News
New Issue of Spectrum Newsletter Now Available
October 6, 2017 – The fall 2017 edition of Spectrum, the department’s newsletter, has just been published. Highlights include Assistant Professor Marcelo Disconzi’s research suggesting how the universe might end and profiles of new faculty members Anna Marie Bohmann and Spencer Dowdall. For more news about our faculty and student activities, you can view a PDF of the new...
Shanks Workshop on Subfactors and Applications
August 28, 2017 – The Shanks Workshop on Subfactors and Applications will be held at Vanderbilt September 30 to October 1, 2017. The workshop will bring together researchers working in areas of mathematics related to the theory of subfactors. This includes conformal field theory, statistical mechanical models, algebraic quantum field theory, quantum computing, tensor networks, low-dimensional topology. and fusion...
BLAST Conference Honoring Bjarni Jónsson, August 14-18
June 28, 2017 – The Department of Mathematics will host the 2017 BLAST Conference August 14-18, 2017. BLAST is a conference series focusing on Boolean algebras, lattices, algebraic logic, quantum logic, universal algebra, set theory, and set-theoretic and point-free topology. It circulates among different universities, and this is the first time it will be held at Vanderbilt. A list...
Award Winners Honored at Annual Ceremony
June 2, 2017 – Five students were honored for outstanding achievements at the recent Department of Mathematics annual award ceremony. The 2017 B.F. Bryant Prize for Excellence in Teaching was shared by graduate students Chang-Hsin Lee and Timothy Michaels. The award recognizes graduate teaching assistants who have demonstrated concern for and accomplishments in teaching, qualities that characterized the career...
Conferences and Workshops Benefit from Shanks Endowment
May 9, 2017 – In addition to the prestigious annual Shanks Conference and Lecture series, a number of other Department of Mathematics conferences and workshops benefit each year from funding provided by the Shanks Endowment. The Shanks Endowment was established in 1984 by the Shanks family in honor of 1956-1969 Department Chair Baylis Shanks and his wife Olivia Shanks....
Conference on Low-Dimensional Topology and Geometry
April 25, 2017 – The Department of Mathematics hosted the Conference on Low-Dimensional Topology and Geometry from May 15 to 19, 2017. Held in conjunction with the 32nd Annual Shanks Lecture, the conference focused on the close interrelationships between geometry and topology in low dimensions, such as in the study of surfaces and three-dimensional manifolds (3-manifolds). Emphasis was on...
Fifteenth Annual NCGOA Spring Institute, May 5-11
April 11, 2017 – The Department of Mathematics hosted the Fifteenth Annual Spring Institute on Noncommutative Geometry and Operator Algebras May 5-11, 2017. The theme of the 2017 event was Operator Algebras and Logic. The Spring Institute is a combination of spring school and international research conference. During the school part of the meeting several mini-courses on a variety...
Jesse Peterson Named Chancellor Faculty Fellow
February 9, 2017 – Associate Professor of Mathematics Jesse Peterson is one of 12 outstanding Vanderbilt University faculty members who have been named to the 2017 class of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. The class comprises highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from mathematics, engineering, and law, as well as the social sciences, life and physical sciences, clinical sciences, and humanities. Peterson...
Mathematics Major Named to Schwarzman Scholars
February 1, 2017 – Marc A. Chen, a Vanderbilt University senior majoring in mathematics and economics, has been named a Schwarzman Scholar for 2017-2018. The program provides full funding for a one-year master's degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Remembering Professor Emeritus Bjarni Jónsson
October 12, 2016 – Bjarni Jonsson, Vanderbilt's first Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, died Sept. 30 at the age of 96. He was internationally recognized as a leading authority on universal algebra, lattice theory and algebraic logic. Jonsson came to Vanderbilt in 1966 and taught here until his retirement in 1993.