News

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!

More recently, Dan Romik published his "Topics in Complex Analysis." This book, hot off the press, reveals a panoramic vision showing how complex analysis underlies and illuminates phenomena in algebra, number theory, and geometry. The final chapter provides a detailed account of the solution to the sphere packing problem in dimension 8, for which Maryna Viazovska was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022. One notable feature of Dan’s book is that the ebook version is fully open access (provided by the publisher, De Gruyter, and paid for by University funds).

We appreciate these contributions highlighting the beauty of mathematics!

This July, our Department hosted two conferences! Both were part of annual traditions, namely the Trisectors workshops and the Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC) annual meetings.

The Trisectors Workshop took place June 26-June 30 and was organized by Alex Zupan, Laura Starkston, Jeffrey Meier, Maggie Miller, and Gabe Islambouli. This year's workshop emphasized connections with symplectic topology. It was preceded by introductory lectures delivered over Zoom during the week leading up to the conference and featured several afternoon devoted to group projects.

The FPSAC meeting, a much larger event, took place July 17-21 and was organized by a much longer list of people including several from UC Davis: Monica Vazirani, Matt Silver, Anne Schilling, Dan Romik, Alex McDonough, Gladis Lopez, Fu Liu, Shelby Kustak, Sean Griffin, Tina Denena, Jesus DeLoera, and Eric Carlsson.

Both conferences were reported to be very successful! Let's thank our colleagues and staff for their hard work!

Learn more about these conferences at the websites for FPSAC 2023 and Trisectors Workshop 2023.

Roger Casals is one of four recipients of an Incentives for Large Grant Awards from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. The Incentives for Large Grant Awards program aims to support faculty pursuing grants over one million dollars. It provides faculty with up to $80,000 over the course of two years.

Together with Laura Starkston, Eugene Gorsky, Motohico Mulase and Anne Schilling, Roger will pursue an National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Research Training Groups (RTG) focused on topology, geometry, and combinatorics. The group hopes to create a vertically integrated training program that provides high-quality research experiences and training in the mathematical sciences for undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Bonam Fortunam!

Professor Arsuaga was one of 5 faculty selected for the 2023 Chancellor’s Fellowships for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for their exceptional contributions in supporting, tutoring, mentoring and advising underrepresented students and/or students from underserved communities.

"Professor Arsuaga has contributed to DEI efforts across all UC campuses, having served first as chair of the Affirmative Action and Diversity Committee at UC Davis and subsequently as chair of the systemwide University Committee on Affirmative Action, Diversity and Equity. He also participated in the task force that led to the Hispanic Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative, has been a member of the Cal-Bridge program leadership, and organized a workshop on the role of DEI in STEM fields. He currently directs the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Math, focusing on underrepresented students."

AWM established the Emmy Noether Lectures in 1980 to honor women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences. In April 2013, the lecture was renamed "AWM-AMS Noether Lecture" and in 2015 was jointly sponsored by AWM and AMS. Schilling was recommended for this award by a joint selection committee (William Goldman, Rachel Kuske (Chair), Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, and Emily Riehl).

Please join AWM and AMS for the JMM 2024 in San Francisco.