On July 1, Professor John Palmieri began a five-year term as the new chair of the Department of Mathematics. John studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College and received his PhD from MIT in 1991 as a student of former UW faculty member Haynes Miller. John held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin, then returned to MIT for three years as an NSF postdoctoral fellow. After two years at the University of Notre Dame, he moved to UW in 1999. John's research is in algebraic topology and algebra. He has taught at all levels, including honors calculus, core undergraduate courses on differential equations and mathematical reasoning, geometry for teachers, and graduate algebraic topology. He has also contributed to the department in several administrative roles, most recently serving as the director of the department’s graduate program from 2013 to 2017.