Wu Jing (PhD 2006) is a professor at Fayetteville State University. According to Dr. Jing, “The outstanding faculty members and the strong academic atmosphere made UCF a great place to pursuit advanced degree in mathematics.”
The UCF Math PhD program started from Fall 1993 with a Financial Mathematics track added in Fall 2017 and it has awarded 68 PhD degrees. Currently there are 52 active PhD students with 46 graduate teaching/research assistantships.
The UCF Math PhD program provides broad based training in pure, applied and industrial mathematics. The program consists of at least 75 credit hours of course work beyond the bachelor’s degree, of which a minimum of 39 hours of formal course work, exclusive of independent study and directed research. Students are required to take several core courses and at least two course sequences, and also electives outside the department. Students must pass the cumulative qualifying examinations at the PhD level after taking core courses, and pass candidacy examinations after taking two course sequences. By the third year, a student should have selected an advisor, formed a committee and started a research program. In the semesters following the candidacy examination, a student takes at least 15 credit hours of dissertation research and engages original and creative mathematical research that pushes back the frontier of knowledge. A PhD is awarded after a successful dissertation defense.
Haimei Shao (PhD, 2011) recently rejoined BB&T Funds Management. Four years of rigorous training at UCF made her capable of analyzing and solving problems in the real world by looking into the roots of the problem and creating the solutions from the roots as well.
The UCF Math PhD program produces students who attain distinction in their fields of research. The faculty in the program are dedicated to the graduate education and many of them are recognized as outstanding scholars. Our faculty members include an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematics, a Marcus Wallenberg Prize winner, Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, and a National Science Foundation Career awardee.
Students in the UCF Math PhD program can specialize in many areas of pure and applied mathematics, including Approximation Theory, Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, Big Data and Mathematical Statistics, Combinatorics and Graph Theory, Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry, Control and Optimization, Differential and Symplectic Geometry, Differential Equations, Fluid and Plasma Dynamics, Inverse and Ill-posed Problems, Mathematical Biology, Mathematical Finance, Nonlinear Waves and Nonlinear Dynamics, Numerical Analysis, Orthogonal Polynomials, Real and Functional Analysis, Probability and Stochastic Analysis, Tomography and Medical Imaging, Topology, and Wave Propagation.
Aaron Masino (PhD 2004) is the supervisor of data science research for the Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics (DBHi) at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr Masino says. “Very few graduate students are afforded all of these opportunities.” to do research.
Students in the UCF Math PhD program are encouraged to interact with other departments, institutions, and industries. For students to pursue research in a variety of disciplines, the program offers flexibility in the composition of the core courses as well as the qualifying examination. Many faculty members in the UCF Math Department conduct interdisciplinary research and supervise graduate students in other departments, research institutes and centers within the university.
Graduates in the UCF Math PhD program regularly go on to successful positions in academics, government agency and industry.
For additional information about the UCF Math PhD program such as curriculum, application requirements, admission procedure, financials etc, please explore Math PhD program @ UCF graduate Catalog and the program’s Q&A website, or contact the program director at qiyu.sun@ucf.edu