Bruno Nachtergaele has been elected foreign member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science (Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, or KVAB) alongside Ive Hermans (Johns Hopkins University), Luis Liz-Marzán (CIC biomaGUNE), and Valérie Trouet (University of Arizona) in recognition of their scientific excellence and impact. The KVAB promotes and rewards scholarship, science, and the arts. It prides itself on its own and its members strong cultural involvement. It is known for its Thinker's Programme, Energy Reflection Group, and Position Papers. Congratulations, Bruno!

We are sorry to share that Distinguished Professor Emeritus Craig Tracy passed away January 29, 2026. He was 80. Craig joined the Department as a Full Professor in 1984 and retired in 2021. He served as Department Chair from 1994 till 1998 and played a transformative role in creating the Department we know now. His extraordinarily fruitful collaboration with Harold Widom (1932-2021) had an indelible impact on Random Matrix Theory and its applications, most notably through their discovery of the Tracy-Widom distribution.

At the Tenth Triennial International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM 2025), held in Shanghai, China from January 3-7, 2026, Roger Casals was awarded a best paper award for his Annals of Mathematics paper, "Infinitely Many Lagrangian Fillings," written jointly with Honghao Gao. The Award, a Gold Award in the Geometry and Topology category, honors "papers with innovative insights and significant impact in math research." Congratulations Roger!