Rice University Math News
2013 Nettie S. Autrey Fellowship and GSA Robert Lowry Patten Award
In recognition of her accomplishments, Arunima Ray has been awarded the Nettie S. Autrey Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year. This award is given annually to one graduate student in the field of science or engineering and provides a stipend of $14,000 for the year. She also received the Graduate Student Association Robert Lowry Patten Award to honor her service to improving graduate student life and education at Rice. Congratulations on both honors!
2013 Undergraduate Awards
The 2013 Hubert E. Bray Prize in Mathematics was shared by Nicholas Ryder and Karl Schaefer. This is given annually to the most outstanding junior mathematics major. We also presented the prizes from the 1st Annual Undergraduate Mathematics Lecture Contest: Karl Schaefer won the Best Lecture prize and Joe Anderson, Arias Hathaway, and Navaneeth Ravindranath shared the Best Presentation honor. Congratulations!
2013 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching
During the week of Commencement Professor Michael Wolf will receive a coveted George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching. Over the past decade, Mike has been involved in almost all aspects of student life, serving as Master of Will Rice College and first Master of McMurtry College, guiding students through Honors Calculus, establishing and directing our VIGRE program to integrate research into our undergraduate experience, and originating the Rice Emerging Scholars Program (RESP). As well as being active in undergraduate student life, he also directed the research of 9 Rice PhD's, and is presently the advisor of three graduate students. A well-deserved honor - Congratulations!
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Anticipating her continued excellence, MATH major Chengcheng Yang has received an NSF graduate fellowship to study mathematics at the University of Chicago. This prestigious fellowship comes with an annual stipend which allows the recipient to conduct their own research at the accredited U.S. institution of their choice. Previous MATH major winners include Tal Einav who is currently studying physics at Caltech. Congratulations!
Sophia Meyer Farb Prize for Teaching
To recognize his outstanding commitment to student education, our newest faculty member Anthony Varilly-Alvarado will receive this year's Sophia Meyer Farb Prize for Teaching from the Rice chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. He is the first mathematics professor to receive this award since it was established in 1977.
CHAOS & Life
How is population growth related to chaos? Is nature fundamentally unstable? To answer these and other questions about dynamical systems, Professor Danijela Damjanovic has developed a semester-long "CHAOS & Life" seminar for female high school students. By working together to solve problems and meeting other women in math and science, she hopes to show that mathematical research can be both exciting and related to problems in the real world. Funding for the seminar and Dynamics Workshop (to be held in May) are part of a prestigious CAREER grant Professor Damjanovic received from the NSF last spring.
2013 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship
In recognition of his past work and future research, Professor Andrew Putman has received a 2013 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. These prestigious fellowships are awarded to early career scientists to acknowledge the quality of their current work as well as their unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. Congratulations! More from the Rice News ...