Achievements, Awards, and Recognitions

• Alistair Windsor received a CAS Peer Power Faculty Research Initiative Grant in the amount of $9,220 for his project titled “Pedagogical Discourse Training for Peer Power Success Coaches: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation.”  His project was chosen as the sole recipient of this new funding mechanism.
• Thomas Hagen is a recipient of the 2025 Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Award.
• Congratulations to Runze Wang on being named the recipient of the Graduate Assistant Meritorious Teaching Award 2025! Runze was selected from over 250 graduate students who teach courses at the University of Memphis—a testament to their dedication and expertise as educators.
• The 1^stprize in the undergraduate competition for Mathematics and Computer Science: Jake Stewart. Jake’s poster presentation was entitled: “Pursuit and escape of L1 pursuer and L2 target”. Advisor: T. Hagen
• The 1^stprize in the graduate competition for Mathematics and Computer Science: Sara Alsuradi. Sara’s poster presentation was entitled: “Energy decays in nonlinear second-order evolution equations with underdamping and overdamping”. Advisor: I. Lasiecka
• The Department of Mathematical Sciences has been recognized for excellence and scholarly influence at the 2025 Research Celebration event held at the FedEx Institute of Technology on March 3, 2025.  Three faculty members from the DMS [B. Bollobas, I. Lasiecka, and R Triggiani] were among 21 faculty members representing the University of Memphis and listed as Impact Leaders with the highest citation metrics based on Scopus H-index. See the attached list Scopus-Google.pdf  with Scopus and Google citations-as, as included at the 2025 UM Research Celebration publication.  
• Alpha Ba and Amy de Jongh Curry (Biomedical Engineering) received an internal Community-of-Research Scholars award for their proposal “College Algebra for Engineering Students.”
• E. Olúṣẹ́gun George and Thomas Hagen, together with Jim Adelman (Biology), Bernie Daigle (Biology) and Xinhua Yu (Public Health) received an internal Community-of-Research Scholars award for their proposal “Information-Theoretic Discovery of Synergistic Interactions.”

Scholarships

The Department of Mathematical Sciences is very pleased to announce that Mrs. Pat Faudree has increased the monetary award of the Dr. Ralph Faudree Award in Mathematics to $ 500 starting in 2025. The Dr. Ralph Faudree Award, established in honor of our former colleague and internationally renowned mathematician Ralph Faudree (1939-2015), is given annually to up to two PhD students in Mathematics who have demonstrated excellent progress toward achieving the doctoral degree.

Faudree Scholars in Math (for Ph.D. students)

We're thrilled to announce that the Math Department has just received the endowed scholarship for Ph.D. students in Math, with a special focus on combinatorics, courtesy of the generous Ms. Patricia Faudree. This scholarship is an additional perk to the existing stipend offered by the Department, currently at $21,000 post-qualification exams as of 2024. The primary goal is to enhance our efforts in attracting top Ph.D. students.

Please take note of this excellent opportunity when encouraging strong applicants to apply for PhD program in Mathematics. The first two students to receive this additional support should have a focus on combinatorics, afterward with a preference for students studying combinatorics. The inaugural scholarship award, starting at a minimum of $5,000 per year, will be granted in the Fall of 2024. As we move into the second year and beyond, two students will be selected annually, each receiving a minimum of $5,000.

A huge thank you to Ms. Faudree for her remarkable generosity and longstanding support in advancing research in Mathematics at DMS. This is a game-changer for our department, and we can't wait to see the positive impact it will have on our future scholars!

The Dr. Karen E. Chancellor Memorial Scholarship Endowment (for students in the Accelerated Baccalaureate Master program)

The Scholarship will provide partial support for ABM students in their final year of the program. Students will be able to apply for the Karen Chancellor Memorial Scholarship from November 2023 through February 2024 in the Tiger Scholarship Manager system. The Department wishes to express heartfelt thanks of gratitude to Ms. Carol Chancellor for her generous gift in memory of her sister Karen, which will truly enhance the ABM program in DMS.

The Dr. Karen E. Chancellor Memorial Scholarship was established by her sister, Carol Chancellor. Dr. Chancellor (BA “80; MS ’80) served as Shelby County’s medical examiner for nearly 14 years before her tragic death on Sept. 10, 2021, following a car crash. At an early age, Dr. Chancellor demonstrated a penchant for the scholarship. After graduating from Overton High School in Memphis, she became of the first students to graduate from the University of Memphis with an undergraduate and a master’s degrees at the same time. She later earned a medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. In 2012, Dr. Chancellor was awarded the University of Memphis Outstanding Alumna Award. This scholarship will be awarded to full-time students enrolled in their second year of the Accelerated Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree Program in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Jamie McMahan Scholarship in Math (for undergraduate students)

Math Department has received a generous endowed gift, the Jamie McMahan Scholarship in Math. This scholarship is for undergraduate students with financial needs majoring in Math.
A minimum of a 3.0 GPA  is required.

The Paul Erdős Professorship in Mathematics

The Paul Erdős Professorship in Mathematics is the most prestigious departmental faculty award on campus, designed to recognize and support tenure faculty within the department who have made outstanding contributions in teaching, scholarship, service, community outreach, and engaged research at the University of Memphis. The award is named after the legendary mathematician Paul Erdős (26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996), a Hungarian mathematician who published more papers than any other mathematician in history. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory. He collaborated with many other mathematicians, including several at the University of Memphis: Bela Bollobás, Cecil Rousseau, Richard Schelp, and Ralph Faudree. Paul Erdős visited the University of Memphis frequently from the mid 1970s until his death, bringing distinction to the mathematics department at the University, and his influence continues to make its mark on the department.

The creation of the Paul Erdős Professorship was spearheaded by then provost Dr. Ralph Faudree. While multiple donors have given to make this endowment possible, a special thanks goes to both the late T. George Traicoff and the late Cecil Rousseau. Their generosity has ensured that the Department has a lasting legacy to a special friend in Paul Erdos, while also helping to reward and retain its brightest faculty.   

Rankings

Recent 2024 rankings of Math Departments: 

• The Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis is ranked #37 nationally and #79 Worldwide on ScholarGPS.com.
• The Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis is ranked #50 nationally and # 108 worldwide on Research.com.

New Concentration in Actuarial Science!

In addition to concentrations in Mathematics, Applied Statistics, and Data Science, the Department of Mathematical Sciences offers a concentration in Actuarial Sciences now (2023). This concentration prepares students with the requisite knowledge of mathematics, applied statistics, probability, accounting, and finance needed for a career in risk assessment and quantification in the insurance industry, where median salaries are over $100K according to U.S.News.

Announcement

The Math Learning Center has moved to Dunn Hall 341 (the old Math Library).

The Department of Mathematical Sciences is happy to announce the return of our Weekly Colloquium Series, with the fall schedule coming soon. Please check the departmental calendar for further information.

Plenary Talks/Invited course lectures by the DMS Faculty
The Faculty of the DMS is actively involved in cutting-edge research in the mathematical sciences. This is reflected by the several high-visibility, invited talks and course lectures presented worldwide. Some of the keynote talks and lectures recently delivered/to be soon delivered by the DMS Faculty are given. Follow our departmental calendar for updates!

The Combinatorics Group is rebooting our Combinatorics Seminar. We're planning on having one soon in the Combinatorics Seminar Room on the 2nd floor of Dunn Hall. The Ralph Faudree Postdoc, Chao Liu, will give the talk, Titled: The Multiplicative Properties for Zero-Sums. Abstract: In this talk, we will present recent joint work in Zero-Sum Theory by David J. Grynkiewicz and Chao Liu. We investigate the multiplicative properties for Zero-Sums on finite abelian groups of rank 2, which allows us to establish the structures for the extremal sequences that do not contain nontrivial zero-sum subsequences of the relevant short lengths.

Other News and Events

For the live events please visit Cantor Sect on Facebook.