The inaugural Atkinson Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching by a Post Doctoral Fellow was awarded last night.
The winner of this year’s award was Marina Chugunova.
The winners are chosen based on nominations and comments from faculty and students.
Congratulations to Marina!
Professor Bálint Virág of the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences (UTSC) and the Graduate Departments of Mathematics and Statistics on the St. George campus has been awarded this year’s Coxeter-James prize in Mathematics.
From their website: The Coxeter-James Prize was inaugurated to recognize young mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research. The first award was presented in 1978.
Since it’s inception in 1978 eight other winners of the prize have been affiliated with the University of Toronto.
Congratulations to Professor Virag!
The Delury Award is given annually to recognize excellence in the department’s teaching assistants. It is usually given to a senior TA (but not always) and is used to recognize the best TAs in the department.
Nominations for the award can come from any faculty member and members of the committee choose winners based on the following criteria:
Congratulations to the winners!
The Department would like to congratulate this year’s Putnam competition team. Once again the Mathematics Department at the University of Toronto has placed in the top ten. We share this honour with MIT, Harvard, CalTech, Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Maryland, Virginia and Waterloo (click here for full results)
This year’s team:
From the official Putnam website: The competition began in 1938 and is designed to stimulate a healthful rivalry in mathematical studies in the colleges and universities of the United States and Canada. The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is an annual contest for college students established in 1938 in memory of its namesake. The Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize was established in 1992 to be “awarded periodically to a woman whose performance on the Competition has been deemed particularly meritorious”. Over the years many of the winners of the Putnam competition have become distinguished mathematicians. A number of them have received the Fields Medal and several have won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
When asked for advice for future students looking to write the competition participant Victoria Krakovna had the following to say: “I am in fourth year, so I’ve participated in the Putnam four times. I practiced a lot by doing old Putnam problems both at the Putnam sessions and on my own. The competition has two parts, each part is 3 hours with 6 problems, arranged approximately in order of difficulty. I usually try to solve the first 3-4 problems in each half of the contest, and don’t attempt the last two much. In general it’s better to concentrate on a few problems and make good progress, rather than make small progress on all six. It’s a good idea to look at all the problems, though, for example you might be able to solve #3 without solving #2. The best advice I can offer is to do a lot of practice of old Putnam problems, as much as you can.”
The department is proud of it’s team’s achievements in this years competition!
The cover page editorial article for this month’s CMS Notes was written by Professor Kumar Murty, Chair of the Department of Mathematics. He also holds the position of Vice-President of the CMS.
The article is entitled “Mathematics in a Changing World” and describes the many challenges faced by mathematics departments across the country and the different ways to make the most of these changes.
The department would like to send out congratulations to the winners of this year’s Undergraduate Mathematics Contest.
The contest, started by Professor Edward Barbeau in the spring of 2001, provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to compete in mathematics and practice their competition skills. The contest is open to all undergraduate students. This year there were 31 participants.
This year’s winners are:
Congratulations to all participants!
If you are interested in writing the competition or would like to view previous year’s winners please visit the official Undergraduate Mathematics Contest page.
Each year the Faculty of Arts and Science, through the Dean’s office, honours administrative staff for their extraordinary contributions to the Faculty. This year the Mathematics Department is proud to honour two of it’s own.
Ms. Beverley Leslie, Department Manager, was awarded with the Dean’s Distinguished Service award. This award is presented to a non-academic staff member who has, over the course of their years of service to the Faculty of Arts and Science, distinguished themselves in ways that are beyond the expectations of administrative peers, academic colleagues and students.
In addition, Ms. Ida Bulat, Graduate Administrator, is the recipient of the Dean’s Student Life Award. This award recognizes an administrative staff member who has improved the quality of the student experience in the Faculty of Arts and Science. This award recognizes innovations and demonstrated improvements to the services provided to students.
Support for both these awards was strong from both faculty and students in the department. It is a well deserved honour for them both, please join us in wishing them congratulations!