Chair Wins Inventor of the Year Award

Our congratulations go to Professor Kumar Murty, Chair of the Mathematics Department, for being honoured by the Innovations and Partnerships Office and receiving the inaugural “Inventor of the Year” award in Engineering and Physical Sciences.

This award is given to ”recognize University of Toronto inventors or teams of inventors who have made a significant contribution to the University of Toronto’s innovation agenda”.  Further information on the award can be found on the Innovations and Partnership Office website.

From the Bulletin: “Murty and research associate Nikolai Volkovs have created a data integrity algorithm that represents a breakthrough in terms of its speed and its large internal state space. It is able to authenticate data at wire speeds and can be customized for each individual user. Moreover, its stream-based architecture opens up new possibilities for authenticating data on the fly as well as building higher integrity systems for greater security and reliability. The invention has been patented and a spin-off company, Prata Technologies, was founded in 2007. Murty is also working with General Electric to apply this novel authentication technology in the smart grid.”

Further information on the award and other recipients can be found at: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/campus-news/inventor-of-the-year-winners-list-2011.html

DeLury TA Award Winners Announced

We are happy to announce that this year’s winners of the Daniel B. DeLury Teaching Awards for graduate students in mathematics are:

  • Karene Chu
  • Bruce Fontaine
  • Henning Petzka

The selection committee consisted of Catherine Sulem and Abe Igelfeld.

Nominations were made by course instructors and undergraduate students.

The selection committee received many favourable comments about our TA’s as fine work is being done by many of our teaching assistants, and we can take pride in their work.

Congratulations Karene, Bruce and Henning!

Cressy Award to Math Union Co-President

This year Sergio DaSilva, co-president of the Math Union this year was one of 15 winners of a Cressy Award.

The awards are given for outstanding volunteer service to the faculty, their departments and the university and for their contributions towards enhancing student experience.

Photos of the Award winner luncheon with Dean of Arts and Science, Meric Gertler, can be found here

Congratulations to Sergio and all the other award winners!

Math and all that Jazz

Recently PhD candidate Alex Bloemendal sat down with the University of Toronto’s Bulletin to talk about how his love of music, his passion for math and an “enthralling conversation about probability” was what drew him into the Specialist Mathematics program here in the Department.

The Bulletin calls Alex “a virtuoso on the piano” who’s “favourite toy [growing up] was his mother’s Texas Instruments calculator” and talks about how there “is a common understanding among mathematicians that math is in fact the basis of sound.  Time, rhythm, meter, intervals and harmony all have a firm grounding in math.”

It then goes on to talk how, after some tough decisions, and a conversation with our own Professor Jeremy Quastel, Alex decided on doing his undergraduate degree right here at UofT.

The full article can be found on Page 8 here: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bulletin/PDF_issues/04-19-11_web.pdf

2010 Putnam Results

We are pleased to announce the Putnam results for 2010.

Konstantin Matveev was the best Canadian contestant and among the top twenty in North America. He will receive the Nathan Mendelsohn Prize for this honour.

In addition, Alexander Remorov received an honorable mention with the score among the thirty best in North America. Keith Ng and Jonathan Zung also ranked in 101-200 range.

The University of Toronto team consisting of Alexander Remorov, Konstantin Matveev and Sida Wang ranked tenth.

The top five teams in order were Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley and University of Waterloo.

Duke, Princeton, Stanford and University of British Columbia placed among the top ten.

All told, 4296 students from 546 institutions competed; there were teams from 442 institutions.

Congratulations to all our participants!

Professor Braverman Wins Sloan

Professor Mark Braverman of the Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science has won one of this year’s prestigious Sloan Fellowship awards.

The full list of winners can be found here

Our hearty congratulations go to Professor Braverman on this great accomplishment!

AMS Centennial Research Fellowship for 2011-12 Winner

Professor George Elliott’s former PhD student, Andrew Toms, now at Purdue, has been awarded this year’s AMS Centennial Research Fellowship.

The Purdue announcement can be found here.