Grad News – 2017

2017

1. Congratulation to Cheng Cheng, who is honored to receive the 2017 Departmental Outstanding Dissertation Award.
2. Professor Katepalli R. Sreenivasan gave a carear talk on November 6, 2017. Professor Sreenivasan is  Dean of NYU Tandon School of Engineering, The Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering, Professor of Physics (Faculty of Arts and Science), Mathematics (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences). He received lots of award and honor, including Member of United States National Academy of Sciences (2007),  Member of United States National Academy of Engineering (1999),  Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997).
3. The department joined the Math Alliance as a silver member and Qiyu Sun attended the  2017 Field of Dreams at Saint Louis from November 2 to 5, 2017, and presented a the graduate program fair.
4. The UCF SIAM chapter was established and more than twenty graduate students  are registered in the Chapter.  Congratulation for Rasika Rajapakshage to be the first president of the chapter.
5. Congratulation to Rajitha Puwakgolle, who received $500 travel support from the American Mathematical Society for his attendance at the 2018 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, CA. 10/2017

   

6. Joseph Brennan and Qiyu Sun visited the University of West Florida, University of North Florida, Georgia Southern University, Auburn University, Tuskegee University and Auburn University at Montgomery to give presentations about the UCF Math graduate program. 10/2017
7. Congratulation to Rajitha Puwakgolle (recipient of the 2017 Research Excellence Award),  Christian Bosse (recipient of the 2017 Graduate Teaching Excellence award) and Jingmei Zhang (recipients of the 2017 Graduate Teaching Assistant Award). 10/2017
8. Jason Bentley, Elliot Blackstone,  Mangalagama Dewasurendra, Ted Juste,  Rasika Rajapakshage and Rajitha Ranasinghe, presented their research during the Fall Southeastern Sectional Meeting of AMS held at UCF on September 23-24, 2017.
9. Tanushree Roy received the 2017 Yvette Kanouff Industrial Mathematics Scholarship.
10. There are 13 PhD students, 3 Master students and  17 Mathematical Certificate students to join the UCF Math graduate program in the 2017 summer/fall semester.
11. Cheng Cheng (PhD, Summer 2016) will be a PostdoctoralResearcher at Duke Univerisity and  under the supervision of professor Ingrid Daubechies. Quoted from her words to the graduate program, “I am very fortunate to be a PhD student in the Department of Mathematics at UCF. I am grateful to my advisors Professors Xin Li and Qiyu Sun for their insightful ideas, endless patience, excellent guidance and funding that make my PhD experience productive and stimulating.” She also gave the credit to UCF as “one of the best universities in the nation. Without the unlimited resources and greatest faculties here, I could not make any of my achievements. Please extend appreciation to all the faculties and staffs for the excellent learning experience.

    

12.  Rasika Rajapakshage is supported to attend the summer school on data science at Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington. (07/2017)
13. Tyler Gomez (advisor:  Jason Swanson) passed the dissertation defense on July 6, 2017. The title of his dissertation is Filtering Problems in Stochastic Tomography. (07/2017)
14. Cheng Cheng (advisor:  Xin Li and Qiyu Sun) passed the dissertation defense on July 6, 2017. The title of her dissertation is Sampling and Reconstruction of Spatial Signals. (07/2017)
15. Martin Rolek (PhD Spring 2017,  advisor Zixia Song) will join College of William and Mary as Visiting Assistant Professor from Fall 2017.

    

16. Cheng Cheng attended CBMS Conference on Sparse Approximation and Signal Recovery Algorithms, May 22-26, 2017 and gave a talk at the 16th New Mexico Analysis Seminar, May 21, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico. (05/2017)
17. The PhD and Master program will add Financial Mathematics tracks in Fall 2017 (04/13/2017)
18. Aritra Dutta (PhD 2016)  will be a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Edinburgh, with joint affiliation at the Visual Computing Center in KAUST, Saudi Arabia. In Dr. Dutta’s own words, “six years of rigorous training under the supervision of professors Xin Li and Qiyu Sun made me think creatively about problems and I developed aninquisitive mind.” Quoted from his comments to the graduate program, “the faculties in the math department are working on cutting edge research problems and there are ample opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. If you have the strong quest to learn and you believe in giving your best as a graduate student,UCF can help you to flourish as a complete researcher. You can reach your dream and compete with students from top schools all over the world.”

    

19. Congratulation to Matthew Russo (recipient of the 2016 Norman  award for excellence in Mathematics), Daniel Marulanda (recipient of the 2016 Master’s thesis award), Arita Dutta and Tyler Gomez (recipients of the 2016 Armstrong award for distinguished teaching) and Daniel Giney (recipient of the 2016 MALL award for excellence in tutoring by a graduate student). 04/2017
20. Cheng Cheng is on the College of Sciences’ Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  She equates her success to the faculty members who supported her and the resources that the school offers.  Cheng said. “Being brilliant is not enough to succeed in your Ph.D. pursuit. You have to be able to persist. You have to be able to bounce back when things go wrong.” (04/2017)
21. Martin Rolek (advisor: Zixia Song) passed the dissertation defense on April 5, 2017. The title of his dissertation is Coloring Graphs with Forbidden Minors. (04/2017)
22. Cheng Cheng, Mangalagama Dewasurendra, Arielle Gaudiello, Rasika Rajapakshage and Alexander York participated the 14th Annual Research Forum of the University of Central Florida on April 4, 2017.  The forum features poster displays and provides an opportunity for students to showcase their research and creative projects. (04/2017)
23. Calvin Wassmuth (Master 1978) was appointed as IT Service Delivery Mgr. at DXC (04/2017)
24. Professor Bard Ermentrou (Distinguished University Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh) gave a graduate career talk, “Toys! Toys! Toys!”  (03/30/2017).
25. The math graduate program is rank No. 134  in  U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools of 2018. The Best Graduate Schools rankings are based on peer and expert opinions about the quality of a program and some statistical data that measures the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. COS News (03/2017)
26. Professor Richard Stanley (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Miami) gave graduate career talk, “My early mathematical career”. Professor  Stanley is the Norman Levinson Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and  a member of  National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of American Mathematical Society. (02/24/2017)
27.  The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) 2017 Summer Graduate Schools accepted Wei Yan’s application to attend SMS 2017: Contemporary Dynamical Systems (Canada) with financial support.  (02/2017)
28. Yu Feng published a paper on stationary and time–periodic patterns of two–predator and one–prey systems with prey in  Volume 37 of the journal Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems – Series A.  01/2017
29. Cheng Cheng, Aritra Dutta,  Martin Rolek gave talks in special sessions at AMS Annual meeting, Atlanta, 2017.  Cheng Cheng received Graduate Student Travel Grants from AMS to attend the annual meeting.  (01/2017)