News

The annual Department Newsletter is now available.

Mathematician is the top tending job title, according to recent data that appears on dice.com. Data Engineer follows in second place. Job postings for mathematicians grew 91.7 percent year-over-year.

Professors Steve Shkoller and Mariel Vazquez were named to the 2020 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. Shkoller was cited for "For contributions to nonlinear partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, and free-boundary problems" and Vazquez for "For contributions in research and outreach at the interface of topology and molecular biology, and for service to the mathematical community in particular to underrepresented groups."

The 2020 Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research in Analysis/Probability Theory will be awarded to Craig Tracy and Harold Widom. The prize recognizes the impact of the ground breaking paper "Level-spacing distributions and the Airy kernel," published in 1994 in Communications in Mathematical Physics.

Prof. Niels Jensen, professor of Mathematics and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has developed a new algorithm to run simulations of molecular motions. The new approach allows for up to a fourfold increase in computing power. Potential applications include materials science and pharmaceutical research. The paper appeared in the journal Molecular Physics and has been incorporated into the widely used software package LAMMPS.

Naoki Saito and co-PIs: Nina Amenta (CS); Chen-Nee Chuah (ECE); Thomas Lee (Stat), joined by 31 senior personnel coming from four departments (Computer Science; Electrical & Computer Engineering; Mathematics; and Statistics), were awarded an NSF grant titled "UC Davis TETRAPODS Institute of Data Science". The project is part of an NSF program called: "Harnessing the Data Revolution: Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science", one of ten "Big Ideas" programs . This institute will cross interdepartmental barriers to promote interdisciplinary research collaborations among faculty members, postdocs, and graduate students in the four departments.

A Data Science Center led by Mathematics Department Professor Thomas Strohmer is one of four new centers to be created at UC Davis through the IMPACT initiative of the UC Davis Office of Research.

The Department will be hosting the Workshop on Geometric Methods for Analyzing Discrete Shapes starting Friday, September 20 through Sunday September 22, 2019. This workshop will discuss new methods for describing and comparing shapes, a key problem in image processing with many applications in medicine and biology.

George Thomas Sallee died unexpectedly in the early evening of Saturday, June 15, 2019, at the UCD Medical Center of hemorrhagic stroke. Tom was born in Nyssa, a little farming community in eastern Oregon on the banks of the Snake River. He worked in the sugar beet fields and packing shed, became an Eagle Scout, and enjoyed a very happy childhood. Tom attended the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena as a mathematics major and went to UC Berkeley under a NSF fellowship for his master’s degree in mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle. While at Berkeley, he met his future wife Joan. Tom was hired as an assistant professor of mathematics by UC Davis in 1966. Teaching was his true love and he slowly moved to the field of mathematics education, a combination of the fields of both math and education. In 1989, he founded College Prep Math. Its junior high and high school textbooks are used across 49 states. He is remembered by his many students, colleagues, and extended family.

John Chuchel died on May 19, 2019, after a long illness. He was 80. Born in Winona, Minn., John moved to Sacramento in 1979. A theoretical mathematician, he was educated at St. Mary’s College in Winona, Minn., the University of Minnesota and Montana State University. He taught college-level math for 53 years, 35 at UC Davis. Numerical interests led him to studies of weather, volcanoes, mountains and careful tracking of over 275,000 miles during 55 years of cycling. He is remembered fondly by his many students and by colleagues who appreciated his wisdom about teaching mathematics.

Becca Thomases, Eugene Gorskiy, Luis Rademacher, Elena Fuchs are featured in a story "Four Exploring the Frontiers of Mathematics" on the UC Davis Curiosity Website.

Jesus DeLoera has been named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics for his "contributions to discrete geometry and optimization, polynomial algebra, and mathematical software."

Graduate student Samuel Fleischer was selected as the student highlight for SIAM's Dynamical Systems Magazine. Fleischer was invited to write an article about his current work and the experiences that have shaped his career trajectory, including his motivations for supporting the community through AWM and other venues.

Chancellor Gary S. May has named the 2019 class of Chancellor’s Fellows, the university’s annual honors program recognizing associate professors for high achievement in the quality and excellence of research and teaching. Professor Luli shares this honor with 9 other promising faculty. He was chosen for "the transformational caliber of [his] work."

Dr. Tavernetti describes the simplicity of math, some of the famous discoveries through the history of mathematics, as well as how math connects different fields. This talk has garnered over 125,000 views.