News

UB Mathematics Department News and Highlights

For general inquiry, contact: mathematics@buffalo.edu

  • PNAS publishes collaborative research that sheds light on steep ocean wave dynamics
    11/3/20
    In a new collaborative study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers from the University of Washington, SUNY at Buffalo and the University of New Mexico have unveiled the dominant mechanism behind wave-breaking of tall oceanic waves. The research team includes Prof. Bernard Deconinck (UW), Prof. Sergey Dyachenko (UB), Prof. Pavel Lushnikov (UNM) and Dr. Anastassiya Semenova (UW).
  • Miller and Scilla win the 2023 Montague Awards
    10/6/23
    The UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Alexandra Miller and Giacomo Scilla are the winners of the 2023 Harriet F. Montague Award. The award was established to commemorate the career of Dr. Montague, who was one of the early graduates the UB mathematics program, and who returned to chair the department for many years. The annual award is presented to one or more UB mathematics majors who have demonstrated intellectual and creative promise in mathematics. Of note, Giacomo Scilla is the recipient of the 2023 Summer Math Scholarship.
  • Giacomo Scilla wins the 2023 Summer Math Scholarship
    3/16/23
    The UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Giacomo Scilla is the recipient of the 2023 Summer Math Scholarship. Together with faculty mentor Dr. Gino Biondini, Scilla formulated an undergraduate research project aimed at understanding the classification of two-dimensional wave patterns governed by the solutions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation, with the ultimate goal of deriving efficient methods to generate large ensembles of such solutions.
  • Three students win the Harriet Montague Awards
    9/12/23
    The Harriet F. Montague Award was established to commemorate the career of Dr. Dr.  Montague, who was one of the early graduates the UB mathematics program, and who returned to chair the department for many years. It is given each year to one or more mathematics majors who have demonstrated intellectual and creative promise in mathematics. In 2022, the UB Mathematics Department recognizes three winners: Sarah Brown, Sahojar Khan, and, Mahdi Rahman.
  • Gigliola Staffilani, 2022
    8/17/23
    The Myhill Lecture Series 2022, "The study of wave interactions: where beautiful mathematical ideas come together" will be delivered by Dr. Gigliola Staffilani, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Mathematics at MIT. Her research concerns harmonic analysis and partial differential equations, including the Korteweg–de Vries equation and Schrödinger equation. Join us for each lecture in the series, October 5, 6 and 7, from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., 250 Mathematics Building, North Campus. 
  • Julia Shapiro wins SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence
    3/31/22
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Julia Shapiro, winner of the 2022 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence. Shapiro will graduate with a bachelor of science in mathematics, and her accomplishments as an undergraduate student include: University Honors College Scholar,  winner of the 2021 Harriet F. Montague Award, and President of the UB Undergraduate Math Club. Shapiro has completed research on Markov Chains through a nationally recognized program at the University of Connecticut, has been a Peer Mentor in the Honors College,  has served as an Ambassador of both the Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences, and has served as an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant in three separate departments — Mathematics, Biostatistics, and Computer Science. 
  • Professor Sarah Muldoon delivers session on analyzing neuroimaging data across scales
    11/3/20
    Statisticians from across upstate New York will descend on UB May 2-4 for UP-STAT 2022, the 10th joint conference of the Upstate Chapters of the American Statistical Association. Sarah Muldoon, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, UB College of Arts and Sciences, will deliver a special invited session on modeling and analyzing neuroimaging data across scales. Visit the conference website.  Read the story by David J. Hill.
  • Our students win Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for Spring 2022
    11/18/21
    The University Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Elohim Fonseca dos Reis and  Asela Abeya are each recipients of the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for the Spring Semester 2022. The award recognizes outstanding research by our graduate students.
  • Tyler Glover wins the 2021 Math Summer Scholarship
    1/11/22
    The UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Tyler Glover, a junior majoring in Mathematics, is the recipient of the 2021 Math Summer Scholarship. Under the guidance faculty mentor, Dr. Joseph Hundley, Tyler designed a special Undergraduate Research project that involved studying methods of geometric construction beyond the standard straight edge and compass, as well as their limitations and the number systems associated with them. For example, a classic result of abstract algebra states that if a segment of length x can be constructed, given a straight edge, a compass, and a segment of length 1, then x must be a root of an irreducible polynomial with integer coefficients and degree equal to a power of two.
  • Professor Hanfeng Li named to AMS 2021 Class of Fellows
    11/3/20
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that the American Mathematical Society has named Professor Hangfeng Li a member of the 2021 Class of Fellows. The international honor places Professor Li among the world's outstanding mathematicians for his contributions to algebraic dynamics and operator algebras. He joined UB Mathematics in 2005, and is currently teaching MTH 424/524, “Survey of Fourier Series Methods”. His main research interest is on noncommutative geometry and dynamical systems, especially connections between operator algebras and dynamical systems. Professor Li's recent work concentrates on actions of countable sofic groups and algebraic actions of general countable (amenable) groups. Read the article by Charlotte Hsu.
  • Robert Busch wins Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award
    5/24/22
    The Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Robert Busch, clinical assistant professor, is the winner of the coveted Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award, 2019-2020. Busch was recognized by the undergraduate Student Association for his commitment and dedication to students. He was nominated for the award by his students. Upon news of the award, Busch's first thought was to acknowledge his students: “To all my students, over all the years, and in all the classes…for giving me the privilege of being your instructor, for making me into a better teacher, communicator, and human being, for the pleasure of watching you learn and succeed, and for the thrill of seeing you graduate and step into your dreams…from the bottom of my heart…THANK YOU.”
  • Class of 2021
    6/3/21
    Four years. You’ve strived, sweated and succeeded. You’ve made friends and memories to last a lifetime. You’ve come so far. To recognize this achievement, the UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to present the name of each graduate in our Class of 2021.
  • Hakan Doga and Dustin Deutsch win the 2021 UB Mathematics Graduate Student Teaching Award
    4/27/21
    The University Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that  Dustin Deutsch and Hakan Doga are the winners of our 2021 Graduate Student Teaching Award. The honor recognizes outstanding performance in teaching by the graduate student recipient.
  • Jeremy Kazimer wins the 2020 Math Summer Scholarship
    8/15/23
    The UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Jeremy Kazimer, a junior majoring in Applied Mathematics and Computational Physics, is the winner of the 2020 Math Summer Scholarship. Jeremy is studying network models for complex systems and high-dimensional data under the guidance his faculty mentor, Dr. Dane Taylor.  Specifically, the 2020 scholarship supported Jeremy's interest in extending information-theoretic techniques to quantify the structural complexity of social networks and biological systems.
  • Welcome new faculty.
    Welcome new faculty
    9/17/20

    The UB Department of Mathematics is pleased to welcome new members of our faculty in Fall 2020:

    Sergey Dyachenko, Assistant Professor

    Mark Marino, Clinical Assistant Professor 

    Corey Placito, Clinical Assistant Professor 

    Kathlene Stephen, Clinical Assistant Professor 

    Richard Hollister, Visiting Assistant Professor 

    Tara Hudson, Visiting Assistant Professor 

    Prosenjit Kundu, Visiting Assistant Professor 

    Rupam Acharya, Postdoctoral Researcher

  • Class of 2020
    5/14/21
    PRESENTING UB MATHEMATICS CLASS OF 2020.
    Four years. You’ve strived, sweated and succeeded. You’ve made friends and memories to last a lifetime. You’ve come so far. To recognize this achievement, we present the name of each graduate in the Class of 2020.
  • ON-LINE HELP CENTER
    4/7/23
    The Math Help Center operates when classes are in session. 
  • Professor Naoki Masuda wins JSPS Prize
    2/26/20
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Dr. Naoki Masuda, Associate Professor, is the winner of the JSPS (Japan Society for Promotion of Science) Prize 2020. The national award recognizes his work, “Pioneering Research on Theory and Data-Analysis Methods for Temporal Networks”. Dr. Masuda attended the JSPS Awards Ceremony in February, 2020, accompanied by his daughter, Ami Masuda. The JSPS 2020 Award included full funding of their travel to Japan. While there, Dr. Masuda and Ami participated in an exclusive audience with the Japanese Royal Family.
  • Popular Mechanics: Crafty combinatorics solved by Johanna Mangahas
    2/4/20

    According to Popular Mechanics, there’s nothing quite like a maddening math problem, mind-bending optical illusion, or twisty logic puzzle to halt all productivity in the magazine's office. We’re curious people by nature, but we also collectively share a stubborn insistence that we’re right, and so we tend to throw work by the wayside whenever we come upon a problem with several seemingly possible solutions. Mathematicians such as Dr. Johanna Mangahas reveal the real answer. How many triangles can you find in this viral math problem?

  • Mondegarian wins the 2019 Math Summer Scholarship
    1/22/21
    Sanaira Mondegarian, a junior majoring in Applied Mathematics, has won the 2019 Math Summer Scholarship. The scholarship provided the opportunity for Saniara to study random matrix theory and applied network science under the guidance of Dr. Dane Taylor. Her research is concerned with the problem of community detection in complex networks.
  • UB Actuarial student Mousa Sunnoqrot featured by AdvisorSmith
    3/23/20

    Mousa Sunnoqrot is a senior at the State University of New York at Buffalo in Amherst, New York, where he is majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Economics and Statistics, with a concentration on Actuarial Science. Mousa is the professional chair for University at Buffalo’s student-run Society of Future Actuaries, and he interned this past summer at Healthfirst in New York City. Mousa is featured in a Q&A by AdvisorSmith, a provider of comprehensive research and advanced tools to better understand insurance for business professionals.

Welcome New Faculty

Fall 2019: The Department of Mathematics is pleased to welcome new faculty:

-Naoki Masuda, Associate Professor (Applied Mathematics);

-Simone Cassani, Visiting Assistant Professor (Applied Mathematics);

-Xin MaVisiting Assistant Professor (Analysis; Operator Algebra);

-Margaret NicholsVisiting Assistant Professor (Geometric Topology);

-Michael A. Rosas, Clinical Assistant Professor, Calculus Coordinator (Representation Theory, Mathematics Education)

See:  Faculty Directory

  • Dana Foundation News: Muldoon’s research probes questions about individual differences in brain activity
    8/22/20
    New research from the University of Buffalo, using computational models of individual people’s connectomes, shed light into individual differences in brain activation patterns, as well as how those patterns may change over time. Since 2009, scientists around the globe have worked to create the Human Connectome, a structural blueprint of the various neural pathways and connections that underlie thought, reason, emotion, and behavior in the brain. Thanks to those pioneering efforts, we now understand that different regions of the brain work together in concert, forming specific networks that facilitate movement, or learning, or our interactions with others—the cognitive skills that allow us to survive and thrive in our daily lives. Yet despite these advances, it’s still not entirely clear how these networks may differ from person to person. Sarah Muldoon, a mathematician at the University of Buffalo, has long been interested in understanding individual differences in the brain.
  • Destiny Diaz wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award
    8/22/20
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Destiny Diaz has won the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Award. The prestigious award is one of the most competitive and respected scientific fellowships in the U.S.  Diaz is completing a BS in mathematics with a minor in Spanish. Recently, Diaz received 2019 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. A Buffalo native, she is a member of the University Honors College and a Prosperity Fellow. In Fall 2019, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship will support her pursuit of graduate study in biostatistics at UB. The award provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period, which amounts to a $34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution.
  • Mark Marino wins Milton Plesur Award 2018-2019
    4/30/19
    Congratulations to Mark Marino on winning the 2018-2019 Milton Plesur Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award is given by the UB Student Association on behalf of the students who nominate their instructors. The award carries the honor of being recognized as an outstanding professor by the students they teach. Marino was presented the award at the organization's annual event, April 29, 2019. Read more in UBNow.
  • John Ringland named faculty speaker for 2019 Commencement
    6/4/19

    Professor John Ringland was the faculty speaker at the College of Arts Commencement on Sunday, May 19, 2019. See the video of Ringland's commencement address. Faculty commencement speakers are selected by nominations and a vote of graduating students from among all CAS faculty. This distinction adds to several recognitions of John Ringland’s outstanding record of teaching and mentoring of students. He is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the MAA Seaway Section Clarence Stephens Award for distinguished university teaching.  

  • UB Student Team excels in the 2019 Mathematical Contest in Modeling
    4/23/19
    Congratulations to the UB Student Team upon achieving the designation of Meritorious Winner in the 2019 Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The award puts the UB team in the top 8% of contestants. This year, 14,108 teams competed in the 35th Annual MCM Contest. The participating teams represented institutions from seventeen countries/regions from around the world. John Ringland, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of UB Mathematics, served as faculty advisor for the UB student team.
  • Destiny Diaz wins the 2019 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence
    4/30/19
    Congratulations to Destiny Diaz, winner of the 2019 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. Diaz will graduate with a bachelor of science in mathematics and a minor in Spanish. Her accomplishments as an undergraduate student include: University Honors College Scholar; Ambassador for the College of Arts and Sciences; Western New York Prosperity Fellow; Volunteer, Dominican Republic Alternative Spring Break; and more. Diaz has completed research on how to increase STEM enrollment, and works at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center as a research apprentice. See the award announcement in UB Now.
  • 2019 Student Awards
    3/23/20
    UB's 15th Annual Celebration of Student Academic Excellence recognized five UB Mathematics students: Destiny Diaz, Michael Montoro, Julia V. Quebral, Anthony R. Taboni, and David Tallents. Our students are receiving various awards for outstanding work. The event began with the CURCA Poster Celebration, followed by the Awards Ceremony. The celebration, April 25, 2019, attracted a wide-range of UB community to the annual event to recognize the outstanding academic contributions of our students, faculty and research mentors. 
  • Destiny Diaz wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award
    8/22/20
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Destiny Diaz has won the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Award. The prestigious award is one of the most competitive and respected scientific fellowships in the U.S.  Diaz is completing a BS in mathematics with a minor in Spanish. Recently, Diaz received 2019 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. A Buffalo native, she is a member of the University Honors College and a Prosperity Fellow. In Fall 2019, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship will support her pursuit of graduate study in biostatistics at UB. The award provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period, which amounts to a $34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution.
  • New Faculty: Barbara Prinari
    5/1/19

    UB Math welcomes Barbara Prinari to our faculty in Spring 2019. Her primary research area deals with nonlinear waves and coherent structures, an area that combines analysis, applied mathematics, and concrete physical applications. Her research activity focuses on the inverse scattering transform (IST) for continuous and discrete integrable systems, a mathematical technique that allows to solve the initial value problem for certain nonlinear equations. Prinari also addresses issues of solvability for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, by identifying function spaces in which the direct and inverse problems are well posed. She has co-authored a monograph on nonlinear Schrödinger systems. Over the past decade, Prinari worked and published on mathematical techniques for solving the initial value problem for nonlinear 2+1 dimensional PDEs with potentials that do not decay at spatial infinity. Most recently, Prinari has been working on the IST for multicomponent nonlinear Schrödinger systems with nonvanishing boundary conditions. We expect Prinari will make full use of abundant resources available at UB and within our department.

  • Muldoon co-authors new study published by Science Advances
    8/22/20
    Published April 3, 2019, the study points to computational modeling as a powerful tool in cognitive science. “Computational modeling enables us to do experiments that wouldn’t otherwise be possible,” says Muldoon. “It is simply not feasible to do these kinds of tests on real people so computer simulations allow us to perform virtual experiments instead.”
  • Eichorn wins the 2018 Summer Math Scholarship
    9/28/20
    Matthew Eichhorn, a junior from Williamsville, NY, who is double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science, has won our second Math Summer Scholarship. Matt is highly involved in the Math Department, participating in competitions including the Putnam exam and the Rochester Math Olympiad. Additionally, he has served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for both MTH 141 and MTH 241, as well as a tutor in the Thomas J. Edwards Undergraduate Learning Center, which assists students with material ranging from algebra and trigonometry through MTH 142.
  • Muldoon models brain structure and performance on language-related tasks
    10/18/18

    The architecture of each person’s brain is unique, and differences may influence how quickly people can complete various cognitive tasks. But how neuroanatomy impacts performance is largely an open question. To learn more, scientists are developing a new tool — computational models of the brain — to simulate how the structure of the brain may impact brain activity and, ultimately, human behavior. The research focuses on interconnectivity within the brain, looking at how different regions are linked to and interact with one another (traits that vary between individuals). A team led by Sarah Muldoon finds that this approach shows promise for understanding the interplay between brain structure and performance on language-related tasks. The research was published in PLOS Computational Biology on Oct. 17, 2018. Read more in the UB News Release.

  • Mark Newman to deliver Myhill Lecture Series 2018
    9/14/22
    Myhill Lecture Series 2018 by Dr. Mark Newman, Anatol Rapoport Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan.
  • Biondini named Department Chair
    6/1/18

    The Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that, as of July 1, 2018, Dr. Gino Biondini will be named department chair. Dr. Biondini takes over from Dr. David Hemmer who on the same day will begin to serve as dean of Michigan Technological University’s College of Sciences and Arts. Read more.

  • Montoro wins the 2017 Summer Math Scholarship
    1/20/20
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Michael Montoro is the recipient of the first annual Summer Math Scholarship. The annual undergraduate research award, established in 2017, is a result of a scholarship endowment by The Summer Math Foundation, Inc. of Amherst, New York. The endowment supports a six week, full-time summer program for the selected undergraduate student to work with a UB Math faculty mentor, which includes a $3000 stipend.
  • "The Society of Future Actuaries" (SOFA) formed by UB students
    12/5/17
    Founded by UB students interested in actuarial careers, "The Society of Future Actuaries" (SOFA) is now a club with roughly half of the membership interested in general data analytics.
  • Menasco co-authors Braid Foliations in Low-Dimensional Topology
    10/31/17
    The American Mathematical Society recently published Braid Foliations in Low-Dimensional Topology, co-authored by UB Mathematics Professor William W. Menasco, and Western Illinois University Professor Douglas J. LaFountain. This book is a self-contained introduction to braid foliation techniques, which is a theory developed to study knots, links and surfaces in general 3-manifolds and more specifically in contact 3-manifolds. Professor Menasco is currently serving UB Math as Director of Graduate Studies.
  • What's in a ripple?
    10/31/17

    A new paper by Gino Biondini and colleagues at the University of Colorado Boulder brings us closer to finding an answer. The research, published in August in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, lays out a set of newly formulated equations that are designed to characterize what happens when an undular bore occurs and spreads along two axes. Visually, this phenomenon resembles the concentric ripples that proliferate outward when you toss a stone into a pond. Read more.

  • Alexandru Chirvasitu
    8/24/17

    UB Math welcomes Alexandru Chirvasitu to our faculty in Fall 2017. His work includes: representation theory with a quantum group flavour; non-commutative geometry and some functional analysis and operator algebras; category theory; and some algebraic geometry, mostly foundational issues, such as scheme/stack reconstruction from category-theoretic data. Chirvasitu is co-author of Exotic Elliptic Algebras of dimension 4 (with S. Paul Smith) forthcoming in Advances in Mathematics. We look forward to watching his impressive publication repository continue to grow as a member of our faculty.

  • Dane Taylor
    8/15/23

    UB Math welcomes Dane Taylor to our faculty in Fall 2017. His work, at the intersection of high-dimensional data analysis (HDDA)nonlinear and complex systems, and network science, uses analyses of functional and structural networks, time series, images, videos, etc., to study complex systems arising in biology, physics, and engineering. Aiming to develop new tools for HDDA, Taylor's research incorporates methodologies from nonlinear dynamics, linear algebra, spectral graph theory, computational topology, statistics, statistical physics and machine learning. We expect Taylor will make full use of abundant resources available at UB and within our department.

  • UB Mathematics wins NSF Award
    11/16/15
    The National Science Foundation has awarded the University at Buffalo mathematics department a three-year, $600,000 grant to support the new program “Experiential Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE@UB).” Led by mathematics professor and director of graduate studies William Menasco, the initiative is a collaboration with industry and academic partners including IBM’s Buffalo Innovation Center, M&T Bank, Moog Inc., Secure RF Corporation and the UB School of Management.
  • Gary Bolduc and Ellyn Sanger receive Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Awards
    9/18/15
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that Gary Bolduc and Ellyn Sanger are recipients of the 2015 Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Award.
  • On Intersection Graphs of Convex Polygons
    5/13/16
    At the International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, held in Brno, Czech Republic, our URGE To Compute team received the Best Student Paper Award for their presentation, "On Intersection Graphs of Convex Polygons".
  • 2015-2016 College Ambassadors
    9/18/15
    The University at Buffalo Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce that two math majors and three double majors were selected by the College of Arts and Sciences to be college ambassadors for 2015-2016. The program fosters student growth and professional development.
  • Jessica Eisenhauer honored as outstanding senior
    5/19/16
    The mathematics department held a commencement ceremony on May 15, 2016, followed by a reception for graduates, their families, and faculty. At the reception the department’s outstanding senior, Jessica Eisenhauer, was honored and made some brief remarks.
  • Summer 2017 Math Scholarship
    7/15/16
    Starting in Summer 2017, one UB mathematics major will be the first to receive the “Summer Math Scholarship” to pursue individual research with a faculty mentor. The Summer Math Foundation, Inc. of Amherst, NY has funded the program for 2017 and simultaneously established an endowment to support the program for future summers.