Department of Mathematics

On Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, students from across the US, Canada, and Mexico competed in the 86th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. The University of Alabama team delivered a standout performance, ranking 50th out of 487 participating institutions. Individual honors go to Vu Minh Khang Ho, who placed in the top 250 of all participants. Ho was joined by teammates Warren Chen, Matthew G…

We will have our first talk of the semester next week, 02/18, by Cody Hutcheson. It will be on Wednesday at 11:00 am in GP 234. Title: Relating first and second-order layer potentials Abstract: We consider divergence form elliptic operators of the form $L= – \div A \nabla$ on \R^{1+n}_+, n \geq 2, where $A$ is a $(1+n) \times (1+n)$ elliptic, complex, $\lambda$-independent matrix. We show that th…

The Latest in Math Analysis Seminar: Dionyssis Mantzavinos (University of Kansas) April 8 @ 4:00 pm 234 Gordon Palmer Hall Title: Linear and Nonlinear Dispersive Equations in Domains with a Boundary Abstract: A plethora of physical phenomena are modeled by… Pi Mu Epsilon Meeting April 9 @ 10:30 pm 346 Gordon Palmer Hall, 505 Hackberry Lane PME is excited to host a meeting on Thursday, April 9th a…

Congratulations to Data Science senior Thanh Nguyen and Mathematics & Data Science junior Colin Hanley for receiving 2025-2026 Arts & Sciences Support for Undergraduate Research (ASSURE) Program Awards! These competitive awards were evaluated by a faculty committee representing departments across the College of Arts & Sciences. Thanh’s project, “Understanding Collaborative Cross-Session Search on…

Congratulations to AMP student Aakash Gurung for receiving the Fall 2025 Arts & Sciences Support for Undergraduate Research (ASSURE) Program Award! This competitive award was evaluated by a faculty committee representing departments across the College of Arts & Sciences. Aakash’s proposed project builds directly on his work in the Summer 2025 Mathematics Research Experiences for Undergraduates (R…

Congratulations to Cody and Joseph on a job well done! PhD student Cody Hutcheson and AMP student Joseph Kasel co-authored a paper with Pablo Hidalgo-Palencia (Postdoc, University of Barcelona), which was posted to arXiv. The paper explores inhomogeneous heat flow in rough domains, establishing solvability of the boundary value problem where one prescribes the temperature on the boundary. In part…

We are excited to share that Dr. Abba Ramadan and Dr. Leah Mungai have been selected as mentors for the 2026 SIAM–Simons Undergraduate Research Program, a nationally recognized initiative supported by the Simons Foundation. The project will be a collaboration with Dr. Leah Mungai (Geography), and together they will mentor undergraduate students in mathematics, computational science, and data scie…

Department members Dr. Martha Makowski and Dr. Erin Watley are co-PIs of the NSF funded project “Cultivating Elementary Mathematics Specialists” (CEMS; NSF # 2447955). This project aims to serve the national need for improved mathematics teaching and learning in elementary schools by preparing and supporting a cadre of Elementary Mathematics Specialists (EMSs) who are highly effective mathematics…

Congratulations to Dr. Jia Zhao, assistant professor of mathematics, who will serve as a co-principal investigator on a three-year, $1.02 million National Science Foundation grant awarded through the Collaborations in Artificial Intelligence and Geosciences program. The project, “AI-Guided Water Availability Tracking and Twin Systems for Infrastructure Resilience,” is led by Dr. Jonathan Frame (P…

Congratulations to Dr. Shan Zhao and Dr. Yuanzhen Shao, who have been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant from the Mathematical Biology program of the Division of Mathematical Sciences, in support of the project “Collaborative Research: On calculating polar solvation and binding energies for non-rigid proteins in the Poisson-Boltzmann theory: modeling, analysis and application.…

This project lies in Commutative Algebra, which provides the local language of Algebraic Geometry and a framework for studying local solutions to polynomial equations and their approximations. The field underpins both pure and applied disciplines, including computer science, physics, and engineering, and is deeply connected to the mathematical subjects of Number Theory, Topology, and Representati…

Congratulations to Dr. Jia Zhao, who has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant from the Computational Mathematics program of the Division of Mathematical Sciences, in support of the project “Accurate, Efficient, and Stable Numerical Methods for Reversible-Irreversible Thermodynamically Consistent PDEs.” This project aims to develop a unified computational framework for solvi…

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Zhu who has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant from the Computational Mathematics program of the Division of Mathematical Sciences, in support of the project “Balanced graph cuts: algorithms, analysis and applications”. This project aims to develop novel efficient and reliable numerical methods to solve the well-known Cheeger cut problem, to en…

Dr. Keisha Cook is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at Clemson University. She received a PhD in applied mathematics and computational biology from The University of Alabama in 2019 and then completed a postdoctoral research position at Tulane University. Her research is in applied and computational biology; e.g. stochastic processes and single particl…

Congratulations to Joshua Ologbonyo for a chapter of his PhD dissertation that won the Best Regular Paper Award at ITNG 2025 (the 22nd annual Conference on Information Technology: New Generations). This work germinated from a collaboration with Dr Reuben Budiardja at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the well-known federal facilities that support research and education in science and engineer…

It is our pleasure to extend heartfelt congratulations to Anna Lindsey for being named the recipient of the Hazel Phelps Jones Award. Anna has demonstrated exceptional academic achievement across all of her mathematics courses at the University of Alabama. With a near-perfect GPA, she has earned the highest GPA among her peers, including those in her graduating cohort of approximately 350 math ma…

Congratulations to Vu Minh Khang Ho for being ranked in the Top 500 of the Putnam Mathematical Competition. This is an outstanding achievement that reflects strong analytical abilities and dedication to excellence in mathematics. 2024-Putnam-Competition-Announcement-of-Winners

Congratulations to Kyungyong Lee for making the 2025 Simons Fellows in Mathematics list! This prestigious fellowship will allow him to take a year’s leave.