Prasad Tetali
Letter from The
Department Head
This past year was a remarkably successful year for the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Coming out of the most serious days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we welcomed most of our faculty, staff and students back for full-time, in-person classes and events, and it was a pleasure to see everyone!
Our undergraduate program continues to be one of the most sought after at any university, and now averages 90 first-year students every year. These students garner competitive awards and prizes from the university and on the national stage.
A number of new faculty have joined our ranks, including Noha Abdelghany, Theresa Anderson and Konstantin Tikhomirov, who you can read more about in this issue. Their strengths in teaching, number theory, probability and geometry are an exciting addition to the department. The department is proud to boast of two faculty members featured as invited speakers at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. Congratulations to Irene Fonseca and Konstantin Tikhomirov! We are also thrilled that Erin Davis, Tabbitha Gordon, and Vitalii Shevchenko joined to boost our staff support. Needless to say, the department could not function without the excellent support of our staff members.
We also celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Summer Undergraduate Applied Mathematics Institute, which supports students — many of whom may not have access to the research opportunities available at Carnegie Mellon — as they work on various mathematics projects. This program has touched the lives of many students and faculty members. This summer’s culminating poster session was attended by some of those people, including former program director and Emeritus Professor Bill Williams and CMU Trustee Larry Jennings. Our alumni continue to make the news. Manil Suri’s exciting new book on math and the origins of universe is receiving much attention and well-deserved praise.
Each year also has its somber moments. In April, Emeritus Professor and former Department Head Morton Gurtin passed away. Mort’s contributions to the department can still be seen today through the Center for Nonlinear Analysis and the students he advised.
We have much to look forward to in the next year. We revised the department’s strategic plan and hope to reinforce our presence in the fields of numerical analysis, computational and applied math, and partial differential equations.
We also plan to continue new programs that support our students and postdocs, including: Classroom-to-Table, where undergraduates have an informal meal with faculty, who offer career advice and mentoring; graduate student prizes for research, teaching, and diversity and outreach; and our postdoctoral teaching fellows program, which aims to reinforce the nation’s mathematical research and education infrastructure.
I look forward to telling you more about these programs and much more in our next issue! If you’d like to learn more about the department, or get involved in any of our programs, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you!
Prasad Tetali, Ph.D.
Alexander M. Knaster Professor
Department Head