2021 Mathematics Newsletter | Department of Mathematics

Message from the Chair

$John Palmieri, Chair$

Welcome to the Winter 2022 Department of Mathematics Newsletter! COVID is certainly keeping us busy — we returned to in-person classes in fall, but the latest variant led to Winter quarter courses starting online. As in last year's newsletter message, I want to acknowledge all of the work that our faculty, staff, postdocs, and students do to make all of these transitions.

In other news, Jack Lee retired last year, and John Sylvester just retired a few weeks ago. Jack joined the department in 1986, John in 1987. Congratulations to both of them on long and successful UW careers, and we wish them the best as they step away from the duties as regular faculty members.

We hired two new permanent faculty this year: Ricky Liu and Cynthia Vinzant join us as new Assistant Professors. Both come to UW from previous positions at NC State. Andrea Ottolini, Hadrian Quan, and Xueying Yu arrived in the fall as new postdocs. In addition, Sheela Devadas and Timothy Duff have National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowships which they have chosen to hold here. Welcome to all of our newcomers!

You will also see articles about some other exciting developments in UW Math: Tatiana Toro has been named the new director of MSRI, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute; this is a very prestigious mathematics institute. She takes over in the coming year, and we look forward to her leadership. Jayadev Athreya is the Interim Director of PIMS, the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences, also a prestigious institute; he started in the fall, so he is hard at work in this role already. Also, the University of Washington has joined the Math Alliance as a partner institution. The Math Alliance is an organization devoted to diversity in the mathematical sciences, especially among students in PhD programs. We are excited to be part of such an important organization.

I encourage all alums and friends of UW math to send us their news. We'd love to hear from you!

- John Palmieri

Tatiana Toro named director of Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI)

Tatiana Toro, Craig McKibben & Sarah Merner Professor in Mathematics, will become the next director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). Media credit: Corinne Thrash The Board of Trustees of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) announced that Tatiana Toro, Craig McKibben & Sarah Merner Professor in Mathematics, will become its next director.… Read more

Jayadev Athreya named Interim Director of PIMS

Jayadev Athreya has been appointed as the new Interim Director of the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), an organization of mathematical scientists in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Washington State whose mandate is to promote research in and applications of the mathematical sciences, to facilitate the training of highly qualified personnel, to enrich public awareness of and education in the mathematical sciences, and to create mathematical partnerships with… Read more

Neil Koblitz is the co-recipient of the 2021 Levchin Prize

$Neal Koblitz$

Professor Neal Koblitz, along with Victor Miller, will share this year's Levchin prize for real-world cryptography. The Levchin prize honors major innovations in cryptography that have had a significant impact on the practice of cryptography and its use in real-world systems. Koblitz and Miller are being honored for their independent developments of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), the idea to use the… Read more

The Math Alliance Expands Diversity In Stem Through Mentorship

People of color and women have historically been underrepresented in STEM, and particularly in mathematics. Departments and programs at the University of Washington are taking steps to change that through mentorship and networking, which have shown promise in improving racial and gender diversity in workplaces as well as helping employees feel more satisfied in… Read more

John Sullivan (1944-2021)

$John Sullivan$

Obituary from The Seattle Times John Brendan Sullivan was born on August 6, 1944 to Catherine D (Marshall) Sullivan and John H Sullivan in Lynn, MA. He was the youngest of three children, with a beloved older brother and sister. John's family didn't have a car so he spent many hours riding on the cross bar of his dad's bicycle as they traveled around Lynn. He was the valedictorian of Lynn English High School in… Read more

New Assistant Professors

$Ricky Liu$

Ricky Liu joined the department as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2021. Previously he was an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, a T. H. Hildebrandt Research Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Alexander Postnikov in 2010. His research interests lie in… Read more

New Postdoctoral Scholars

$Sheela Devadas$

Sheela Devadas received her PhD from Stanford University in 2021 under the supervision of Brian Conrad. Her area of research is in algebraic geometry. She will be working with Max Lieblich. Lijun Ding received his PhD from Cornell University in 2021 under the supervision of Yudong Chen and Madeleine Udell. His research lies at the intersection of optimization, statistics, and machine learning. He will be working with Dima Drusvyatskiy. Timothy Duff… Read more

Two graduate students awarded NSF postdoctoral fellowships

$Amzi Jeffs$

Congratulations to Amzi Jeffs and Anthony Sanchez, who have been awarded Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships by the National Science Foundation! Amzi Jeffs will be going to Carnegie Mellon University and Anthony Sanchez to UC San Diego. The purpose of the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (MSPRF) is to support future leaders in mathematics and statistics by facilitating their participation in postdoctoral research environments that will have… Read more

2021 Graduating Class

DOCTORATE: Samantha Davies (advisor: Thomas Rothvoss) | Postdoc at Northwestern Dissertation: Designing Scheduling Algorithms via a Mathematical Perspective Samantha Fairchild (Jayadev Athreya) | Postdoc at Max Planck Counting social interactions for discrete subsets of the plane Charles Godfrey (Sándor Kovács) | Postdoc at Pacific Northwest National Lab Higher direct images of ideal sheaves, correspondences in log Hodge cohomology and globally F-… Read more

2020-2021 Undergraduate Student Honors and Awards

$Medal$