Faculty from Department of Mathematics Included in Top Two Percent of Researchers in the World Group 

In a recent article published by a Stanford research group, six faculty from the Department of Mathematics were included in their list of the top two percent of researchers in the world. Variables including the number of papers authored, total citations and the impact of published research were considered.  

Department of Mathematics Chair Professor Xin Li, Ph.D. shared, “This prestigious list of the world’s top 2% researchers, encompassing an elite group of 1,237,868 individuals, shines a spotlight on the exceptional achievements of six of our esteemed faculty members. But their brilliance extends even further. Within their specific sub-fields of research, these remarkable scholars rank among the top 0.1% to 2.19%, a truly awe-inspiring accomplishment that places them at the absolute pinnacle of their fields. 

This impressive achievement underscores the exceptional research quality of our department, placing us along with the leading institutions globally. We are immensely proud of our faculty members for their outstanding contributions, which solidify our department’s reputation as a world-class department for mathematical research.” 

Congratulations to the following faculty members: 

  • Professor Alexander Katsevich, Ph.D.  
  • Professor Deguang Han, Ph.D. 
  • Research Professor Mourad Ismail, Ph.D. 
  • Graduate Coordinator and Professor Qiyu Sun, Ph.D. 
  • Professor Kuppalapalle Vajravelu, Ph.D. 
  • Professor Jiongmin Yong, Ph.D. 

Professor Alexander Katsevich, Ph.D. 

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Dr. Alexander Katsevich works on mathematical foundations of image reconstruction in Computed Tomography (CT) and on the development of improved reconstruction algorithms for CT. His most significant development was named the Katsevich Algorithm by the mathematical community, he has received over 20 patents and co-founded a UCF spinoff company iTomography Corporation – with a motto “From Theoretical Breakthroughs to Industry Adoption.” Technologies developed by Prof. Katsevich have been commercialized via licensing deals to Siemens, Canon Medical, Bruker, and others.  

He was awarded the 2016 Marcus Wallenberg Prize, the highest international honor awarded by the forestry industry. The award was presented by King Gustaf of Sweden for “groundbreaking research and development work that has resulted in the realization of a high-speed X-ray-based computed tomography instrument and method for non-destructively scanning whole tree logs.”   

Professor Deguang Han, Ph.D. 

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Dr. Deguang Han’s research interests are in the areas of functional and applied harmonic analysis, with focuses on operator algebras, representation theory, frame theory and their applications to signal processing and quantum information theory. Han has over 150 peer-review publications including two AMS Memoirs and one REU book by American Mathematical Society. 

Graduate Coordinator and Professor Qiyu Sun, Ph.D. 

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Dr. Sun works on applied and computational harmonic analysis, mathematical signal processing, graph neural networks, spatially distributed dynamic systems and sampling theory. Dr. Sun solved a longstanding classification problem in Gabor analysis and made a fundamental contribution to spatially distributed systems theory.  

Professor Kuppalapalle Vajravelu, Ph.D. 

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Dr. Kuppalapalle has 14,054 total citations. He was recognized as number one at UCF, number 298 in the U.S. and number 601 in the world on the list of Top Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Scientists.  



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