University of Michigan Department of Mathematics ContinuUM NEWSLETTER • 2019

Ypsilanti Math Corps Program View From the Chair’s Office Debuts at UM Anthony Bloch

Math Corps is a phenomenal program originating at The Mathematics Department had a busy and exciting year. Wayne State University that has changed the lives of thou- As always I would like to thank our faculty and staff for all sands of students from Detroit over the past few decades (visit their work and contributions and for making this department mathcorps.org for more information). It is a free math sum- such a pleasant and exciting place to work. mer camp for middle school and high school students. Among I would like to acknowledge the contributions of our As- those who have attended the Wayne State program, 80-90% of sociate Chairs: Andreas Blass, Dick Canary, Kristen Moore, them go on to college. Inspired by this program, members of and Karen Smith, as well as Personnel Committee Chair Ralf the UM Math Department recently started a Math Corps site. Spatzier, Doctoral Chair Mattias Jonsson, Stephen DeBacker, Professors Stephen DeBacker, Sarah Koch, and Yunus head of the undergraduate program, Admissions Chair Kartik Zeytuncu (UM-Dearborn) ran a Math Corps program in Sum- Prasanna, Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics Program mer 2019 for middle school and high school students from Director Silas Alben, and everyone else who has worked so Ypsilanti, MI. They were awarded a Faculty Structured Out- hard on departmental issues this year. As I write this we are reach Support Fellowship, from the Center for Educational preparing for an external review, and would like to thank our Outreach at UM, to run a pilot program for four weeks on internal committee for helping to prepare, and in particular Central Campus in Ann Arbor. About 40 middle school stu- Jenny Young, Heather Kleber and Doreen Fussman who dents and 20 high school students from the Ypsilanti area worked on our self study. I want to thank Doreen Fussman, attended, working with ten college students from UM. In our Chief Administrator, and her extremely capable staff who addition, several members of the Math Department including work hard every day to keep our department running smoothly. undergraduates, postdocs, graduate students, faculty, and staff On the hiring front we were happy to hire Asaf Cohen who volunteered their time to work with the Math Corps campers joins us in financial mathematics. Alex Wright was here last over breakfast each morning. Pictured below is Stephen year but joins formally this year. We are also happy to DeBacker with students. welcome several visitors including Aaron Pixton who is the Gehring Visiting Professor this year, as well as Giovanni Russo, and Lyudmyla Barannyk. We are pleased to have an exciting new group of Postdoctoral Assistant Professors and a large and excellent class of new graduate students. Our program in financial mathematics Inside continues to do well View from the Chair’s Office 1 under the leadership Math Corps 1 of Erhan Bayraktar, Faculty News 2 along with the actu- New Faculty 3 arial program directed Jim Kister 3 by Roger Natarajan. Quant Program Award 4 Charlie Doering was Graduate Program 4 reappointed as head PhD Alumni Profile 5 of Complex Systems, Graduate Awards 6 and Lydia Bieri now 2019 Doctorate Degrees 7 One of the great strengths of the Math Corps is the “kids directs the Michigan Undergraduate Commencement 8 teaching kids” model. The high schoolers are the tutors and Center for Applied Undergraduate Awards 9 the mentors of middle schoolers. The college leaders are the and Interdisciplin- Actuarial News 10 tutors and the mentors of the high schoolers. Every student in ary Mathematics Alumni News 11 the program always has someone to look up to and someone Math T-shirt Photos 11 continued on page 5 continued on page 10 T-shirt Order Form 12

UM DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS CONTINUUM 2019 Faculty News

Professor Bhargav Bhatt is one of 16 scientists nationally to Professor Karen E. Smith, the M. S. Keeler Professor of be named a 2019 Simons Mathematics and Associate Investigator. The Simons Chair for Graduate Studies, Investigator program has been elected to the recognizes outstanding National Academy of theoretical scientists, Sciences. In April, 2019 who will receive a sig- the Academy announced nificant and stable base the election of 100 new of research support from members and 25 foreign the foundation, enabling associates who are them to undertake long- recognized for their dis- term study of fundamen- tinguished and continuing tal questions. The intent achievements in original of the program is to find research. Election to the and support scientists in their most productive years, when National Academy is con- they are establishing creative new research directions, provid- sidered one of the highest ing leadership to the field, and effectively mentoring junior honors for scientists. This cohort of NAS members includes scientists. the most women ever elected in any one year. Dr. Mark Conger, who teaches Mathematics in the LSA Assistant Professor Alex Wright received the Michael Brin Comprehensive Stud- Dynamical Systems Prize for Young Mathematicians from ies Program, received Penn State Univer- the 2019 Golden Apple sity. The prize is Award in recognition given bi-annually to of his outstanding com- recognize outstand- mitment to students. ing contributions to The award annually dynamical systems honors a UM faculty made by researchers member for outstand- within four years of ing teaching, and is the their PhD. In ad- only teaching award at dition, in January UM given by students. Wright received the Award recipients are 2019 Levi L. Conant charged each year with giving a lecture as if it’s their last. Prize from the Ameri- Conger’s lecture was entitled “The Local, the Global, and the can Mathematical Society (AMS). He is being recognized Nature of Infinity.” for his article “From rational billiards to dynamics on moduli Professor Sergey Fomin, the Robert M. Thrall Collegiate spaces” published in 2016 in the Bulletin of the American Professor of Math- Mathematical Society (Vol. 53, pp. 41-56). The Conant Prize ematics, has received a is awarded annually to recognize the best expository paper 2019 Simons Fellowship. published in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of The Simons Fellows the AMS in the preceding five years. programs in both Math- ematics and Theoretical Promotions: Physics provide funds to Wei Ho was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. faculty for up to a Silas Alben was promoted to Professor. semester-long research leave from classroom Postdoc Teaching Awards: teaching and administra- Frederick Gehring Award: Harrison Bray tive obligations. Juha Heinonen Award: Christin Bibby Allen Shields Award: Luke Edholm B. Alan Taylor Award: Alexandros Saplaouras

2 CONTINUUM 2019 New Faculty James Kister, 1930-2018

Asaf Cohen joined the UM Math- James (“Jim”) Milton Kister, Professor Kister taught at mathe- ematics Department in 2019 as an Assis- Professor of Mathematics, passed away matics summer schools in Italy, tant Professor. in October, 2018, at his home in Ann specifically in Perugia (1991) and He received Arbor, surrounded by close family. Born Corona (1992), from which several his PhD in and raised in Cleveland, OH, he left for Eastern European students were recruit- Probability Wooster College in 1948, and started ed for U.S. graduate schools, including and Statistics graduate work UM. As associate chair from Tel-Aviv in mathematics for graduate studies, University in at Harvard in he developed relation- 2013, under 1952. Due to ships with Spelman and the direction health concerns, Morehouse Colleges, of Eilon he soon left for and had success recruit- Solan. Profes- Tucson, AZ, ing their students to sor Cohen during which Michigan. was a Postdoc time he recov- During a postdoc- Assistant Pro- ered enough to toral fellowship at the fessor at UM from 2014-2017, and an take a job at Los University of Virginia Assistant Professor of Statistics at the Alamos National in 1960-61, Professor University of Haifa from 2017-2019. Laboratory. As a Kister solved a famous research Professor Cohen’s research interests old problem of P.A. assistant there are in applied probability, stochastic Smith by producing an from 1953-1956, processes, and control theory. Specifi- example of a periodic Professor Kister worked with some of cally, he focuses on mean-field games, transformation of higher dimensional the earliest electronic computers on a mathematical finance and actuarial Euclidean spaces with no fixed points. variety of scientific projects, including, science, diffusion scale and large devia- While at the Institute for Advanced with several others, the design of a pro- tion scale analysis of stochastic control Study in Princeton from 1962-64, Pro- gram for a computer to play chess. He problems and games. His work has fessor Kister became interested in John soon returned to graduate school at the included machine learning, model un- Milnor’s important work on “micro- University of Wisconsin to complete his certainty, risk-sensitive control, heavy bundles,” and he proved that Milnor’s PhD in mathematics, with a specialty of traffic regimes, and partial differential microbundles were in fact classical topology. equations techniques in stochastic topological bundles. This important control and differential games. In 1959 Professor Kister was hired step vastly simplified the current theory by the UM Mathematics Department as and finally showed that the topological Alex Wright is now an Assistant an instructor, and was promoted to manifold theory could be described with Professor, and was profiled in 2018. assistant professor in 1961, associate elegance and simplicity unmatched by professor in 1964, and professor in the classical differential theory. 1966. He stayed until his retirement in Math Puzzle by Catriona Shearer Professor Kister was married to 1998. He served as department chair Susan Spence from 1956-1972 and his from 1971-1973, and was associate only child Karen was born in 1957. chair for graduate studies from 1988- During his stay in Oxford in 1977 he 1992 and 1994-1996. Professor Kister met an English mathematician, Jane helped to guide the academic careers Bridge, on the faculty there. The two re- of many promising mathematicians. He turned to Ann Arbor together, and were directed eight doctoral students who pleased to celebrate their 40th wedding themselves went on to academic careers. anniversary shortly before he died. He is He took full advantage of professional survived by his wife Jane, his daughter opportunities to travel, spending extend- Karen (Tim Athan) two grandchildren, ed periods at the Institute for Advanced If each of the four congruent rectangles above and four great grandchildren. has area 673, what total area do they cover Study at Princeton, the University of when arranged like this? (answer can be found Virginia, UCLA, and the Universities of elsewhere in this newsletter) Cambridge, Oxford, London and Paris.

UM DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS 3 Quant Students Words from the Associate Chair Win Competition for Graduate Studies A team of UM Quantitative Finance Our graduate programs continue to Rafe Kinsey (PhD 2014), Strategic and Risk Management Master’s Pro- thrive! For the 2019-2020 school year, Development, Spark Investment Man- gram students was one of five winners we have an especially large entering agement LLC. of the Eighth Annual Academic Affiliate cohort, with 32 incoming PhD students, Sarah Kitchen (UM postdoc 2013- Membership Student Competition spon- four new Marjorie Lee Browne (MLB) 2017), Research Scientist/Engineer, sored by the International Association Master’s students, and another three Michigan Tech Research Institute. of Quantitative Finance (IAQF). The Master’s students. In case you are un- competition, which attracts nearly fifty familiar with it, our MLB program is Brian Wyman (PhD 2010), Senior teams from twenty academic programs a “bridge to the PhD program” for stu- Vice President, Operations and Data each year, tasked students with prepar- dents from underserved communities, Analytics, The Innovation Group. ing solutions in response to a problem which until this year admitted only AIM I am very grateful for the panelists’ dealing with credit spreads. UM’s Team students. Notably, two of our four new generosity with their time, expertise, Submartingale included Quant Finance MLB scholars intend to study theoreti- and wisdom. Please let me know if you students Rick Yuankang Xiong (team cal mathematics. are interested in serving on our Non- captain), Hui Cai, Israel Diego-Guerra, The data revolution has created Academic Careers panel in the future! Yifei Lu, Xinye Xu, and Yuan Yin. high-level demand for mathematicians, One of my goals as Associate Chair Team Submartingale met weekly and there are many fulfilling math- is to strengthen our relationships with to research and prepare their solution, ematical careers outside academia that our PhD alumni. Reconnecting with you drawing heavily on their graduate cours- are increasingly attractive for our PhD all has been my favorite part of this job. es in their work. According to Team graduates. Two 2019 Michigan Mathe- I’ve been super impressed by how ac- Captain Rick Xiong, “Machine learning matics PhDs are beginning this fall at AI complished and happy Michigan Math and time series forecasting were very research labs at Google, for example. To PhD alumni seem to be! Please check exciting topics for all of us, so everyone accommodate skyrocketing student and out our new Advice and Resources web- was highly motivated to complete their postdoc interest in industry careers, we site for math graduate students (sites. assigned portion of the work and to op- have instituted an annual panel discus- lsa.umich.edu/math-graduates/), which timize our quantitative methods.” Xiong sion in which PhD alumni tell us about contains a section for alumni. We’d love also applauded the team’s systematic their work and mingle with current PhD to share some advice or perhaps a job way of working together, stating, “We students. This year’s panel featured: announcement you might like to post made sure to apply the four-eyes prin- Bill Correll (PhD 2002), Senior there! ciple to our work, which I think was Research Scientist, Radiant Solutions, Professor Karen Smith crucial in ensuring accuracy.” Ypsilanti, MI. Associate Chair for Four of the six team members have Nicolas Ford (PhD 2013), Google AI Graduate Studies since completed their Quant Master’s Residency Program. Program. Hui Cai returned to his home- town of Shanghai to start his position with Bloomberg, while Rick Xiong accepted a position with State Street in Hangzhou. Yifei Lu joined MSCI’s model validation team in Norman, OK. Yuan Yin has been accepted into Illinois Institute of Technology, where she will pursue a PhD in Mathematical Finance. Team Submartingale is the first UM Quant Program team to participate in this competition. Team members were invited to attend a celebration honoring the winners and an informal presenta- tion of their work at a reception in New York in October 2019. Additional details are available on the Quant website Left: PhD Graduate Francesca Gandini. Right: PhD Graduate Robert Walker with Associate Chair quant.lsa.umich.edu. Mattias Jonsson.

4 CONTINUUM 2019 in the international IBL community. Doug has taken the Small Spotlight on Doctoral Alumni Group Instructional Diagnostics technique he learned from the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching to UNI, where it is now being used to help improve Douglas Shaw instruction there. Professor of Mathematics, University of Northern Iowa A gifted improvisational actor, Doug has developed tech- Dr. Shaw received his PhD in 1995 for his thesis “A Non- niques for incorporating improv in the classroom, particularly Associative Approach to the Finite Projective Plane Conjec- STEM classrooms, which has led to an association with the ture,” under the direction of Thomas Storer. International Applied Improvisation Network. He has recently published Social Nonsense, a book of “Creative diversions for Doug Shaw came to two or more players.” This is a book of writing, drawing, and Michigan from Syracuse New storytelling games designed to give people fun, creative, al- York, where he was a systems ternatives to getting out their phones when they are with their engineer at GE, parlaying his family and friends. one year in industry into a lifetime of didactic yet enter- Doug loves his Alma Mater, and since 2011 he has re- taining anecdotes. turned to Ann Arbor every summer to teach in the Michigan Math and Science Scholars program in the UM Mathematics Doug is currently a full Department. Professor of Mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), a university that values both excellent teach- Math Corps ing and scholarship from its (continued from page 1) faculty. He came to UNI from to learn from. This is quite powerful: the younger students see a postdoc at the University of themselves in the older students and are inspired to realize Minnesota, where he met his wife, Laurel. They now have a their full potential. Another part of the Math Corps magic is mortgage, a dog, and a 13 year old daughter, Frances. Frances, the supportive and caring environment it provides. Everyone who grew up playing in college classrooms in the afternoons in the Math Corps feels a strong sense of family. The program and surrounded by mathematics in the evenings, wants to be is for life: Math Corps participants are always welcome to re- a teacher when she grows up. Doug served four years on the turn in subsequent summers. In fact, when Math Corps alumni Cedar Falls Board of Education, 2014-2018. describe the incredible impact that the program has had on At UNI Doug loves to teach math courses from devel- them, they inevitably mention their “Math Corps family.” opmental to graduate-level, but also has taught courses in The results of the very first Ypsilanti Math Corps at UM theater, business innovation, and first-year oral and written were significant. The pre/post test data for the middle school communication. He even gave a presidential scholar course students in particular showed measurable improvement (the on GÖdel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader. Hofstader had average test score tripled!), and every participant expressed a visited the University to give a rare talk there, and attended strong desire to return next summer. Continuing to follow the Doug’s office hours to chat. Doug is a well-loved and influ- Math Corps philosophy of believing in and celebrating chil- ential professor at UNI. He was recently chosen as the first dren, DeBacker, Koch, and Zeytuncu hope to run this program recipient of the Beverly Funk Barnes Educator Excellence annually. To this end, the Math Department is actively work- Award at UNI for his passion, creativity, dedication to stu- ing with different offices at the University to find long-term dents, and commitment to his community. funding. Doug credits his success to his preparation at the Univer- sity of Michigan, where he had both excellent research and teaching mentors, and the opportunity to have full responsi- bility for teaching classes, which was vital experience for his job search. At Michigan, he was one of the pioneers of our groundbreaking and nationally influential calculus reform program, under the direction of Mort Brown. He also helped develop our instructor development program, under Pat Shure and Bev Black. As an avid practitioner of Inquiry Based Learning, Doug coauthored a paper on using IBL to teach Liberal Arts Mathe- matics with Theron Hitchman (UM PhD 2003), a major leader Math Corps students in action.

UM DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS 5 2019 Graduate Program Fellowships & Awards

Allen L. Shields National Science Jonathan Guzman Saibal De Fellowship Foundation Fellow Alex Kapiamba Peter Dillery Joseph Kraisler Shelby Cox Moise Mouyebe Bradley Dirks Alana Huszar Jenia Rousseva Deshin Finlay The Wirt and Mary Christopher York Ursula Trigos-Raczkowski Karthik Ganapathy Cornwell Prize Robert Walker Alexander Ginsberg Trevor Hyde Peter Smereka Thesis Andy Gordon Takumi Murayama Award Sweetland Fellowship Haoyang Guo Raymundo Navarrete Rachel Webb Aleksander Horawa Cortright Fellowship James Hotchkiss Yongkai Qiu Poorman Fellowship Sumner B. Myers Mitul Islam Nancy Hong Memorial Prize Zhan Jiang Juha Heinonen Memorial Visu Makam Zhi Jiang Graduate Student Prasad Family Fund Sameer Kailasa Fellowship Fellowship Department of Sayantan Khan Karen Butt Lara Du Mathematics Outstanding Ryan Kohl Montek Gill Teaching Award Benjamin Krakoff Marjorie Lee Browne Yifeng Huang Christina Athanasouli Jiayu Liang Scholars Claire Lin Fernando Angulo Barba Rackham International The Karen Rhea Yiyang Liu Karina Aponte Student Fellowship Excellence in Teaching Yunze Lu Joseph Ballardo Christiana Mavroyiakoumou Award Steffen Maass Lemar Callaway III Shubhodip Mondal Salman Siddiqi Caleb Mayer Esteban Coronel Balcazar Andrew McMillan Uzziel Cortez Rackham One-Term The Mort Brown Michael Mueller Daniel Maes Dissertation Fellows Excellence in Teaching Alapan Mukhopadhyay Moise Mouyebe Gilyoung Cheong Award Ilia Nekrasov Angus Chung Jacob Haley Khoa Nguyen Mathematics Alumni/ Montek Gill Swaraj Sridhar Pande Alumnae Scholarship Yifeng Huang The Pat Shure Carsten Petersen Fanchen He Matthew Olson Excellence in Teaching Samantha Pinella Award Jenia Rousseva Mathematics Department Rackham Outstanding Lara Du Yuping Ruan Kannappan Graduate Student GSI Award Sampath David Schwein Awards Jasmine Powell Usha Sharma Bhalla Yonatan Shelah Francesca Gandini Daniel Irvine Fund Sanal Shivaprasad Mark Greenfield Christina Athanasouli Binglin Song Devlin Mallory Rackham Predoctoral Rishi Sonthalia Nathan Vaughn Fellowship Mathematics Department Daniel Stoll Leighton Wilson Emanuel Reinecke Graduate Fellowship Nawaz Sultani Harry Richman Jorge Arce Garro Derrick Sund Mathematics Department Rachel Webb Craig Bolles Ursula Trigos-Raczkowski Summer Research Anna Brosowsky Konstantinos Tsouvalas Grants Rackham Science Award Jack Carlisle John Wakefield John Holler Joseph Ballardo Attilio Castano Yinan Wang Daniel Irvine Craig Bolles Brian Chen Nicholas Wawrykow Patrick Kelley Amanda Bower Can Chen Yueqiao Wu Harry Lee Attilio Castano Ruian Chen Wijit Yangjit Andrew O’Desky Esteban Coronel Balcazar Yiwang Chen Berkan Yilmaz Matthew Olson Elizabath Collins-Wildman Gilyoung Cheong Jingjie Zhang Salman Siddiqi Uzziel Cortez Robert Cochrane Xin Zhang Alexander Vargo Anthony Della Pella Elizabeth Collins-Wildman Yili Zhang Nathanial Vaughn Bradley Zykoski

6 CONTINUUM 2019 2019 Doctorate Degrees Yuanyuan Chen completed the dissertation “Filtration Philip Tosteson completed the dissertation “Representa- theorems and bounding generators of symbolic multi-powers” tion stability, configuration spaces, and Deligne-Mumford under the direction of Mel Hochster. Yuanyuan will be a compactifications” under the direction of Andrew Snowden. Software Engineer at Zoox. He will be an NSF Postdoc at the University of Chicago. Francesca Gandini completed her dissertation “Ideals of Umang Varma completed the dissertation “A paucity of subspace arrangements” under the direction of Harm Derksen. data in machine learning: Applications in single cell RNA She has accepted a position at Kalamazoo College. sequencing and ranking” under the direction of Anna Gilbert. Han Huang completed the dissertation “High dimensional Robert Walker completed his dissertation “Uniform phenomenon in convex geometry and spectral theorem of symbolic topologies in non-regular rings” under the direction random graphs” under the direction of Mark Rudelson. Han of Karen Smith. He will be an NSF Postdoc at the University has accepted a position at Georgia Tech. of Wisconsin. Trevor Hyde completed his dissertation “Polynomial Bowei Wu completed his dissertation “Spectrally-accurate statistics, necklace polynomials, and the arithmetic dynamical algorithms for simulating vesicle Stokesian flows and their Mordell-Lang conjecture” under the direction of Jeff Lagarias application to electrohydrodynamics” under the direction of and Michael Zieve. He has accepted a position at the Univer- Shravan Veerapaneni. sity of Chicago. Hao Wu completed the dissertation “New applications of John Kilgore completed his dissertation “Weyl’s Law for random matrix theory in spin glass and machine learning” singular algebraic varieties” under the direction of Lizhen Ji. under the direction of Jinho Baik. He has accepted a position at Radiant Solutions/Maxar. Ming Zhang completed the dissertation “Quantum K- Robert Lutz completed his dissertation “Electrical net- Theory with level structure” under the direction of Yongbin works, hyperplane arrangements and matroids” under the Ruan. Ming has accepted a position at the University of Brit- direction of Jeff Lagarias. He has accepted a position at ish Columbia. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Left: Master’s recipient Andrew Melfi completed his dissertation “Theoretical and Alana Huszar with numerical analyses of deviations between Kingman’s Professor Mattias Jonsson; Below right: Coalescent and the Wright-Fisher Model” under the direction PhD recipient John of Divakar Viswanath. Kilgore with Professor Mattias Jonsson; Below Rongxiao Mi completed the dissertation “Gromov-Witten left: Commencement theory and type II extremal transitions” under the direction of speaker and PhD Yongbin Ruan. Rongxiao has accepted a position at Harvard. recipient Bobbie Wu. Takumi Murayama completed the dissertation “Seshadri constants and Fujita’s conjecture via positive characteristic methods” under the direction of Mircea Mustaţă. Takumi will be an NSF Postdoc at Princeton. Jiah Song completed the dissertation “Mathematical modeling and simulations of traffic flow” under the direction of Smadar Karni. Jiah will be Data Scientist Analyst at Ford Motor Company. Matthew Stevenson completed his dissertation “Applica- tions of canonical metrics on Berkovich spaces” under the direction of Mattias Jonsson. He has accepted a position at Google. Qingtang Su completed the dissertation “Long time behavior of 2d water waves” under the direction of Sijue Wu. Qingtang has accepted a position at University of Southern

California.

Yitong Sun completed the dissertation “Random features 2019 methods in supervised learning” under the direction of Anna Problem: Math to Solution Gilbert.

UM DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS 7 Undergraduate Awards Ceremony and Commencement Activities

Top row l-r: Professor Kristen Moore presents the Donald J. Lewis Mathematical Merit Scholar Award to Tali Khain; Professor Michael Zieve presents the George Piranian Excellence in Mathematical Writing Award to Noah Luntzlara; Cathy Rusco presents the Lois Zook Levy Award to Sarah McNair-Wilson; Graduate Trey Austin with Professor Stephen DeBacker. Second row l-r: Donald J. Lewis Mathematical Merit Scholar Award recipients; Bychinsky Award winner James Hazelden with Professor Stephen DeBacker; Graduate Briana Staggers. Third row l-r: Professor Hugh Montgomery with Virginia Tech Math Competition high scorer Wanqiao Xu; Graduate Kendra Robbins; Graduate Noah McNeal; Graduate Robert Weinbaum; Fourth row l-r: Graduate Amanda Burcroff; Graduate Carly Burwell.

Undergraduates Receive National Recognition Three undergraduate Mathematics Students have earned national academic scholarships. Amanda Burcroffand Noah McNeal were awarded Marshall Scholarships. They were among 48 students who received the awards out of over 1000 applications in 2018. Marshall Scholarships provide full fund- ing for a year of study in any subject at any institution in the United Kingdom. Amanda and Noah both graduated in 2019, and are the fifth and sixth UM mathematics students to receive this recognition. Undergraduate Noah Luntzlara received a 2019 Gold- water Scholarship from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. He is one of 496 students to be named Goldwater Scholars out of over 5000 applicants. These students are recognized for their impressve academic and research credentials.

8 CONTINUUM 2019 2019 Undergraduate Awards and Fellowships

The William Lowell Putnam com- Otto C. Richter Prize for Actuarial Science Bochem Pham petition is a rigorous 12 question exam Nabil Ahmed Vidya Srinivas Kah Jun Lim Jacob Strange which tests the originality and technical Yuan Shi John Yang competence of math students. More than 4,500 students participated in this year’s Irving Wolfson Award for Actuarial Science Frank H. and Agnes A. Davis Scholarship competition. The top scorers from the Bradley Pineless Henry Fleischmann Andrew Gadbois CIGNA Award for Actuarial Science department were Omer Siddiqui, Noah James Milleville Mark Cappaert Luntzlara, and Conor Thompson. Connor Novak Emily Coffield Killian Olson In the 36th Annual University of Owen Langejans Wen Plotnick Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Shihao Su D.W. Simpson Award for Actuarial Science Competition placed first, Jishi Sun Luke Keirnan Keera Feng Arav Agarwal placed second, and Matthew Wang Junshan Chen placed third. Natarajan Family Award for Actuarial Science Yuan Shi Ben Dushnik Scholarship Evelyn O. Bychinsky Awards Lois Zook Levy Award for K-12 Teaching Jing-Yi Liu Fangu Chen Sarah McNair-Wilson Matthew Polgar James Hazelden Donald J. Lewis Mathematical Merit Scholars Carl Hahn Fischer Scholarship Ruizhe Huang Nabil Ahmed Shijie Cheng Stephen Jasina Ryan Britton David Geering Shijia Li Mengyang Cao Jacob Hall Yifan Lu Ryan Capouellez Cody Laskowski Jared Stolove Shiliang Gao Alexander Vidinas Yingsi Jian Annie Xu Marilyn and Stewart Gloyer Scholarship Wenyu Jin Alexander Cepo Tali Khain Dylan Debaun Leon P. Zukowski Prize for Math Lab Mentoring Max Kontorovich Daniel Kaiser Noah McNeal Miner S. Keeler Scholarship Mathematics Alumni/Alumnae Scholarship Roi Orzach Koichi Anderson Noah McNeal William Warner Yuxuan Bao Robert Weinbaum Robert Buhring Jack McLaughlin Award in Algebra Coco Zhang Liam Clancy Charles Devlin Yuci Zhou Cameron Derwin Wilfred Kaplan Award in Applied Mathematics John Dolan Benjamin Doubek Tali Khain Margaret S. Huntington Prize in Actuarial Jeremy D’Silva William LeVeque Award in Number Theory Research Maryan El-Hage Jaeyoon Kim Yuxuan Cao Scott Guest Ming Hint Chui Frank Raymond Award in Geometry and Keshav Gupta Maya Crystal Cooper James Topology John Desmond Filbin Stephen Jasina Piriyakorn Piriyatamwong Trevor Kelterborn Luke Kiernan George Piranian Excellence in Mathematical Li Hsuan Lin Alec Korotney Zachary Murry Writing Award Owen Langejans Kathleen O’Gorman Noah Luntzlara Grace Liu Harshith Tenepalli Noah Luntzlara Sumner B. Myers Award in Analysis Zhanning Zhu Grace O’Brien Yichen Liu Jeffrey Ohl Outstanding Achievement in Mathematics Outstanding Graduating Seniors Shankar Prabhu Mufeng Gao Amanda Burcroff Jason Ross Melissa George Piriyakorn Piriyatamwon Alexander Saigeon Zhihao Guo Mengxi Wang Matthew Sawoski Benjamin Johnsrude Eric Winsor Chance Stephenson Mingda Liu Matthew Supran Alexander Tew Bobby McGovern Wirt and Mary Cornwell Prize in Mathematics Kenneth Wang Jeffrey Ohl Jaeyoon Kim Gregory Raskind Zheng Yang Upamanyu Sharma L.C. Cortright Memorial Scholarship Ziyi Zhang Tianyu Yang Fizza Ahmd Joshua Gordon Yuan Yao Virginia McCulloh Scholarship Nameer Hirschkind Jiaxi Yin William Garland Yi Zhou Eric Huang Stephen O’Donnell

UM DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS 9 Actuarial Program Highlights Notes from the Chair (continued from page 1)

We are continuing to maintain our elite status as one of (MCAIM). I would like to thank John Schotland for his the 33 Centers of Actuarial Excellence in the world as desig- service as the previous head of MCAIM, which ran some nated by the Society of Actuaries. excellent conferences this year including one in honor of Joel We held our 17th Annual Nesbitt-Huntington Actuarial Smoller. Commencement on May 4, 2019 with Alexa L. Nerdrum, a Our faculty continue to accrue numerous honors. Many 1995 alumnus, as our keynote speaker. The quality of stu- are funded externally, sometime from multiple sources. Karen dents (23) who graduated during the past academic year was Smith was appointed a member of the National Academy of impressive. They passed a total of 84 (3.2 average) actuarial Science, Bhargav Bhatt received a Simons Investigator Award exams. Ten of them majored in a second area. On the average and Sergey Fomin a Simons Fellowship (see page 2). they had one summer internship. Above all, 16 of them found Our department has developed several excellent outreach employment immediately upon graduation. programs to the community including the wonderful Math The beginning of the school year typically brings a surge Corps (detailed on page 1). Bob Griess runs the Wolverine in actuarial enrollments. Currently, there are 116 students Express program, and we still hold weekly Math Circles. The who have declared Actuarial Math as their major; 36 of them Michigan Math and Science Scholars summer program attracts are majoring in one additional area, and twenty one of them outstanding high school students from around the world for its with additional minors. A record number (47) of our actuarial three sessions. students have added a major and/or minor in areas related to Our innovative calculus program continues to do well as actuarial science, namely, Data Science, Statistics, Econom- does our center for Inquiry-Based Learning directed by Ralf ics, and Business Administration. In addition, there are at Spatzier. As mentioned above we will have an external review least seven students who are pursuing dual degrees (having this year, and we host the visiting committee in October. to complete 158 credits, as opposed to normal 120, before graduation) in Actuarial Mathematics and Business Adminis- We are very grateful for the wonderful donations to our tration/Engineering. department from alumni, faculty, emeritus faculty, and friends. Marilyn and Stewart Gloyer have pledged additional funds We are also experiencing a significant increase in the to their scholarship endowment that will support students number of high school students who have expressed interest pursuing a secondary teaching certificate in Mathematics. in pursuing the actuarial profession. This is exciting for the In addition, the Alan Kaylor Cline fund was established by program. Alan Cline and Elaine Rich, which will provide support to It is always a pleasure to work closely with our student undergraduate students with financial need. We received over club Student Actuaries at Michigan (SAM). The SAM Board $9,000 in donations on November 27, 2018, for Giving Blue- does an outstanding job assisting the members (more than day. This money was used to enhance the graduate and un- 225) in course planning, passing actuarial exams, finding dergraduate commencement ceremonies. We look forward to internships, and securing full time jobs. another successful Giving Blueday on December 3! I am extremely pleased that our network of employers is Anthony Bloch increasing annually. They tell us that the quality of our stu- Alexander Ziwet Professor & Chair dents is also increasing each year. That is music to our ears. We encourage all the alumni/ae to join University of Participants in the Actuarial Alumni Leadership Council meeting Michigan Actuaries group in LinkedIn in September, 2019. Front row l-r: Karen MacDonald, Susan Smith, www.linkedin.com/groups/2486220. Joseph Marker, Mario Imbarrato, Michael Frank, Kristen Moore, JJ Carroll, Kevin Dyke, Tom Terry, Tom Levy, Dave Hartman, Roger B. Roger Natarajan Natarajan, Back row l-r: Keera Feng, Lee-Yang Lin, Brad Pineless, Actuarial Program Director Ed Martin, Kelley Clevenger.

10 CONTINUUM 2019 Alumni Updates Where’s Your Math T-shirt Been?

Karen Uhlenbeck (BS 1964; PhD First row l-r: Siblings Natalia (2020) and Michael (2018) Jenuwine in Budapest; Tianji Cong (2020) in 1968 Brandeis) has been awarded the Sichuan; Alex Wang in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Second row l-r: Kyle Sinclair (2011) at Angkor Wat; Julie Rakas (2019) and Justin Vorhees (2019) at the Arc de Triomphe; Gregory Zelanka on the Gatlinburg 2019 Abel Prize in recognition of her Skybridge. Third row l-r: Thomas Tay at the Microsoft headquarters in Seattle; Emily Witt (2011) pioneering achievements in geometric and Daniel Hernandez (2011) at the University of Kansas with specially designed VOTE math shirts; partial differential equations, gauge Rongxiao Mi (2019) and Mark Shoemaker (2013) at Colorado State University; Alex Wright shows off theory, and integrable systems, and for the back of the VOTE shirt (with a cartoon by Olivia Walch (2016)) with Jenny Wilson in East Hall. the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathemati- cal physics. She is the first woman to receive the Abel Prize, which is given annually by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. It is considered one of the highest honors in mathematics. Christopher Swanson (MS 1996, PhD 1999) received a Meritorious Service Award in recognition of his outstanding service to the Ohio Sec- tion of the Mathematical Association of America during the MathFest in Cin- cinnati, OH, in August 2019. The Ohio Section selects one member to receive this award every 5 years. He is currently Professor of Mathematics and Direc- tor of the Academic Honors Program at Ashland University. Olivia Walch (PhD 2016) is a Post- doctoral Research Fellow at the UM De- partment of Neurology. As a Math Phd student, Olivia worked with Professor Danny Forger to develop the successful Entrain App for helping travelers shift their circadian rhythms to reduce jet lag. She is currently working on a grant from the UM Exercise and Sport Science Ini- tiative, studying the circadian rhythms of athletic performance, as well as an M-Cubed grant which looks at sleep and circadian rhythms in fibromyalgia patients. The success of Entrain inspired Olivia to establish a start-up company called Arcascope to bring research on circadian rhythms to mobile phones. Michigan Reception 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings Thursday, January 16, 2020 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm Capitol Ballroom I, Hyatt Regency RSVP to [email protected] All are welcome! See you in Denver!

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