We are pleased to announce that David Gao has been awarded the Hellman Family Foundation Endowed Graduate Fellowship, a prestigious program established to support early-career scholars demonstrating exceptional research promise.

The fellowship provides one-time funding to advance impactful research and help recipients accelerate their academic and professional growth.

More information about the award can be found here: https://evc.ucsd.edu/resources/hellman-fellowship-program.html 

The Department of Mathematics Front Desk will be closed for Winter Break starting on Thursday 12/18/25. We will reopen on Monday 1/5/26.

Congratulations to Sofia Tkachenko, recipient of the 2025-2025 Silagi Undergraduate Award! Please join us in celebrating this outstanding achievement.

Congratulations to our 16 undergraduate math majors who have been named among the recipients of the 2025-2026 Physical Sciences Dean’s Undergraduate Awards for Excellence!

The recipients are (in no particular order):

1. Chia-Lun Tsao
2. Kenji Gunawan
3. Eric Jung
4. Sahith Edula
5. He, Yifan
6. Maya Chang
7. Hoffman, Michael
8. Charles R. Chen
9. Jack Determan
10. Ryan Batubara
11. Gexiang Zhang
12. Yimeng Yin
13. Scarlett Chen
14. Marco Bazzani
15. Gavin Zhang
16. David Stephens

In a recent opinion piece in the San Diego Union Tribune, Professors Julian Betts (Economics), Akos Rona-Tas (Sociology and Vice Chair of UCSD Academic Senate) and Michael Holst (Chair, Department of Mathematics) discuss the issue of Mathematics preparation and their concerns about what it means for future students (as first presented in an Academic Senate workgroup report).

Congratulations to PhD student Johnny (Jingze) Li for their selection as one of six UCSD graduate student scholars recognized for his exceptional contributions to undergraduate education.  Johnny served as a Summer Graduate Teaching Scholar in Summer 2025, teaching a lecture of Math 20D where he developed a studio-style course environment that incorporated project-based learning, inquiry-based pedagogy and concept maps.  Johnny is a PhD candidate working in the emergent phenomenon of artificial and biological neural networks under the direction of Professor Gabriel Silva in Bioengineering and Professor Bo Li in Mathematics.

Congratulations to Adrian Ioana on being named the inaugural holder of the Presidential Chair in Mathematics. Professor Ioana is an internationally recognized leader in the general areas of operator theory and functional analysis. He is especially known for his work on von Neumann algebras, a topic with important applications in quantum mechanics and ergodic theory.

We are pleased to announce that Kazutoshi Alexander Patrick Ko has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Julie D. Soo, MA '85 Master's Degree Scholarship.

This prestigious award, in the amount of $2,500, recognizes a master's degree student in the physical sciences or statistics who has demonstrated a commitment to applying analytical skills in the service of social responsibility and civic engagement.

Congratulations to Kazutoshi on this well-deserved honor!

The Graduate Awards Committee has selected the following four students for the 2024-25 TA Awards:

Vitor Borges - nominated by Anthony Sanchez

"He is responsible and mature and shows a genuine interest in his students. Vitor will have a long career not just as a research mathematician, but as a top-tier instructor."

Jiyoung Choi - nominated by Leesa Anzaldo and Jiawang Nie

"She carefully explained how definitions and theorems apply to problems and examples in a way that was understandable to students.  She is a highly accessible TA, as she promptly communicates in emails and made herself available to meet outside regular office hours."

Steve Huang - nominated by Alina Bucur

"He helped proofread the homeworks I assigned (not a trivial task for a course for which there is no textbook!), wrote solutions for both homework and quizzes (thus ensuring the grader's task was much easier), met with students who had fallen behind to help them catch up."

Max Johnson - nominated by Leesa Anzaldo

"They were passionate and energetic about writing meaningful worksheets and facilitating exams with academic integrity in mind. After working with him, Max even created a problem bank for future Math 18 TAs to use for writing worksheets"