Department of Mathematics

Student News

  • Fall 2023: Graduate Student Rachmiel ("Rocky") Klein is highlighted by GSAS in an article "Journey Through the Math Department: An Interview with Rachmiel (Rocky) Klein, PhD Student in Math..." 
  • Fall 2023: The three-member Brandeis team of Nikolai Kivva, Catinca Alexandru and Mason Price took first place in the Math Olympiad held at Boston College on November 17, 2023. Here's the full article on the Science Blog.
  • Fall 2023: Graduate student Josh Perlmutter is featured in GSAS's "Geeking Out With..." this month. Read Josh's top movie picks and how he and his friends have tracked their rankings of all the films they have viewed through spreadsheets and coding.
  • Spring 2023: The Brandeis team did very well at the Putnam Mathematics Competition this year. The Brandeis team ranked 39 out of 456 institutions! This is a great result, especially given that small institutions are naturally at a disadvantage in such rankings. The Putnam Exam is an annual Mathematics Competition for all undergrad math students in the US and Canada. It is famous for the intricate mathematical puzzles it proposes, whose solutions require imagination and inventiveness.We had 8 students participate in the weekly competitions at Brandeis, with Ben Kamen, Issac Berger and Phong Pham going on to compose the Brandeis Team at the national competition. Student Ben Kamen got an honorable mention since he scored 58 out of 3415 participants, and the other students on our team also did very well. Congratulations to our team and all participants, and a great thank you to our Putnam coaches Prof. Kiyoshi Igusa and PhD student Tudor Popescu!
  • Fall 2022: Graduate student Jill Mastrocola has been awarded the Math Graduate Teaching Award, 2021-2022.
  • Spring 2022: Graduate student Simon Huyhn has been awarded a "Provost Dissertation Research Award" for 2022-2023.  
  • Spring 2022: Graduate student Ray Maresca has been awarded University Prize Instructorship for 2022-2023. According to GSAS, "instructorships will be awarded to candidates who propose courses that contribute substantially to the undergraduate curriculum and who have demonstrated excellence and commitment to teaching." Ray will be teaching an undergraduate class on the Representations of Quivers.
  • Spring 2022: Two undergraduates, Ben Kamen '23 and Isaac Berger '25, performed very well in the 2021 Putnam Competition, under the guidance of Prof. Kiyoshi Igusa. At 427 institutions, just under three-thousand students competed in December and our team placed 72nd out of 427. Congratulations to the Putnam team!
  • Spring 2022: PhD student Tudor Popescu has been admitted into the GSAS Spring 2022 Career Development Fellowship Program.  This fellowship will give GSAS students (across all disciplines) skills to help them prepare for careers in academia, non-profits, industry and beyond. The goal of the program is to foster a community of students committed to planning for their post-MA or PhD.  
  • Fall 2021:Ray Maresca and Shizhe Liang are co-winners of the Math Graduate Teaching Award, 2020-2021.
  • Fall 2021: Kaitlin Ragosta, PhD student in Mathematics, received an 2021 NSF Fellowship in the field of "Algebra, Number Theory, and Combinatorics." The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions.

Undergraduate News

Arnold Shapiro Prize in Mathematics Recipient

Spring 2023

Lucca Raabe '23

Spring 2022

E Huffman '22  

Spring 2021

Hange Zhu '21  

Spring 2020

Brian Mintz '20 

Division of Science Prize for Outstanding Research Recipient

Spring 2021

Xiao Zhong '21

Spring 2020

Joel Herman '20  

Elihu A. Silver Prize Recipient

Spring 2020

Xiao Zhong '21 has been awarded the Elihu A. Silver Prize.The prize is given annually for excellence in research in Math and Physics.

Graduate News

The Jerome Levine Thesis Prize, in honor of Prof. Jerry Levine, is given annually to a graduate student finishing with an outstanding PhD thesis. 

  • (2023) Ian Montague "Seiberg-Witten Floer K-Theory and Cyclic Group Actions"

 

  • (2022) Changxin Ding "Combinatorial and Geometric Correspondences in Algebraic Graph Theory"
  • (2020) Langte Ma, "Gluing and Surgery for the Casson-Seiberg-Witten Invariant of Integral 
    Homology S1 × S3"
  • (2019) Ying Zhou, "Four problems related to maximal green sequences"
  • (2018) Yan Zhuang, "Noncommutative Symmetric Functions and Permutation Enumeration"
  • (2017) Yiting Li, "Rigidity of eigenvalues for β ensemble in multi-cut regime"

  • (2017) Biji Wong, "Torsion Invariants of 3-orbifolds, Equivariant Corks, & Heegaard Floer Homology"

  • (2016) Matthew Cordes, "Morse boundaries of proper geodesic spaces"

  • (2015) Anna Medvedovsky, "Lower bounds on dimensions of mod-p Hecke algebras: The nilpotence method"

  • (2014) Stephen Hermes, "Higher homotopy structure of Ginzburg algebras"

  • (2013) Alyson Burchardt, "The Hausmann-Weinberger 4-manifold invariant of right-angled Artin groups"

  • (2012) Ryan Broderick, "Incompressibility and fractals"

  • (2010) Mark Radosevich, "Concave spin fillings of contact 3-manifolds"

  • (2009) Brian Drake, "An Inversion Theorem for Labeled Trees and Some Limits of Areas under Lattice Paths"

  • (2008) Hsin-Hong Lai, "The invariance of virtual classes under blow up of a point when g=0"

Graduate Student Teaching Prize
  • 2021-2022 Jill Mastrocola
  • 2020-2021 Co-winners: Shizhe Liang, Ray Maresca
  • 2019-2020 Charles Stine
  • 2018-2019 Eric Hanson
  • 2017-2018 Charlotte Rose Morris-Wright
Harold I Levine Endowed Fellowship Prize Winners

The Harold I. Levine Endowed Fellowship supports graduate student research in mathematics. The fellowship is endowed by Emeritus Professor Harold Levine and his wife Renée.

  • 2022
    Yu Xin, Ray Maresca
  • 2021
    Changxin Ding
  • 2020:
    Ian Montague
    Mishel Skenderi
  • 2019:
    Charlotte Rose Morris-Wright
  • 2018:
    McKee Krumpak
    Qing Liu
  • 2017:
    Angelica Deibel
    Matthew Garcia
Richard S. Palais Endowed Fellowship Recipients

The Richard S. Palais Endowed Fellowship was established in December 2017 by Bing-Le Wu, PhD '91 and Wei Du, PhD '94 in honor of Emeritus Professor Richard S. Palais. It is to be awarded to a graduate student enrolled at Brandeis University who is pursuing graduate studies in Mathematics.

  • 2021
    Gabe Lozada Rodriguez
  • 2020
    Gabe Lozada Rodriguez
  • 2019
    Wei Lu

Exceptional Department Service Award/Remote Learning Transition of 2020 Award
The Exceptional Department Service Award is given to a graduate student who supported the department during the pivot to remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis. A letter from the Dean of GSAS, Eric Chasalow, to the recipient Charles Stine states in part "Your program faculty nominated you for this award because of your contributions to supporting the department's pivot to remote learning. Along with your program, GSAS appreciates the additional efforts you made to support those around you, particularly at a time when that support has never been more critical."
  • 2020
    Charles Stine