The National Children’s Museum breaks down the science, technology, engineering, art, and math behind everyday mysteries in the second season of their children’s podcast, STEAM Daydream with National Children’s Museum.

Professor Lan-Hsuan Huang recently joined them for an episode called “Bubble Trouble” to help 11-year-old Kid Investigator Kaedence R. and the rest of the cast figure out why bubbles are always round.

You can learn more about the podcast and listen to the episode at www.nationalchildrensmuseum.org/podcast/.

Professor Maria Gordina has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

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.

“It is an honor to welcome a new class of AMS Fellows and to congratulate them for their notable contributions to mathematics research and service to the profession,” said Professor Ruth Charney, President of the American Mathematical Society, on the 2023 Class of Fellows of the AMS. “We extend our thanks to the nominators and members of the selection committee for their help in highlighting the outstanding achievements of their colleagues.”

Professor Gordina is recognized for her contributions to stochastic and geometric analysis, infinite-dimensional analysis, and ergodicity of hypoelliptic diffusions.

She joins 38 other mathematicians to be named Fellow of the AMS for the year 2023. For an alphabetical list of all past Fellows, visit https://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/fellows/fellows.cgi.

Professor Gordina is the fifth member of our department to receive this prestigious distinction. Previous Fellows in our Department are Professor Emeritus Bill Abikoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard Bass, Professor Guozhen Lu, and Professor Changfeng Gui.

Congratulations, Professor Gordina!

The Fulbright Specialist Program awarded a grant to Professor Alexander Teplyaev to work with Professor Anna Rozanova-Pierrat at the Laboratoire de Mathématiques et Informatique pour la Complexité et les Systèmes (MICS), CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay, France.

A program of the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright Specialist Program is an opportunity for U.S. academics and established professionals to engage in two- to six-week, project-based exchanges at host institutions across the globe.

Professor Teplyaev’s award is for 2022. His project involves research and educational components dealing with applied analysis on fractals and networks, including fractal shape optimization.

The Simons Foundation recently announced its first PIVOT Fellows. Among them is Amit Acharya, of Carnegie Mellon University, who will be a visitor in the UConn Mathematics Department during 2023.

Dr. Acharya will work on a joint project with Professor Ambar Sengupta, with the goal of developing new ideas at the interface of geometry, gauge theory, and materials science.

Professor Andreas Malmendier has received an OVPR Scholarship Facilitation Fund for his project “Developing Best Practices for Inclusive Graduate Mentoring in Mathematics”.

Developing best practices for inclusive mentoring in Mathematics is key for enhancing the diversity in UConn’s mathematical sciences graduate program. The goal of this Scholarship Facilitation Fund is to cultivate knowledge about how to promote a positive and inclusive educational climate in mathematics. Specifically, this project will focus on understanding the learning environment for graduate students in mathematics. The project team consists of Drs. Andreas Malmendier (Mathematics) and Jacqueline Chen (Psychological Sciences).

As part of the SFF, the team will conduct confidential, one-on-one interviews with mathematics faculty members and doctoral students. The team will analyze the interview content to identify common sources of misunderstanding, conflict, or tension between faculty mentors and graduate students when they give and receive feedback, respectively. From the results, Drs. Malmendier and Chen will generate a summary of conclusions about the best practices for graduate mentoring and present them in the Mathematics Department teaching semina