News

The inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society was announced on November 1, 2012. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. Five UC Davis Mathematics Department faculty are among the initial class of Fellows: Joel Hass, Greg Kuperberg, Bruno Nachtergaele, Abigail Thompson and Craig Tracy.

The A. W. Tucker Prize was established by the Mathematical Optimization Society in 1985. It is awarded at each International Symposium on Mathematical Programming for an outstanding doctoral thesis. Amitabh Basu is one of three Tucker Prize finalists for 2012.

Using criteria such as number of publications, awards, and citations, the Academic Ranking of World Universities from the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University produces an annual list of the world's leading universities. The results for 2012 the UC Davis Mathematics Department was ranked 33rd worldwide, and 24th among US universities. A complete list can be found at the official Academic Ranking web site:

The Department of Mathematics mourns the loss of our former colleague William P. Thurston, who was at Davis from 1996 to 2003. Bill was in the process of returning to Davis in Fall 2012.

Recent Mathematics Ph.D. student Matthew Stamps was recently awarded an NSF postdoc to join the combinatorics group at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm for two years.

A new book by UC Davis emeritus professor Washek Pfeffer has been published by CRC press. Titled "The Divergence Theorem and Sets of Finite Perimeter", the book investigates new material in analysis, geometric measure theory, sets of bounded variation, and geometric topology. Prof. Pfeffer received a Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, in 1966 and taught at UC Davis until his retirement in 1994. He now lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Professor Blake Temple with graduate students Moritz Reintjes and Zeke Vogler, have discovered new types of singularities in space-time caused by colliding shock waves. The results were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

David Renfrew, who is completing his Ph.D. this Spring with thesis advisor Alexander Soshnikov, has been awarded the 2012 MPS Dean�s Graduate Student Prize in the College of Letters and Science. David's research is on probability, random matrix theory and mathematical physics, and can be sampled at http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~drenfrew He will begin a postdoc at UCLA this Fall.

Alex Mogilner's recent work on clot formation is featured in

GGAM graduate student Ben Fogelson has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. GGAM students Eric Brattain-Morrin and David Stein receive honorable mentions. The fellowships are described at http://www.nsfgrfp.org/

Mathematics graduate student Chelsea Weaver has been awarded a 2012 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. This is a highly competitive fellowship awarded to U.S. citizens and nationals who intend to pursue a doctoral degree in one of fifteen supported disciplines. NDSEG Fellowships last for three years and pay for full tuition and all mandatory fees.

The American Automatic Control Council has selected UC Davis Emeritus Professor Arthur J. Krener as the recipient for the 2012 Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award.

A study of highly cited researchers places UC Davis among the world's leading mathematical centers

Christine A. Shoemaker , who graduated from UC Davis in 1966 with a B.S. in mathematics and is currently the Joseph P. Ripley Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

On February 15 the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced the selection of 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers as recipients of Sloan Research Fellowships for 2012. Among this year's fellows is Assistant Professor James Bremer of the UC Davis Mathematics Department. A complete list of the 2012 Sloan Fellowships Awards can be found at