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Department of Mathematics
University of Mississippi


Announcements
Professor Arthur Benjamin will deliver the 21st Dalrymple Lecture in Mathematics, on March 1st, 2018, at 7:00 PM, Overby Center Auditorium. Prof. Benjamin is the Smallwood Family Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. He is also a professional magician, and in his entertaining and fast-paced performance, Dr. Benjamin will demonstrate how to mentally add and multiply numbers faster than a calculator, how to figure out the day of the week of any date in history, and other amazing feats of mind.
A research proposal of mathematics visiting assistant professor Maksym Derevyagin, Olga Holtz (the lead collaborator, UC Berkeley), and Sergey Khrushchev (Kazakh-British Technical University) has been selected for the Summer Collaborators program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The proposal is entitled “The Laguerre-Polya class, Polya frequency sequences and generalized Hurwitz matrices”. The collaboration will take place on the IAS campus in July of 2018.
Sandra Spiroff, Associate Professor in Mathematics, will co-organize a workshop at Banff International Research Station October 20-25, 2019. As a collaborative effort with Emily Witt (Kansas), Karen Smith (Michigan), and Irena Swanson (Reed College), the accepted proposal “Women in Commutative Algebra” has the concurrent aims of advancing research and improving the current representation and visibility of women in the field.
Saša Kocić, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, has been chosen for funding under NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, a program designed to help junior investigators in EPSCoR-eligible states develop career-spanning collaborations through extended visits to other premiere research institutions around the nation (full press announcement).
This November 4-5, the department will host the 5th Mississippi Discrete Mathematics Workshop. These workshops bring together researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students from Mississippi and nearby states, as well as a number of international participants. The featured speaker for this year’s workshop is Mark Ellingham, of Vanderbilt University. Further details can be found at http://discretews.math.msstate.edu. We welcome speakers and non-speaking participants alike.
Thái Hoàng Lê, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.
Mathematics major Alex Jane Martin will be inducted into the University of Mississippi 2016-17 Hall of Fame. Alex is a triple-major in Economics, International Relations, and Mathematics.
Micah B. Milinovich, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded a two-year NSA Young Investigator Grant (2017-2019) from the National Security Agency Mathematical Sciences Program for a project entitled “Zeros of L-functions and estimates for primes.”
Professor of Mathematics Gerard Buskes has been named the Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher of the Year, in recognition of his excellence in teaching and dedication to his students.
Prof. Jerzy Weyman will deliver the 20th Dalrymple Lecture in Mathematics, on October 29th, 20015, at 6:00 PM, Overby Center Auditorium. The abstract of his talk can be read here. Prof. Weyman got his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1980. His interests span several branches of algebra: Commutative Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Representation Theory and Invariant Theory. Since 1985 until 2013 he held a position at Northeastern University in Boston. Since 2013 he is Joan and Stuart Sydney Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Weyman was the recipient of the Kuratowki Prize of the Polish Mathematical Society in 1983. He was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in 2011 and was the recipient of the Sierpiński medal in 2015.
On Saturday, October 17th, the University of Mississippi hosted its 11th annual math tournament for high school students. 12 teams competed in the team competition, representing high schools from as far away as D’Iberville! The winning teams were from Collierville High School and from Oxford High School. 46 students took part in the individual competition. Joey He and Akaash Padmanabha from Collierville tied for first place, with a perfect score! Shawn Chao and Edward Hu from Oxford tied for second place.
Jeremy Clark and Thái Hoàng Lê join the department as new tenure-track assistant professors, and Pengfei Zhang as new visiting assistant professor.
Recent mathematics Ph.D. graduate Chris Schwanke has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa for the next one-to-three years. Tentative plans have been made for Chris to collaborate with Professor Emeritus Koos Grobler as well as postdoctoral fellows Miek Messerschmidt and Marten Wortel.
Prof. Brian Conrey, Executive Director of the American Institute of Mathematics, will deliver the 19th Dalrymple Lecture in Mathematics, on April 9th, at 6:30 PM, Overby Center Auditorium. The abstract of his talk can be read here. Prof. Conrey is also a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bristol, England, and a recipient of the 2008 Levi L. Conant Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his outstanding expository paper “The Riemann Hypothesis”.
Mathematics Ph.D. student Janet Nakarmi is the recipient of a Graduate Student Achievement Award from the College of Liberal Arts. She is one of only two recipients chosen from the departments of Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mathematics, and Physics and Astronomy.
Prof. Erwin Mina-Diaz is an invited speaker at the Workshop on Orthogonal and Multiple Orthogonal Polynomials at CMO, Oaxaca, Mexico, August 9-14, 2015.
Recent Mathematics Ph.D. graduate Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh has accepted a three-year position as a William W. Elliott Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Duke University.
Prof. Micah Milinovich is an invited speaker at the International Conference on Number Theory and Physics at IMPA in Rio de Janerio, Brazil from June 15-June 26, 2015. The conference poster can be found here.
On Saturday, October 11th, 2014, the University of Mississippi hosted its 10th annual math competition for high school students. 48 students took part in the competition, representing a total of 9 high schools! It was great to see so much dedication and hard work on display.
The Fourth Abel Conference: A Celebration of Yakov G. Sinai, will be held soon on Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, 2014.
Two mathematicians, Jacob Lurie (algebraic geometry) and Yitang Zhang (number theory), have been named 2014 MacArthur fellows. Recipients are chosen from a wide variety of disciplines including writing, the arts, the sciences and social sciences, the humanities, and entrepreneurship, and must demonstrate exceptional creativity and promise for important future advances. Details about the fellowship can be found here and a complete list of the 2014 MacArthur fellows can be found here
Ole Miss math professor Sandra Spiroff is one of the official visiting scholars at the University of Utah
Maryam Mirzakhani (dynamics/geometry), a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics. The 2014 Fields Medal was also awarded to Artur Avila (dynamical systems), Manjul Bhargava (number theory), and Martin Hairer (stochastic PDEs). Quanta Magazine brings nice pieces about these mathematicians and their work. Terrence Tao briefly describes part of their research here
Our Graduate Student Chapter is featured on the American Mathematical Society website
Prof. Micah Milinovich has been awarded a second consecutive NSA Young Investigator Grant (2015-2017)
Samuel Lisi and Hehui Wu join the department as new assistant professors
Jeremy Clark, Maksym Derevyagin, and Ulises Fidalgo join the department as new visiting assistant professors
Recent Ph.D. graduate Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh was an invited participant in the workshop “Exciting New Faces in Analytic Number Theory” at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn, July 2014
Math graduate student Chris Schwanke has been awarded the 2013-2014 Graduate Instructor Excellence in Teaching Award. This is the Department of Mathematics’s second consecutive win of this honor. Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh received the award for the 2012-2013 year
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