Alumni News
May 2024
Ray Maresca and Jill Mastrocola, both receiving their Brandeis Math PhDs in 2024, were featured in a GSAS article about the Graduate Ceremony as part of the 2024 Commencement. In the article, 2024 GSAS Graduates Share Reflections and Advice, Jill and Ray reflect on their research experiences in the Mathematics Department and their opportunities to grow as instructors and community members.
Jill Mastrocola
Ray Maresca
Victor J. Katz, Brandeis Math PhD '68, received the Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics, the most prestigious award for service offered by the Mathematical Association of America. Dr. Katz has been a leading figure in the history of mathematics, and has brought his scholarship into his educational activities. According to the citation, Dr. Katz was honored with the 2023 Yueh-Gin Gung and Charles Y. Hu Award, "not only for his scholarship but for the way he leveraged this exceptional scholarship in the service of mathematics."
Anish Ghosh
January 25, 2022
Anish Ghosh PhD '06 has received the 2021 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematical Sciences, India's highest science award. In an interview with GSAS, Ghosh describes his work as a "branch of mathematics called ergodic theory which can be loosely described as the mathematically rigorous study of chaotic systems...Somewhat surprisingly, it turns out that ergodic theory is closely connected to an ancient branch of mathematics called number theory. My work explores the connections between these two subjects." Ghosh describes his experience at Brandeis as "wonderful" and says that his "PhD supervisor Dmitry Kleinbock was my mentor and provided all the support and guidance that I needed," while citing other influential faculty mentors in the department as well. Ghosh is currently a faculty member at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai where he specializes in Ergodic Theory and Number Theory.
Douglas Ravenel
Photo Credit: Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
December 7, 2021
The Oswald Veblen Prize is awarded every 3 years to honor the authors of a notable research work in geometry or topology.
Ravenel's PhD advisor at Brandeis was Mathematics Professor Emeritus Edgar Brown. Ravenel is a currently a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rochester.
December 7, 2021
Abhishek Gupta (Data Scientist, Tracelink) finished PhD in June, 2021 under the supervision of John Wilmes. He has since been working as a member of the data science team at Tracelink trying to build data products for the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Yurong Zhang (Quantitative Manager, Fifth Third Bank) obtained her Ph.D. under the supervision of Joël Bellaïche in 2014. After graduation, she pursued a non-academic career: credit risk management. She started as a quantitative model developer at PNC Bank and got her new job at Fifth Third Bank this summer. Her main job responsibilities are to develop and maintain credit risk models for risk rating and loss forecasting.
Netta Engelhardt
August 30, 2021
Netta Engelhardt was the focus of an article, This Physicist Discovered an Escape From Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox, in Quanta Magazine in connection with her work on black holes. She and her colleagues have resolved a famous paradox posed by Stephen Hawking about the loss of information at the boundary of a black hole. Netta majored in Mathematics and Physics at Brandeis, and is now the Biedenharn Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics at MIT.
Ulrike Tillmann
March 10, 2021
Ulrike Tillmann was interviewed for an article, Channeling Creativity in Mathematics: Ulrike Tillmann ’85, as part of a feature on Brandeis Alumnae in STEM in the Brandeis Alumni News. Ulrike majored in mathematics at Brandeis, and is now professor of mathematics at Oxford University and a fellow of the Royal Society.
Keith Merrrill
May 2019
Keith Merrill, PhD '13, was awarded the 2019 Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Keith is currently an Assistant Professor in the Brandeis Mathematics Department.
May 2019
John Bergdall, PhD '13, is the subject of an article on the website of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He describes his experiences as a graduate student in the Brandeis Mathematics department and subsequent postdoctoral positions.
April 2019
The Department was thrilled to host Ph.D. alumni, including Andrew Gainer-Dewar (’12), Software Engineer III at Google; Mario Bourgoin (’04), Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft; Chunsheng Chen (’99), Senior Software Engineer at Google; and Alex Charis (’12), Senior Software Engineer at HubSpot. Graduate students engaged with alumni to learn about career paths for mathematicians in software engineering and data science. Through their experiences, alumni showed students how to translate their skills into industry jobs. One alumnus summed it up, “a math Ph.D. teaches you how to wrestle a problem patiently to the ground. You are fearless when it comes to solving problems.”
March 2019
We are thrilled to announce that Karen Uhlenbeck has won the 2019 Abel Prize in Mathematics. Uhlenbeck
Fall 2017
Brandon Shapiro (BA ’17) has been awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship starting in 2017, to support his PhD studies in Mathematics at Cornell University.
May 2017
Nick Wadleigh (PhD’17 with Professor Dmitry Kleinbock) and Matthew Cordes (PhD’16 with Professor Ruth Charney) have each been awarded Zuckerman STEM Leadership Postdoctoral Scholarships. Each will be a postdoc at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
May 2017
János Kollár (PhD’84 in Mathematics with Professor Teruhisa Matsusaka) is a co-recipient (with Claire Voisin) of the 2017 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. Awarded by the Hong Kong-based Shaw Foundation, the Shaw Prize honors recent breakthroughs by researchers in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and life science and medicine.
May, 2017
Leslie Lamport (MA’63, PhD’72 with Professor Richard Palais) was given an honorary degree at the 2017 Brandeis Commencement, and gave an address at the School of Science diploma ceremony. Lamport was the recipient of the 2013 A.M. Turing Award, given by the Association for Computing Machinery.
August 2016
Jingyue Chen (PhD’15) was awarded a New World Mathematics Award Silver Prize at the 2016 International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians. The prize was awarded for her PhD Thesis, Existence and Rigidity of Calabi-Yau Bundles, supervised by Professor Bong Lian.