Six assistant professors in the College of Letters and Science have been named to UC Davis’ newest class of Hellman Fellows. The Hellman Fellows Fund provides grants to more than 100 junior faculty members annually at all 10 UCs and four private institutions. The fellowships of up to $50,000 are intended to give early-career faculty extra support for their research.
Professor of Mathematics Jesús De Loera has received the Farkas Prize, awarded annually to a mid-career researcher in the field of optimization by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Optimization Society.
According to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, gravity is curvature in the fabric of spacetime. Shockwaves can distort spacetime, causing singularities where the laws of physics appear to break down.
Now two mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with equations that remove these singularities. In doing so, they also extend a theorem called Uhlenbeck Compactness to the setting of General Relativity.
Jesús De Loera, professor of mathematics, has been recognized with a 2020 ADVANCE Scholar award for “his excellence in research and tireless work to diversify the mathematical profession and increase opportunities for underprivileged populations.”
To stay a step ahead of the virus, an interdisciplinary team of UC Davis researchers will use mathematics, data science and experimental biology to predict potential mutations of the novel coronavirus. The proposed research was recently funded by a $200,000 RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation.
Professor Abigail Thompson, chair of the Department of Mathematics, has been recognized as a Hero of Intellectual Freedom by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for her op-ed on diversity statements. Thompson will deliver the keynote address at the council’s ATHENA Roundtable Conference in November.
Caustics are patterns that emerge from the reflection of light rays from surfaces — such as the glitter of sunlight on wavelets in the UC Davis Arboretum. The mathematics that explains caustics is called contact geometry. That’s the speciality of Roger Casals Gutierrez, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. Casals was recently awarded both a Sloan Research Fellowship and a NSF CAREER award to support his work.
Getting research experience as an undergraduate student doesn’t have to mean working in a laboratory. Instead of days spent transferring fluids from one tube to another, math major Tracy Camacho explored matroids, complex mathematical objects with many different uses.
