Department of Mathematics

Department Events

Undergraduate Events

Text includes: The Brandeis Math Department presents Math Department Merchandise; Calling all math majors and minors to showcase your creativity and contribute to our vibrant math community. Submit your design ideas through our Google Form by November 2nd 2023. For questions and more info, please contact Dakota Lichauco olivialichauco@brandeis.edu Bhakti Parwani bhacktiparwani@brandeis.edu. Illustrations include: An image demonstrating the volume of a sphere, a paper with a pencil, and a t-shirt with a price tag. Also included are several gold stars and gold swirls.
Math Department Merchandise

November 2, 2023

Math Department Curriculum and Advising Event Wednesday, Nov 15.2023 12:14-1:45pm -Review the class schedule for Spring 2024, - review the major and minor requirements. - We will be ready to answer your questions abound the math curriculum, - We will review the opportunities and resources in the Math Department. Location: Zoom. Hosts: Prof. Olivier Bernardi (Math Chair). Prof. Dmitry Kleinbock (UAH) and math faculty
Curriculum and Advising

November 15, 2023

The Math Department hosted its bi-annual Curriculum and Advising Event on Wednesday, Nov 15th. We reviewed the class schedule for Spring 2024, the major and minor requirements, questions about the math curriculum, and the opportunities and resources in the Math Department. Here's the powerpoint pdf from the event: docs/curriculum-and-orientation-event.v2.pdf

floating bubbles, a calculuator and a zeta sign
Boba x Math Meet + Greet

September 6, 2023

The Brandeis Math UDRs Present: Boba X Math Meet + Greet. Outside Goldsmith Building September 6th 12:30pm-1:30pm. 

Description of image: floating bubbles, a calculator and a zeta sign

Starting Tuesday September 12, students are invited to the 84th Annual Putnam Challenge: Putnam Practice at Brandeis with Prof. Kiyoshi Igusa and Tudor Popescu. Where? Goldsmith 101. When? Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7pm. Pizza!
Putnam Challenge Practice

September 12, 2023

Starting Tuesday September 12, students are invited to the 84th Annual Putnam Challenge: Putnam Practice at Brandeis with Prof. Kiyoshi Igusa and Tudor Popescu. Where? Goldsmith 101. When? Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7pm. Pizza!

Senior Research Thesis Presentations
Senior Research Thesis Presentations

May 4, 2023

Alexander Apo (thesis advisor,  An Huang), Lin Yu (thesis Advisor, Gleb Nenashev), Rebekah Kristal (thesis advisor, Jonathan Toboul), and Yuteng Chen (thesis advisor, Tyler Maunu) presented their Senior Research Thesis Defenses.

directed reading program
Directed Reading Program

May 3, 2023

Undergraduate students Yihan Gao, Marco Qin, Allen Minch, Pengqui Li, Isaac Berger, Phuong Pham, Qianrun Wu and Sarah Levine took part in the Directed Reading Program (DRP) which pairs undergraduate students with their graduate student mentors (Alex Semendinger, Rocky Klein, Rebecca Rohrlich, and Ray Maresca) to undertake independent study projects of various sizes and scopes over the course of the spring semester.

Outreach Information Event poster
Outreach Information Event

April 21, 2023

The Math Department (DEI Committee) hosted an event for students and faculty providing information on outreach activity and how to have a positive impact on our community.  

Presenters:

math department curriculum and orientation
Math Department Curriculum and Orientation Event

March 31, 2023

The Math Department's faculty met online with students to present new program initiatives, guidelines for math and applied math majors, 2023-2024 course offerings, upcoming events and other important information.

math faculty research talks for undergraduates
Math Faculty Research Talks for Undergraduates

March 24, 2023

UDRs Lucca Raabe and Nicole Meng hosted an event for undergraduates to hear about the current research from two faculty members in the Math Department. Professor An Huang's talk was on "Are certain arithmetic questions optimization problems in disguise?" Professor Tyler Maunu's talk was on "Recovering Structured Matrices."

putnam competition
Putnam Competition

February 15, 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. Read more about the competition on the Science at Brandeis Blog.

Congratulations to our team and all participants, and a great thank you to our Putnam coaches Prof. Kiyoshi Igusa and PhD student Tudor Popescu!

mathfacultryresearchtalks
Math Faculty Research Talks for Undergraduates

November 11, 2022

UDRs Lucca Raabe and Nicole Meng hosted an event for undergraduates to hear about current research in the Math Department. Professor Jonathan Touboul spoke on "Dynamic and Probabilistic Models for Biology" and Professor Assaf Bar-Natan spoke on "Surfaces, but Bigger Than you Thought".

poster for advising event
Curriculum and Orientation Event

October 25, 2022

The Math Department's faculty met online with students to present new program initiatives, guidelines for math and applied math majors, Spring 2023 course offerings, upcoming events and other important information. Here's the powerpoint (pdf) we shared, which includes a "Notes Section" on the rotation of math courses and ideas for pursuing research.

meetthemajor
Meet the Major Event, Fall 2022

September 30, 2022

The Math Department's math majors, soon-to-be majors, Undergraduate Student Representatives, graduate students and faculty met outside of the Math Building for some food, apple cider and lively conversation.

alumni pics
Math UDR Alumni Panel Event 2022

May 2, 2022

The Math Department's UDRs, Lucca Raabe and Nicole Meng, hosted seven alumni during a virtual alumni panel this spring. Jiyin Chen '20, Amy Gao '19, Andrew Lipnick '18, Susannah Miller '19, Siqing Tao '19, Brandis Whitfield '19 and Athena Xiao '20 answered the question "What can a math degree do for you"?

senior thesis titles
Senior Honors Research Thesis Defenses

May 6, 2022

Seven seniors presented their honors research thesis in Goldsmith 300.

  • Lachlan Elam “Diffusion of dynamical networks with applications to cell biology”
    Thesis Advisor: Profs. Thomas Fai  and An Haung

  • Chami Lamelas “Vorticity-Stream Solver for Microfluidic Devices and Applications to Blood Cell Sorters” 
    Thesis Advisor: Profs. Thomas Fai and An Huang

  • Chloe Shiff “Investigating Length Control by Severing in Cytoskeletal Structures”
    Thesis Advisor: Profs. Jonathan Touboul and Jane' Kondev

  • Ashley Kamal “Spatial Coherence of Low Frequency Sound in Continental Shelf Environment”

    Thesis Advisors: Prof. Keith Merrill and Madeline Miller (MIT Lincoln Laboratory)

  • Victoria Xu “Balanced Regime of Large Neural Networks”
    Thesis Advisors: Profs. Jonathan Touboul and Thomas Fai

  • Max Cui-Stein “Symmetry Breaking in Oscillator Networks and Destabilization of Equivarient Patterns”

    Thesis Advisors: Profs. Jonathan Touboul, Paul Miller and Irv Epstein

  • E Huffman "“Non-Archimedean Geometry and the Weight-Monodromy Conjecture after Scholze”Thesis Advisor: Prof. Joël Bellaïche

image of barbeque
Math UDR Barbeque

April 29, 2022

The Math Department's UDRs, Lucca Raabe and Nicole Meng, and the Math Department hosted over fifty people at a barbeque in Volen Circle.

Math Curriculum and Orientation
Undergraduate Curriculum and Orientation Event

April 1, 2022

The Math Departments faculty met with math students to discuss program requirements, course selections and upcoming events.

DRP pairs undergraduate students with graduate student mentors

February 8, 2022

Every spring semester, the Directed Reading Program (DRP) pairs undergraduate students with graduate student mentors to undertake independent study projects of various sizes and scopes over the course of the spring semester. The projects can take the form of reading and working through a mathematics text, reading research papers, or even doing research. The goal of the DRP is to enable undergraduate students to study mathematics in greater depth than is possible in a classroom, to increase interaction between undergraduates and graduates, to give undergraduates an opportunity to practice explaining mathematical ideas in conversations and in presentations, and to give graduates an opportunity to share their passion for mathematics. For questions about the program, please email mathdrp@brandeis.edu.

Senior Honors Thesis Defenses in Applied Mathematics

May 12, 2021

Bradley Kaplan BS ’21

  • Title: "Mathematical and Computational Analysis of Stochastic Car and Drone Sharing Network Models." Adviser: Prof. Jonathan Touboul

Ryan Xie BS ’21

Alumni Career Panel for Undergraduates

April 29, 2021

The Math Department's Undergraduate Department Representatives hosted an Alumni Career Night with three stellar alumni: Siddhi Krishna BA '12, Yitong Wang BA'14 and Elana Israel BA'18. Alexandra Martin from the Hiatt Career Center presented us with tips for job hunting.

Siddhi Krishna 
A Boston native, Siddhi Krishna graduated from Brandeis in 2012, with double majors in Math and Economics, and double minors in Computer Science and IGS. As an undergraduate, she was a Schiff Research Fellow studying behavioral economics, intending on pursuing a career in this field. After graduating, she decided to study math instead, and returned to Brandeis for a postbac/master's degree. Siddhi graduated with her PhD from Boston College in May 2020. She is currently a postdoc at Georgia Tech, and starting this Fall, she will be an NSF postdoc and a Ritt postdoc at Columbia University. Her research area is low-dimensional topology, the study of shapes and spaces of different dimensions.

Yitong Wang is a data scientist at Marcus by Goldman Sachs. With backgrounds in economics and mathematics, Yitong started her career in advertising, and developed a genuine interest in customer facing products and working with data, which led to subsequent endeavors in healthcare and eventually finance. Today, Yitong works on building advanced analytical solutions and machine learning models to achieve state of the art fraud detection, as well as exceptional customer service for millions of Apple Card customers.

Elana Israel is currently a second year PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant at Syracuse University. She graduated with a Bachelor’s from Brandeis in 2018 with a double major in Math and Chemistry. Her mathematical interests lie in Algebraic Topology, specifically Knot Theory. At Brandeis, Elana assisted the Math Department as a UDR and worked in the Admissions Office, among other activities. After Brandeis, she took a gap year with City Year Americorps.

Alexandra Martin is a Hiatt Career Center advisor and a junior majoring in biochemistry with a minor in Psychology.

December 4, 2021

Mathematics Professor Kiyoshi Igusa prepared a group of Brandeis students for the 82nd Putnam Mathematics Competition, "the “preeminent mathematics competition for undergraduate college students in the United States." The students met twice-weekly with Prof. Igusa and with graduate student Tudor Popescu to work on fun, practice Putnam problems.

Graduate Events

Open House

November 19, 2021

The Math Department hosted a Virtual Open House for students considering graduate studies in applied and pure mathematics.  The Open House focused on outreach to a diverse, talented pool of students as part of our efforts to recruit more women and BIPOC students to our PhD and Master's programs.  The program included admissions FAQs with our Director of Graduate Study, small group meetings with our faculty, and a student panel with our current PhD students.  It was an informative yet casual way for us to connect with prospective students!

Summer Prep Camp

August 17, 2021

The Summer Math Prep Camp is a workshop run by the Graduate Student Representatives to help incoming graduate students with the transition to graduate school. Advanced graduate students teach refresher courses in analysis, algebra, and topology.

PhD and MS Thesis Defenses

Graduate Thesis Defenses, 2020-2021

Tarakaram Gollamudi, PhD’21
Thesis Title: "L-ideal at irregular CM points of weight 1"
Advisor: Joël Bellaïche

Abhishek Gupta, PhD’21
Thesis Title: "Faster Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms via Inflation"
Advisor: John Wilmes

Eric Hanson, PhD’21
Thesis Title:"Picture Groups and Simple Minded Collections" 
Advisor: Kiyoshi Igusa

McKee Krumpak, PhD’20
Thesis Title: "Twisted h-invariants"
Advisor: Daniel Ruberman

Duncan Levear, PhD’20
Thesis Title: "Bijections for Faces of the Shi and Catalan Arrangements" 
Advisor: Olivier Bernardi

Qing Liu, PhD’21
Thesis Title: "Dynamics and rigidity of the Morse boundary"
Advisor: Ruth Charney

Zihao Liu, MS’21
Thesis Title: "Scaled Homology and Topological Entropy"
Advisor: Kiyoshi Igusa

Anurag Rao, PhD’20
Thesis Title: "Some Problems in Uniform Diophantine Approximation"
Advisor: Dmitry Kleinbock

Mishel Skenderi, PhD’21
Thesis Title: "Some Results concerning Random Lattices and Metric Number Theory"
Advisor: Dmitry Kleinbock