n array), including the 3-dimensional reconstruction problem that arises in cryo-electron microscopy."
November 2023
Allison Arzeno UCD '09 featured in Geekwire
In December 2022, Geekwire featured an article on Allison Arzeno (formerly O'Hair) under the title "Meet Allison Arzeno, the data science whiz leading insurance tech company Assurance IQ." Allison, who graduated with a major in Mathematics from UC Davis in 2009, had recently been promoted to chief executive officer of Seattle's Assurance IQ, a subsidiary of Prudential Financial, Inc.
Geekwire is a technology news website primarily focused on the area around Seattle, Washington, where Assurance IQ is located. It is an honor for Allison to be featured in this way. During her time at UC Davis, Allison wrote a dissertation under Jesús DeLoera entitled "The Geometric Structure of Spanning Trees and Applications to Multiobjective Optimization." Allison's skilled use of mathematics in the real world makes us proud and provides an example (and a contact) for math majors who wish to follow in her footsteps!
November 2023
Iyer named Hellman Fellow
Professor Iyer has been recognized by campus and named a Hellman Fellow. The Hellman Fellowship, funded by a generous grant given by Chris and Warren Hellman and dating back to 1995, aims to provide support to early stage faculty. The fellowship will help fund his research on "Formation of Separation and Onset of Reversal for the Stationary Navier-Stokes Equations." This year a dozen early stage faculty have been inducted into the Society of Hellman Fellows at UC Davis. Take a moment to read more about this ingenious class of inductees. Congratulations Sameer!