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 Awards

Index



Faculty and students on the UBC Mathematics Department have received a number of awards and honours.

2021 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Shamil Asgarli is the recipient of the 2020-21 Mathematics Department Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Postdoctoral Fellow.

    The student nominations were very enthusiastic. One student wrote:
    "Shamil Asgarli is the epitome of what a teacher should be. His passion for the subject he is teaching is positively infectious ... in fact after learning about steady state analysis with him I was left with a smile on my face and a need to share how cool this new idea was with the other people around me."

    He has also been mentoring undergraduate students in research, on his own initiative, and received some very strong faculty nominations.

  • Ailana Fraser has been awarded the 2021 CMS Cathleen Synge Morawetz Prize for an outstanding research publication, or a series of closely related publications in the fields of Geometry and Topology.

    Please see here for media release.



2020 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Alejandro Adem and Kai Behrend are among the 9 individuals who make up the 2020 Class of Fellows of the Canadian Mathematical Society.

    The Fellowship recognises CMS members who have made excellent contributions to mathematical research, teaching, or exposition; as well as having distinguished themselves in service to Canada's mathematical community. To learn more (and to see the 7 new fellows not from UBC), follow this link to the CMS press release:

    https://cms.math.ca/news-item/canadian-mathematical-societys-2020-class-of-fellows-announced/

  • Leah Edelstein-Keshet is the winner of Arthur T. Winfree Prize from the Society for Mathematical Biology. The prize honours "a theoretician whose research has inspired significant new biology". [1]Leah's name joins an impressive roster of past winners ... where it fits right in!

    The Winfree Prize consists of a cash prize of $500 and a certificate given to the recipient. The winner is expected to give a talk at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology.

    [1] https://www.smb.org/arthur-winfree-prize/

  • Priscilla (Cindy) Edson Greenwood has been appointed to the order of Canada.

    https://www.gg.ca/en/activities/2020/governor-general-announces-114-new-appointments-order-canada

    which cites her "contributions to the fields of statistics and mathematics, and for her pioneering work in probability theory." She is a emeritus in our department, a member of the IAM, and has associate status in Statistics. She was a faculty member at UBC from 1967-2000 and after (then mandatory) retirement she was about a decade at Arizona State before returning to UBC as an emeritus. She remains active in research and student mentoring.

  • Sarafa A. Iyaniwura has been awarded the 2020 Dr. Deepak Kaura Award in the Mathematics of Medicine.

    Details here: https://www.iam.ubc.ca/blog/sarafa-iyaniwura-receives-2020-kaura-award/

  • Fok-Shuen Leung has just been named as the winner of the PIMS education prize for 2020. The PIMS web site packs a long list of well-deserved accolades into this comparatively short citation [1]:

    "PIMS is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Education Prize is Dr. Fok-Shuen Leung! Dr. Leung is a tenured Senior Instructor in the Department of Mathematics at UBC Vancouver and the recipient of a 2012 Killam Teaching Prize in the Faculty of Science. Dr. Leung’s ability to connect with students, organize, and innovate, are amplified in his role as Academic Director, First Year Experience.

    Additionally, PIMS wishes to acknowledge Dr. Leung’s important contribution to creating quality, transformative teaching preparation for mathematics graduate students. His involvement with the TA Accreditation Program, a 60-hour program that he started in 2010, offers professional development for TAs beyond the department’s requirements. These initiatives are now modelled in similar programs at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto.

    Dr. Leung is invested in encouraging activities which enhance public awareness and appreciation of mathematics, as well as fostering communication among various groups and organizations concerned with mathematical training."

    [1] https://www.pims.math.ca/news/pims-2020-education-award-winner-announced

  • Sujatha Ramdorai is the winner of the 2020 Krieger-Nelson Prize for her exceptional contributions to mathematics research.

    For more details, see The CMS News Release [1]. Sujatha will receive her award and present a prize lecture during the CMS Summer Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, June 5-8, 2020 [2].

    [1] https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2020/Krieger-Nelson
    [2] https://summer20.cms.math.ca/

  • Elina Robeva has won the 2020 UBC/PIMS Mathematical Sciences Young Faculty Award.

    Details here:
    https://www.pims.math.ca/pims-glance/prizes-awards
    *The official annoucement from PIMS will be posted here later.

  • Liam Watson has won the 2019 Young Faculty Award sponsored by UBC and PIMS. Liam joined our Department in summer 2018, with a research focus on Low Dimensional Topology. He has contributed a lot during his short time here, and not only through his highly-regarded research. He served on last year's Merit Review Committee and on this year's dca, and he is currently on the Dean's Committee to identify our next Department Head. Liam's impressive research and collaborative links with other topologists have also landed him a successful PIMS Collaborative Research Group Award.

    This prize was created by two founding donors, Anton Kuipers and Darrell Duffie, to recognize UBC researchers for their leading edge work in mathematics or its applications in the sciences.

    A detailed citation/news release is here:
    https://www.pims.math.ca/news/liam-watson-2019-pims-ubc-mathematical-sciences-young-faculty-award-winner

  • Jun-cheng Wei is the winner of the 2020 Jeffery-Williams Award for his exceptional contributions to the theoretical development and interdisciplinary applications of nonlinear partial differential equations.

    For more details, see The CMS News Relase [1]. Jun-cheng will receive his award and present a prize lecture during the CMS Summer Meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, June 5-8, 2020 [2].

    [1] https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2020/2020-jw-prize
    [2] https://summer20.cms.math.ca/



2019 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Michael Bennett is one of 52 mathematical scientists from around the world named as Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) for 2020. The AMS recognizes Mike “For contributions to Diophantine equations and Diophantine approximations, and for service to the mathematical community.” Here is the full press release [www.ams.org]

  • Neil J. Balmforth was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2018. This is a significant and well-deserved honour. In its citation [1], the APS notes Neil's "fundamental contributions to astrophysical fluid dynamics, dynamical systems, geophysical fluid dynamics, non-Newtonian fluid dynamics, and granular flow".

    [1]
    https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=&year=2018&unit_id=&institution=

  • Jeffrey Dawson, in Combined Honours Computer Science and Mathematics, has been awarded a Governor General's Silver Medal as head of the graduating class in Science.

    Details regarding nomination procedures are posted here:
    https://graduation.ubc.ca/event/about/awards/

  • Yuqing Du, in Engineering Physics with a minor in Honours Mathematics, has been awarded a Governor General's Silver Medal as head of the graduating class in Applied Science.

    Details regarding nomination procedures are posted here:
    https://graduation.ubc.ca/event/about/awards/

  • The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) has named Dr. Julia Gordon (UBC) as the recipient of the 2019 Krieger-Nelson Prize. The Krieger-Nelson Prize was inaugurated to recognize outstanding contributions in the area of mathematical research by a female mathematician. Dr. Gordon will receive the award during the CMS Summer Meeting in Regina, Saskatchewan, June 7-10, 2019.

    Here are the media release and more information on past recipients.

  • Yaniv Plan is the recipient of the 2019 André Aisenstadt Prize in Mathematics. The prize, awarded by the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques every year since 1991, recognizes exceptional mathematical results achieved by a young Canadian mathematician. Professor Plan's work concerns the mathematics of information. It interacts with various fields including high dimensional data analysis, machine learning, harmonic analysis, probability, signal processing, and information theory. Prof. Plan's focus has been mostly on compressed sensing and its generalizations, such as low-rank matrix and tensor recovery.

    Further details, including an abstract for the associated prize lecture, are here:
    http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prixAA19_fr.shtml.

  • Juncheng Wei has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Professor Wei, a Tier-One Canada Research Chair in nonlinear partial differential equations, is a prolific researcher whose work impacts both pure and applied mathematics. His surprising counter-example to the famous De Giorgi Conjecture is just one highlight among an extensive suite of fundamental contributions to the field of nonlinear PDEs. The Royal Society's official announcement, dated 2019-09-10, is online at [1].

    [1] https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/Class%20of%202019.pdf

  • Ethan White PhD Student in Discrete Mathematics, has been selected to receive the prestigious Killam-Donald N. Byers Memorial Prize for the 2019W session. “In 2002, UBC created an endowed prize in memory of former Killam Trustee, Donald N. Byers. The prize is awarded to the highes t-ranking Killam Doctoral Fellow in the annual Affiliated Fellowships competition. The award is made on the recommendation of the Fac ulty of Graduate Studies in consultation with the Affiliated Fellowships adjudication committee. ” Read more about the award here [www.grad.ubc .ca]



2018 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Sven Bachmann is the winner of the Annales Henri Poincaré (AHP) prize.

    "Each year a prize founded by Birkhäuser is awarded for the most remarkable paper published in the journal Annales Henri Poincaré. The winners of the AHP prize are selected by the Editorial Board.

    The AHP Prize 2016 was awarded to Sven Bachmann, Wojciech Dybalski and Pieter Naaijkens for the paper

    Lieb-Robinson Bounds, Arveson Spectrum and Haag-Ruelle Scattering Theory for Gapped Quantum Spin Systems

    The article constructs rigorously the scattering theory for gapped quantum spin models, showing that in such systems one may speak about "quasiparticles" which behave very similarly to usual particles satisfying the bosonic statistics. By extending the Haag-Ruelle theory for relativistic QFT to interacting homogeneous non-relativistic systems, the authors solve an important open problem in mathematical physics. The main difficulty, consisting of the absence of Einstein's causality, is overcome by using the Lieb-Robinson bound on the propagation speed and conditions on the shape of the one-particle spectrum.

    The general construction, done using elegant and natural arguments, is illustrated on the example of the Ising model in transverse magnetic field. The techniques developed in the paper open new exciting perspectives in the study of nonequilibrium states of strongly coupled spin systems."
    Details here: http://www.springer.com/birkhauser/physics/journal/23/PS2?detailsPage=societies

  • Martin Barlow, Michael Bennett, George Bluman, David Boyd, Ailana Fraser, Nassif Ghoussoub and Malabika Pramanik were annouced as the Canadian Mathematical Society Inaugural Class of Fellows.
    Details here: https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2018/Fellows

  • Shirin Boroushaki is the winner of 2017/2018 Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.
    See https://academic.ubc.ca/awards-funding/award-winners/killam-teaching-service-winners

  • The winners of the Mathematics Department's Graduate Research Awards for 2018 have now been named:

    Please join us in congratulating Laurent and Federico on their excellent research conducted during their time at UBC.

  • Hong Zhe Chen, in Combined Honours Physics and Mathematics, has been awarded a Governor General's Silver Medal as head of the graduating class in Science.
    Details regarding nomination procedures are posted on the Faculty of Graduate Studies website.

  • Adela Gherga and The Ha were the recipients of the 2018 Faculty of Science Excellence in Service Awards which recognize the exceptional service contributions of Science's staff, students and faculty

    • Adela Gherga,a PhD student, is a winner in the Student category. Her leadership through the MGC and her energetic activism in favour of student mental health have driven real improvement in the Department.
    • The Ha, one of our impressive IT crew, is a winner in the Staff category. The's nomination was made through the Department of Statistics, where he holds a joint appointment with Mathematics. But today we take pride in noting that his Math-Stat split is 60-40, and celebrate The's extraordinary dedication to optimizing the networking and computational infrastructure on which our daily work depends.

  • Nassif Ghoussoub has been a powerful asset to our Department since he joined as an Assistant Professor in 1979. On Sunday evening at the Awards Banquet associated with the CMS Winter Meeting, his long list of well-deserved accolades got a little longer: he was introduced as the winner of the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize for 2019.

    The main selection criterion for this prize is outstanding contribution to the advancement of research. The prize has a monetary component, and comes with an invitation to present a research lecture at each of the sponsoring Institutes.

    The nice citation at [1] celebrates both Nassif's "deep, original, and influential contributions" to a whole list of mathematical fields, and his "extraordinary contributions to Canadian mathematics in general."
    [1] http://www.pims.math.ca/news/professor-nassif-ghoussoub-named-winner-2019-crm-fields-pims-prize

  • Tom Hutchcroft (supervised by Omer Angel and Asaf Nachmias), 2015 winner of our Graduate Research Award, and 2018 winner of a Governor General's Gold Medal. He will be picking up the 2018 Canadian Mathematical Society Doctoral Prize and presenting a prize lecture during the CMS Winter Meeting here in Vancouver, December 7-10, 2018. His lecture is Monday December 10, 13:30 - 14:30 in Pavillion Ballroom CD, at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center.

  • Tom Hutchcroft has won the 2018 Canadian Mathematical Society Doctoral Prize! The Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student. Tom will receive his award and present a prize lecture during the CMS Winter Meeting here in Vancouver, December 7-10, 2018.

    Today's official announcement in Ottawa says "he is regarded as one of the top recent Ph.D.s in probability theory in the world" with "an impressive collection of results ... published in leading journals, such as Inventiones Mathematicae" and "has made remarkable progress in the study of uniform spanning trees on unimodular and planar graphs" amongst many other achievements, including recently winning the Governor General's Gold Medal.

    The full media release is at
    https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2018/Doctoral

  • Tom Hutchcroft has been awarded a Governor General's Gold Medal. This recognizes Tom as the UBC doctoral graduate with the most outstanding academic record. Dr Hutchcroft made a strong impression during his time here, with a paper in the Inventiones in 2016, two productive summers as an intern at Microsoft Research, and the Math Department's Graduate Research Prize in 2015.

    Tom's dissertation (supervised by Omer Angel and Asaf Nachmias) is entitled Discrete Probability and the Geometry of Graphs. It has 10 chapters, and each one after the introduction corresponds to a peer-reviewed publication in a top-quality journal.
    Here is a direct link: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62595

    Tom is now a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge and a Junior Research Fellow in Trinity College. (This sentence comes from his new home page, at href="http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~th361/ .) All indicators point to a bright future and ongoing success.

  • Malabika Pramanik won a Killam Research Prize, in recognition of her outstanding research and scholarly contributions. For more details on this prize, please see
    https://research.ubc.ca/research-excellence/awards-honours/faculty-research-award-winners

  • Gordon Slade (FRSC, FRS) is the winner the CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize for 2018!

    The Prize is awarded by the Canadian Mathematical Society to recognize mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    Professor Slade has done outstanding work in rigorous statistical mechanics, motivated by the physics of critical phenomena. For more details, see [1] and [2]. He will receive his award and present a prize lecture during the CMS Summer Meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick, June 1-4, 2018.

    [1] https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2018/2018-jw-prize
    [2] https://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/jw

  • Ben Williams has won the 2017 UBC Mathematics and Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Faculty Award. The prize has a cash component, and winners are invited to give a prestigious invited lecture. Thus we can look forward to hearing Prof Williams describe his work sometime later this year.

    The UBC Math/PIMS Faculty Award was created by two founding donors, Anton Kuipers and Darrell Duffie, to recognize UBC researchers for their leading-edge work in mathematics or its applications in the sciences. This is the third time it has been given; previous winners are Rachel Ollivier for 2015 and Yaniv Plan for 2016.

    Professor Williams works on the boundary between topology and algebraic geometry/number theory. He and his collaborators have done important foundational work in equivariant and motivic homotopy theory, and have used this "heavy machinery" to shed new light on (and in some cases completely settle) a number of long-standing open problems in algebra. A referee in the competition credits Ben with a knack for figuring out the 'right' perspective on things: "he knows the difference between an explanation and a beautiful explanation, and he definitely strives for the latter."

    Ben received his BA (in Math and English Literature) and MSc (in Math) from University College Dublin in Ireland. He went on to earn Ph.D. at Stanford in 2010, under the supervision of Gunnar Carlsson. After 3 years at the University of Southern California, he came to UBC as a postdoc in 2013. We succeeded in recruiting him to the permanent faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2015.



2017 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Alejandro Ádem has been named as a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. His installation will occur at the Mathematical Institute of the UNAM on 22 April 2017, where he will lecture on "Navegando entre grupos, representaciones y topologÍa". The promotional is at http://amc.edu.mx/amc/carteles/CartelAADEMAMC.pdf

  • Kai Behrend and Brian Marcus had been named in the 2018 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.

    Kai Behrend
    "For contributions to algebraic geometry."
    Brian Marcus
    "For contributions to dynamical systems, symbolic dynamics and applications to data storage problems, and service to the profession."
    Details here: http://www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/new-fellows

  • Sabin Cautis has been awarded the 2017 CMS Coxeter-James Prize for his outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    "Prof. Cautis is a leader in the new and rapidly developing field of categorification as it relates to geometric representation theory, algebraic geometry, mathematical physics and low-dimensional topology. Categorification is a search for deeper structure behind invariants in algebra and topology."
    The full citation can be found at https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2017/cj-award

  • James J. Feng is the winer of the CAIMS Research Prize 2017. It recognizes Feng's influential contributions to the study of complex fluids, through a combination of challenging computations, novel theoretical insights, and physical experiments.

    The full citation is available at:
    http://www.caims.ca/news/professor-james-feng-awarded-caims-research-prize-2017

  • UBC's 2016 Faculty Research Awards were announced:
    • Dragos Ghioca won a Killam Research Fellowship to support him while on sabbatical.
    • Christoph Hauert won a Killam Research Prize, in recognition of his outstanding research and scholarly contributions.
    • Dong Li won the Charles A McDowell Award for Excellence in Research, recognizing demonstrated excellence in pure or applied scientific research by a young faculty member
    See https://research.ubc.ca/research-excellence/awards-honours/faculty-research-award-winners for more details.

  • Congratulations to Julia Gordon for winning the 2017-2018 Michler Prize, co-sponsored by the Associaton for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University. The AWM website says, "The prize provides a fellowship for the awardee to spend a semester in the Mathematics Department of Cornell University without teaching obligations. ... The Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize will honor outstanding women at this stage of their careers and enable them to focus on their research in the stimulating environment of the Cornell University Mathematics Department."

  • The winners of the Mathematics Department's Graduate Research Awards for 2017 have now been named:

    • Oliver Leigh, winner for Pure Mathematics, and
    • Josh Scurll and Cole Zmurchok, joint winnners for Applied Mathematics.

    Please join us in congratulating Oliver, Josh and Cole on their excellent research conducted during their time at UBC.

    Oliver Leigh is an expert on both Gromov-Witten theory and Donaldson-Thomas theory, Josh Scurll has made strides in image interpretation problems in cell biology, and is also at the forefront of designing an innovative strategy to personalize targeted cancer therapies, and Cole Zmurchok's research includes an ingenious finding in the application area of cell biology that mechanical tension on cells can affect their biochemistry.
    Each award winner will be invited to give a Departmental Colloquium, where you can learn more about their work.

  • Stilianos Louca has been awarded a Governor General's Gold Medal for his PhD work and dissertation. This annual prize is given to the graduating doctoral student who has achieved the most outstanding academic record at UBC.
    https://www.grad.ubc.ca/awards/governor-generals-gold-medal

    Dr Louca distinguished himself in every aspect of his studies here. His research has already produced many publications. His dissertation, The ecology of microbial metabolic pathways (supervised by Michael Doebeli through the Department of Mathematics and the Institute of Applied Mathematics), has just recently become available through the University's online repository: to see what all the excitement is about, visit
    https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0314930

  • Yaniv Plan has won the 2016 UBC Mathematics and Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Faculty Award. The prize has a cash component, and the winner is invited to give a prestigious invited lecture. So we can look forward to hearing Prof Plan describe his work sometime later this year.

    The UBC Math/PIMS Faculty Award was created by two founding donors, Anton Kuipers and Darrell Duffie, to recognize UBC researchers for their leading edge work in mathematics or its applications in the sciences. This is only the second time it has been given; the first-ever winner was Rachel Ollivier for 2015.

    Professor Plan's research has connections to machine learning, probability, signal processing, and information theory. He has made pivotal discoveries in compressive sensing, low-rank matrix recovery in the presence of noise, and high-dimensional data analysis. Referees comment on his unique ability to do mathematics that is deep and practical, theoretical and at the same time computationally relevant.

    Yaniv Plan earned his PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 2011, under the supervision of Emmanuel Candes. He went on to the University of Michigan as an NSF Posdoctoral Fellow and Hildebrandt Assistant Professor, then joined the faculty at UBC Vancouver in 2014.

  • Pamela Sargent and Cole Zmurchok are the winners of 2016/2017 Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.
    See https://academic.ubc.ca/awards-funding/award-winners/killam-teaching-service-winners

  • Gordon Slade has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (London).

    The full citation is available at: https://royalsociety.org/people/gordon-slade-13422/

  • Gordon Slade has been awarded 2016/2017 Killam Teaching Prize in Faculty of Science. Gordon's excellence in teaching at all levels, ranging from service courses for UBC Engineers through graduate-level courses and summer schools here and abroad, has inspired eager learners around the world for decades.
    See https://academic.ubc.ca/awards-funding/award-winners/killam-teaching-service-winners

  • Stephanie Van Willigenburg has been named the recipient of the 2017 CMS Krieger-Nelson Prize for her exceptional contributions to mathematical research.

    Today's official announcement in Ottawa says, among other things, that "Prof. van Willigenburg is a leading expert in algebraic combinatorics, a vibrant area of mathematics that connects with many other fields of study including representation theory, algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, topology and probability. Her research and subsequent discoveries have focused on Schur functions, skew Schur functions and quasisymmetric Schur functions, central topics within the field of algebraic combinatorics."

    Steph will present a lecture and receive her award in conjunction with the Mathematical Congress of the Americas (https://mca2017.org/) in July 2017.

    For additional information, visit https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2017/kn-prize.



2016 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Omer Angel has been awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize from the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.
    The full citation is available at: http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/Rollo/

  • Jim Bryan has been named in the 2017 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
    Citation:

    "For contributions to algebraic geometry and service to the mathematical community."
    For details: http://www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/new-fellows

  • Matthew Coles and Vanessa Radzimski are the winners of 2015/2016 Killam Prizes for outstanding work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Science.
    See http://vpacademic.ubc.ca/killam-awards/killam-graduate-teaching-assistant-awards/ for more detail.

  • The winners of the Mathematics Department's Graduate Research Awards for 2016 have now been named:

    • Rob Fraser and John Ma, joint winners for Pure Mathematics
    • Alejandra Herrera, winner for Applied mathematics
    Please join us in congratulating Alejandra, John and Rob on their excellent research conducted during their time at UBC. Alejandra has developed a model for protein turnover that is crucial to experimental biology, John has made substantial progress on the mean curvature flow of Lagrangian surfaces, and Rob's strengths lie in a variety of areas from harmonic analysis on local fields to patterns in sparse sets. Each award winner will be invited to give a Departmental Colloquium, where you can learn more about their work.

  • Tom Hutchcroft has been named as Microsoft Reseach PhD Fellow for 2016.
    See http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/global/northam/northam-fellows.aspx for more detail.

  • Leah Edelstein-Keshet is the winner of the CAIMS Research Prize for 2016.

    "CAIMS is pleased to announce that the recipient of the CAIMS Research Prize for 2016 is Professor Leah Edelstein-Keshet, University of British Columbia.

    Professor Leah Edelstein-Keshet is a world leader in the application of mathematical methods and analyses to biological problems. She has written highly original and impactful papers on the characterization of collective spatial organization of biological organisms and of cytoskeletal dynamics and cell motility. One key feature of her work is the development of novel mathematical models and sophisticated mathematical and computational analyses of biological phenomena on all scales, ranging from molecular to cellular to populations. Her modeling and analysis makes insightful predictions, and she collaborates with experimentalists to test these predictions in order to refine the models. She has been one of the globally recognized pioneers of this highly interdiscipinary and relevant approach to the modeling and study of biological processes. She has also developed novel mathematical models for important human diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimers disease, and cancer."

  • Leah Edelstein-Keshet In February the Officers and Elected Directors of the Society for Mathematical Biology unanimously approved the Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize to recognize the exceptional scientific contributions made by a woman in mathematical biology.
    In the annoucement online at http://www.smb.org/publications/SMBnet/digest/v16/v16i08.html, SMB President Schnell outlines UBC Mathematics Professor Edelstein-Keshet's outstanding scientific contributions and service.

  • Colin Macdonald and Anthony Wachs have been awarded NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplements.

    • Colin Macdonald, for "Numerical Computing on Evolving Domains"
    • Anthony wachs, for "Multi-scale modelling of reactive particulate flows"

    More information about the program is available at:
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp

  • Rachel Ollivier has won the 2015 UBC Mathematics and Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences Faculty Award. The winner is invited to give a prestigious invited lecture.

    The UBC Math/PIMS Faculty Award is new this year; the plan is to award it annually. It was created by two founding donors, Anton Kuipers and Darrell Duffie, to recognize UBC researchers for their leading edge work in mathematics or its applications in the sciences.

    Professor Ollivier works in the Langlands Programme, a central theme in pure mathematics which predicts deep connections between number theory and representation theory. She has made profound contributions in the new branches of the "p-adic" and "mod-p" Langlands correspondence that emerged from Fontaine's work on studying the p-adic Galois representation, and is one of the pioneers shaping this new field. The first results on the mod-p Langlands correspondence were limited to the group GL_2(Q_p); but Dr. Ollivier has proved that this is the only group for which this holds, a surprising result which has motivated much subsequent research.

    She has also made important and technically challenging contributions in the area of representation theory of p-adic groups, in particular, in the study of the Iwahori-Hecke algebra. In joint work with P. Schneider, Professor Ollivier used methods of Bruhat-Tits theory to make substantial progress in understanding these algebras. She has obtained deep results of algebraic nature, recently defining a new invariant that may shed light on the special properties of the group GL_2(Q_p).

    Rachel Ollivier received her PhD from University Paris Diderot (Paris 7), and then held a research position at ENS Paris. She subsequently was an Assistant Professor at the University of Versailles and then Columbia University, before joining the faculty here at UBC in 2013.

  • Malabika Pramanik was the recipient of the 2016 CMS Krieger-Nelson prize for her outstanding research contributions. Details of Malabika's contributions are presented with the media release, at
    http://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2016/kn-award.html

    As a winner, Malabika joins an impressive list of Canadian mathematical leaders, including our own Ailana Fraser, Rachel Kuske,Izabella Laba, Leah Keshet, and Cindy Greenwood.
    https://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/kn.html

Student awards:

  • Caroline Lemieux, in Honours Mathematics and Computing, wins Governor General's Silver Medal as head of the graduating class in Science.


2015 Awards

Academic awards and honours:



2014 Awards

Academic awards and honours:



2013 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Neil Balmforth has been awarded the 2013 CAIMS Research Prize.
    From the citation:

    "CAIMS is pleased to announce that the 2013 CAIMS*SCMAI Research prize has been awarded to Prof. Neil Balmforth, University of British Columbia.

    Prof. Balmforth's research has focused on the modeling and analysis of problems in classical fluid mechanics, complex geophysical flows, and viscoplastic flows. His work combines asymptotic analysis, dynamical systems theory, and stability theory together with a keen physical insight into modeling issues associated with complex fluids. Notable contributions include the modeling and analysis of Non-Newtonian lava flows, the study of solitary waves in thin film models, the analysis of the spectrum associated with shear-flows, vortices, and critical layers, and shallow water flows. His work is theoretical, yet is influenced strongly by laboratory experiments in fluids."

  • Carmen Bruni was a recipient of a 2012-13 Killam graduate teaching prize, recognizing outstanding contributions made by a graduate student.

  • James J. Feng has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
    Citation:

    "For pioneering studies of solid-liquid two-phase flows, interfacial dynamics of complex fluids, and phase-field modeling of the moving contact line."

  • Congratulations James J. Feng on his appointment as a Peter Wall Distinguished Scholar in Residence for the coming year. More details on this prestigious award are available at http://pwias.ubc.ca/programs-awardees/wall-scholars/

  • Dragos Ghioca was a recipient of a 2012-13 Killam faculty teaching prize, recognizing outstanding contributions made by teaching faculty.

  • David Kohler was awarded a 2013 Science Achievement Award in the Student category.
    See http://science.ubc.ca/faculty/awards/achievement for more details.

  • Rachel Kuske has been selected by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) as one of ten recipients of their inaugural AWM Service Award. The AWM was founded in 1971 and now has over 3,000 student, individual and institutional members. The AWM Service Award recognizes individuals for helping to promote and support women in mathematics through exceptional voluntary service to the Association for Women in Mathematics.

  • Zinovy Reichstein was the recipient of the 2013 Jeffery-Williams Prize. The prize was inaugurated in 1968 to recognize established mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    The complete announcement has been posted here:
    http://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2013/jw-prize.html

  • Tai-Peng Tsai has been awarded the Morningside Silver Medal of Mathematics from the ICCM 2013. More details are available at : http://iccm.tims.ntu.edu.tw/#@MorningsideAwards

  • Jun-cheng Wei has been awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement in the most recent round.

Teaching awards:

  • The Department Teaching Awards were awarded to
    • Enrico Au-Yeung (Teaching Awards)
    • Cindy Blois (Teaching Awards)
    • Carmen Bruni (Teaching Awards)
    • Vanessa Radzimski (TA Awards)
    • Chao Pang (TA Awards)
    • Kelly Paton (Teaching Awards)
    These awards recognize outstanding teaching performances from our postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

2012 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Alejandro Adem, Martin Barlow, David Boyd, Jim Carrell, Bill Casselman, Ailana Fraser, Nassif Ghoussoub, Izabella Laba, Zinovy Reichstein, Maurice Sion and Gordon Slade were announced as Inaugural Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
    See http://www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/ams-fellows

  • Jim Bryan has been awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement in the most recent round. This highly competitive award provides substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.

    More information about the prize is available at :
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp

  • Jessica Conway has won a Faculty of Science Postdoctoral Travel Award.

  • Ailana Fraser has been awarded the Canadian Math Society's 2012 Krieger-Nelson Prize. The prize was inaugurated in 1995 to recognize female mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    Information about the Kriege-Nelson Prize: http://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/kn.html

  • Dragos Ghioca has been named the winner of the 2012 Ribenboim Prize. This prize is awarded every two years by the Canadian Number Theory Association for distinguished research in Number Theory. See http://www.cs.uleth.ca/%7Ecnta2012/CNTA12-RibenboimAnnounce.html

  • Nassif Ghoussoub has been awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal to "honour [his] significant contributions and achievements". See http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=14019&lan=eng

  • Fok-Shuen Leung was a recipient of a 2011-12 Killam teaching prize, recognizing outstanding contributions made by teaching faculty. See http://vpacademic.ubc.ca/killam-teaching-prizes/killam-teaching-prize-award-winners/20112012-2/

  • Mark MacLean is the recipient of the 2012 PIMS Education Prize.

    This prize, awarded by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, recognizes individuals who have played a major role in encouraging activities which have enhanced public awareness and appreciation of mathematics, as well as those who foster communication among various groups concerned with mathematical education at all levels.

    Mark MacLean is an outstanding instructor making a major impact on teaching in Mathematics at UBC and beyond. He was one of the original members of the UBC Science One (first year Science) programme and has contributed greatly to its success, with a personal dedication to enhancing the learning environment. In addition to his excellent teaching, MacLean has taken leadership roles in course development, instructor supervision, tutorial centre management, and TA training. He has also chaired UBC committees on Scholarships and Teaching Awards. His energetic outreach activities include leadership in the Euclid Contest and teacher professional development in the area of Aboriginal Education, in collaboration with PIMS. These activities support high school teachers and students throughout the greater Vancouver area and beyond. Together with Veselin Jungic at SFU (previous PIMS Education Prize winner), Mark has developed highly successful curricular material for children (including videos and texts) in the context of Aboriginal culture.

    The 2012 PIMS Education Prize will be awarded during the annual Changing the Culture conference at Simon Fraser University on May 18, 2012.

  • Young-Heon Kim has been awarded a 2012 Sloan Research Fellowship. These prestigious two year fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. The awards recognize distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

    More information is available at http://www.sloan.org/fellowships/page/21

Teaching awards:

  • The Department Teaching Awards were awarded to one postdoctoral fellow, Deniz Karli, and to three graduate students, Rebecca Hiller, Ed Kroc and Ali Vakil. These awards recognize outstanding teaching performances from our postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

Student awards:

2011 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Ian Frigaard has been elected President of the CAIMS*SCAIM(Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society) Board. Ian's term will be 2011-2013.

  • Ian Frigaard has been awarded the 2011 CAIMS/MITACS Industrial Mathematics Prize. This award recognizes exceptional research, conducted primarily in Canada, in any branch of industrial mathematics.

    The citation recognizes Ian's distinguished contributions to the theory of dynamics of non-Newtonian fluids as well as industrial applications using mathematical modelling for oil well construction. His research is recognized as inspired by industrial problems and also contributing to support industry progress while frequently conducted in collaboration with industrial partners. The full citation is available at:
    [Oops, dead link]

    More information about the prize is available at : http://www.caims.ca/Awards/Iprize.html

  • Young-Heon Kim has been awarded the 2012 André-Aisenstadt Prize from CRM, shared with Marco Gualtieri (Toronto). The André-Aisenstadt Mathematics Prize is awarded to recognize talented young Canadian mathematicians.

    The prize committee "was impressed and excited about both files and decided to award the prize to .. both."

    More information about this prize can be found at http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prixAndreAisenstadt/prix_AA_an.shtml

  • Gordon Slade has been elected to Fellowship in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

    Fellowship in the IMS honors the outstanding research and professional contributions of its members, recognizing distinction in probability or statistics research and leadership.

    More information on IMS Fellows can be found at:
    http://www.imstat.org/awards/honored_fellows.htm

  • Juan Souto and Ozgur Yilmaz have been awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplements in the the most recent round. These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.

    More information about the prize is available at :
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp

  • Michael Ward has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 CAIMS Research Prize. This award recognizes innovative and exceptional research contributions in an emerging area of applied or industrial mathematics.

    The citation recognizes Michael's significant successful combination of singular perturbation techniques and numerical methods to analyze boundary-value problems arising in a wide range of applied fields. He will give the prize lecture at the CAIMS*SCMAI Annual Meeting, which this year is part of the ICIAM meeting in Vancouver.

    More information about the prize is available at : http://www.caims.ca/Awards/Rprize.html

Teaching awards:

  • Malabika Pramanik has been awarded a 2010-11 UBC Killam Teaching Prize. These prizes recognize outstanding achievement as a teacher, reflecting enthusiasm for teaching and commitment to students.

    This is the sixth UBC Killam Teaching Prize awarded in Math over the last five years.

Student awards:

  • David Steinberg is the recipient of 2010-11 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards for students. As noted in the message from the Dean, these awards recognize exceptional service contributions of faculty, staff, and students.

    David was cited for

    ... leadership in TA training in the Mathematics Department, and playing a key role in setting up the Mathematics Department's TA Accreditation Program (TAAP).

  • The following students were awarded a NSERC/SSHRC graduate fellowships for 2011-12.

    PGSM fellowship: Matthew Coles

    CGSM fellowships: Jonathan Blackman, Meghan Dutot, Jeremy Hoskins, Adrian Keet, Brett Kolesnik, Laura Liao, Justin Martel, Oren Rippel, Pamela Sargent

    PGSD fellowship: Rory Wilson

    CGSD fellowships: Kyle Hambrook, Alexander Tomberg

    Vanier fellowship: Iain Moyles

    SSHRC fellowship: Alexander Jakobsen

Service awards:

  • Verni Brown is the recipient of 2010-11 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards for staff. As noted in the message from the Dean, these awards recognize exceptional service contributions of faculty, staff, and students.

    Verni was cited for

    ... exceptional service, organization, and contributions as Undergraduate Secretary in the UBC Math Department. Her management of this large program provides superior support of our undergrads and teaching mission.

2010 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Omer Angel has been awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement in the most recent round. These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.

    More information about the program is available at:
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp

    This is the seventh DAS awarded to a UBC Math faculty member in the last four years.

  • Omer Angel has been awarded a 2010 Sloan Research Fellowship. These prestigious two year fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. The awards recognize distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

    More information is available at: http://www.sloan.org/pressroom/item/458/2010-sloan-research-fellowships and more on UBC awardees at: http://science.ubc.ca/news/355

  • The following students were awarded a NSERC graduate/postdoctoral fellowships for next year.

    PGS fellowships:
    Farzin Barekat, Shane Cernele, Cameron Christou, Eric DeGiuli, Matthew Folz, Tyler Helmuth, Jennifer Morrison, Oren Rippel, Rhoda Sollazzo
    PDF fellowships:
    Jun Allard, Adam Clay, Craig Cowan, Aurel Meyer, Terry Soo

  • Kai Behrend has been awarded the Canadian Math Society's 2011 Jeffery-William Prize for Research Excellence. The prize was inaugurated in 1968 to recognize established mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    The citation notes that Kai is one of the world's leading experts in the theory of algebraic stacks and the geometry of moduli spaces of stable maps, and that today nearly every paper in Gromov-Witten theory, which is a mathematical incarnation of string theory, relies on his work in some way.

    This is the fifth time in the last decade that a UBC Math Faculty member has won this award.

    Information on the prize is available at: http://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/jw.html
    The complete citation is available at: http://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2010/jw-announcement

  • Daniel Coombs has been selected as the recipient of 2010 CAIMS/PIMS Early Career Award in Applied Mathematics. This award recognizes exceptional research in any branch of applied mathematics where the recipient is less than ten years past the date of Ph.D. at the time of nomination.

    Dan is cited for his creativity, productivity, and ever-growing impact in mathematics applied to problems in biology. He works in the field of computational immunology, addressing a wide range of problems in viral disease dynamics and HIV modelling, and in the dynamics of receptors on cell surfaces.

    Additional information about the award is available at: http://www.pims.math.ca/news/caimspims-early-career-award-applied-mathematics

  • Jimmy Feng has been awarded a UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship. This award recognizes special distinction of intellect in promising faculty members as they devote full time to research during a study leave.

  • Ailana Fraser has been awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement in the most recent round. These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.

    More information about the program is available at:
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp

    This is the eighth DAS awarded to a UBC Math faculty member in the last four years.

  • Nassif Ghoussoub has been awarded the 2010 CMS Borwein Career Award. This award recognizes individuals who have made exceptional, broad, and continued contributions to Canadian mathematics. In this case, revolutionizing Canadian mathematics and its world status is among Nassif's many achievements.

    More about the award can be found at http://www.math.ca/Prizes/info/db.html

  • Congratuations to Bud Homsy on his honorary doctorate awarded by University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. This award included the citation for his research and educational activities in the field of fluid mechanics, including multiphase flows, non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, hydrodynamic stability, and for spearheading the production of "Multimedia Fluid Mechanics".

    More information and photos are available at:
    http://www.ups-tlse.fr/1277818244144/0/fiche___actualite/

  • David Kohler has been selected as the recipient of the 2009/10 UBC Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Award. This award recognizes a select group of graduate students who have made outstanding contributions to teaching and learning at UBC. The citation from the Office of the Vice Provost and AVP Academic Affairs, noted that there are 2000 TAs at UBC, so winning this award is a remarkable achievement.

  • Rachel Kuske has been awarded the Canadian Math Society's 2011 Krieger-Nelson Prize for Research Excellence. The prize was inaugurated in 1995 to recognize female mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    The citation notes that Rachel has made important contributions to the study of ordinary, stochastic, and partial differential equation models for a wide range of applications including neuroscience, mathematical biology, buckling under compression, mathematical finance, and hydraulic-fracture mechanics.

    Rachel has also been involved in industrial mathematics, and has continually been mindful of mentorship of young scientists, including other women mathematicians. She is currently serving as Head of the Department of Mathematics, to the appreciation and benefit of her colleagues.

    This is the fourth time in the last decade that a UBC Math Faculty member has won a Kreiger-Nelson award.

    Information about the Kriege-Nelson Prize: http://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/kn.html
    Media release: http://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2010/kn-announcement

  • Mar Ness, Warren Code and Rajiv Gupta have won the 2009/2010 Faculty of Science Achievement awards in the areas of staff, students, and faculty, respectively.

    These awards recognize exceptional service contributions of faculty, staff, and students. They will be presented at a special ceremony at the Faculty of Science Meeting on Tuesday, May 11, 2010, at St. John's College - usually around 3:30-4:00. Please mark your calendars for this, so we can all join to celebrate our colleagues' achievements.

    The individual citations for Mar, Warren, and Rajiv are:

    Mar Ness:
    Heroic efforts in not only administering but also optimizing the major responsibilities of classroom assignment, timetabling, and exam administration, together with unparalleled assistance in registration and first year advising. All these jobs are done with great personal commitment and care in support of Math students and instructors.
    Warren Code:
    For scientific leadership and community-building service among the students and faculty of the Mathematics Department.
    Rajiv Gupta:
    Extraordinary service in transforming the Undergraduate Chair position to include valuable training, tracking, and advising contributions well beyond the usual job description. Remarkable resource for staff, students, and instructors at all levels to support teaching the department.

  • Brian Wetton has been selected as the recipient of the 2010 CAIMS/MITACS Industrial Mathematics Prize. This award recognizes exceptional research, conducted primarily in Canada, in any branch of industrial mathematics.

    The citation recognizes Brian's contributions particularly in the area of fuel cells, noting that he refocused his research in industrial mathematics with direct applicability of advanced mathematics to real world problems. Brian is also recognized for a distinguished record of mentoring and supervision, as evidenced by his management of a research team of industrial and academic partners and the successful careers of his students.

    More information about the prize is available at : http://www.caims.ca/Awards/Iprize.html

  • Benjamin Young is the recipient of the 2010 Doctoral Prize (http://cms.math.ca/Prizes/info/dp/). The CMS Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student. Young received his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of British Columbia, working under the joint supervision of Jim Bryan and Richard Kenyon.

Teaching awards:

Student awards:

  • Oren Rippel, an outstanding Combined Honours Math and Physics student, who has been awarded a Wesbrook Scholarship.
    The Wesbrook Scholarship recognizes demonstrated excellence in academics and service, encouraging students who balance high academic achievement with outstanding contributions to society through a range of extracurricular activities. Information about the scholarships is available at: http://www.students.ubc.ca/finance/awards.cfm?page=scholarships&view=premier

2009 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Omer Angel has been award the 2009-2010 Andre-Aisenstadt Prize.

    This award recognizes outstanding research achievement by a young Canadian mathematician in pure or applied mathematics.
    http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prixAndreAisenstadt/prix_AA_an.shtml

    From the citation: "He works in probability theory, on percolation, random walks and random spatial processes of all sorts, with applications to other areas of mathematics, physics and even biology. He has many impressive results..."
    The full citation can be found at: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/en/index.shtml

  • Martin Barlow has been award the 2009 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize, intended to be the premier mathematics prize in Canada.

    Martin is a leading figure in probability and the leading international expert in diffusion on fractals and other disordered media. In addition, the impact of his work has been important in such diverse fields as partial differential equations, including major progress on the De Giorgi conjecture, stochastic differential equations, the mathematical finance of electricity pricing, filtration enlargement and branching measure diffusions.

    More information about the prize and Martin's work is detailed in their CMS Email announcement.

  • Martin Barlow, Michael Doebeli and Leah Keshet have been appointed as Distinguished Scholars in Residence for 2009 at UBC's Peter Wall Institute for Advance Study. The Distinguished Scholars in Residence program, targeted at senior Associate and Full Professors, was developed to bring to the Institute outstanding, UBC faculty members with distinguished research records and commitment to interdisciplinarity.

    More information on the PWIAS Distinguished Scholars in Residence program can be found at: http://www.pwias.ubc.ca/programs/sir.php

  • Patrick Brosnan has been awarded the 2009 Coxeter-James prize for research by the Canadian Mathematical Society for his outstanding contributions to mathematical research. The full citation can be found at http://www.cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2009/res-prizes
  • David Brydges and Zinovy Reichstein have both accepted invitations to speak at the next International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010 in Hyderabad, India. This is an extremely prestigious honour -- only a handful of mathematicians receive these invitation are invited. The ICM meets only once every four years.
  • Jimmy Feng, Kalle Karu and Nike Vatsal were all awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator Awards. These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp
  • Eldad Haber, jointly appointed in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Mathematics, has been awarded a NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC). The IRC program is designed to enhance and develop research connections between universities and industry and to provide enhanced training environments. More information about the IRC program can be found at:
    http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/CFS-PCP/IRC-PCI_eng.asp
  • Christoph Hauert has been granted an Early Career Scholarship award at UBC's Peter Wall Institute for Advance Study for 2009-10. These scholars are chosen based on highly promising records with the possibilities of intellectual and interdisciplinary exchange with peers in very different areas of research.
    http://www.pwias.ubc.ca/programs/residential-programs/early-career-scholars.php"
  • Gordon Slade has been awarded the 2010 CRM-Fields-PIMS prize. The CRM-Fields-PIMS prize is the premier prize for research awarded jointly by the three Canadian mathematics institutes. It recognizes exceptional achievement in the mathematical sciences for research conducted primarily in Canada or in affiliation with a Canadian university.

Teaching awards:

Student awards:

  • Graduate Award Winners for 2009-2010:

    Vanier Scholarship: Cindy Blois

    PIMS-IGTC Fellowships: Jun Allard, William Carlquist, Kelly Paton

    NSERC Fellowships: Kael Dixon, Joanna Fawcett, Kyle Hambrook, Ali Fatehi Hassanabad, Jennifer Morrison, Iain Moyles, Daniel Pareja, Kelly Paton

    University Graduate Fellowships: Roland Bauerschmidt Yu-Ting Chen, Craig Cowan, Alex Duncan, Mostafa Fazly, Hardeep Gill, Jay Heumann, Xiaohu Ji, Vishaal Kapoor, Aurel Meyer, Andrew Morrison, Cihan Okay, Kai Rothauge, Ryan Schwartz, Dennis Timmers, Tereza Wei

    MSc. Fellowships: Alexander Jakobsen, Athena Nguyen, Ali Vakil

  • Farzin Barekat, an outstanding third year Honours Mathematics and Physics student, has won designation as a Wesbrook Scholar and winner of HSBC Emerging Leader Scholarship (a Premier Undergraduate Scholarship).

    The Wesbrook Scholars and Premier Undergraduate Scholarships are encouraging students who can balance high academic achievement with outstanding contributions to society through a range of volunteer, cultural, and sporting activities.

2008 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Ivar Ekeland has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada.

    Election to the RSC recognizes the merits and achievements of distinguished individuals from all branches of learning who have achieved distinction, both nationally and internationally, through research and scholarly work in the arts, humanities and sciences. It is the highest academic accolade in Canada that is available to scientists and scholars.

  • Stephanie Van Willigenburg has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for 2008 - 2009!

    The Humboldt Research Fellowships are strongly competitive awards with which the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly-qualified scientists and scholars from abroad to spend extended periods of research in Germany. Steph will be spending part of 2009 at the University of Hannover.

Teaching awards:

  • The Department Teaching Awards expanded in 2008 to include both graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

    Two Graduate Student Teaching awards:
    Adam Clay and Ryan Lukeman

    Postdoctoral Teaching Award:
    Ronnie Pavlov

  • Stephanie van Willigenburg has won the 2008 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize.

    This prize recognizes instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate students and stimulate critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and developent of innovative approaches to teaching methodology and curricula." The recipient also receives a cash award.

    For more details on this prize, please see

    www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24

Student awards:

  • The 2008 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition took place on December 2008.
    Cedric Lin was the UBC high scorer on the 2008 Putnam exam for the third year in a row, this time placing in the top 15 in the entire competition (out of a total of 3,627 participants). Other high scorers from UBC included Farzin Barekat, whose top-50 ranking earned him an Honourable Mention, and Stanley Xiao, who placed in the top 120 participants. Overall, UBC had eight students place in the top 500.

    UBC's team placed 19th among the 405 universities and colleges having Putnam teams. We had 23 people participate in the exam; 19 of them scored at or above the median, and 15 of them scored at least 10 points (which is enough to place in the top third of all contestants).

    Congratulations to all the students who participated, and thanks to the department for their great support of the practice sessions!

  • Amir Moradifam won the prestigious Killam Predoctoral Fellowship

    The following students won NSERC Fellowships:
    Michael LeBlanc (Alexander Graham Bell CGS D), Andrew Brown (PGS M), Keira Gunn (PGS M), Chan Ian (PGS M), Tiffany Chao (PGS M), Sitar Scott (PGS D), Rose Simon (PGS D), Cindy Blois (extended PGSM), Shane Cernele (CGS M), Tyler Helmuth (PGS M), Jerome Lefebvre (PGS M), Michael Lindstrom (PGS M), Carol Ross (PGS M), Vincent Sippola (PGS M), William Thompson (PGS M)

    The following students won University Graduate Fellowships:
    Omer Dushek, James Clarkson, Adam Clay (UGF/Pacific Century Graduate Scholarship), Vishaal Kapoor (partial UGF), Erez Louidor, Ryan Lukeman (UGF/Pacific Century Graduate Scholarship), Aurel Meyer (partial UGF), Andrew Morrison (UGF/ Josephine T. Berthier Fellowship), Liang Zhu

    In addition, Omer Dushek, Ryan Lukeman, and Jennifer Morrison won new IGTC awards.

  • The 2007 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition took place on December 1, 2007. The top scorer at UBC was Cedric Lin, who achieved an Honourable Mention, ranking in the top 75 participants overall. Three other UBC students earned spots in the top 300 participants, and a total of nine UBC students were ranked in the top 600.

    The UBC Putnam Team ranked 15th out of 413 participating institutional teams. A total of 3753 students from 516 colleges and universities participated. A total of 25 students from UBC participated, the highest participation rate in our history.

    More information about the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition can be found here:
    http://math.scu.edu/putnam/

2007 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Martin Barlow has won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2008 Jeffery-Williams Prize that recognizes mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    For more details, please see the press release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself can be found at the CMS web site.

  • Jim Bryan and Michael Doebeli both awarded a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship for next year.

    The purpose of the award, based on special distinction of intellect, is to assist promising faculty members, who wish to devote full time to research and study in their field during a recognized study leave.

    Jim has also been awarded a Visiting Research Professorship at the Miller Institute for Basic Science at UC Berkeley. The purpose of this Professorship is to bring promising or eminent scientists to the Berkeley campus on a short-term basis for collaborative research interactions. More info at: http://millerinstitute.berkeley.edu/page.php?nav=24

  • David Brydges has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

    RSC, founded in 1882, is Canada's oldest and most prestigious scholarly organization, recognizing "the extraordinary accomplishments of persons of talent, expertise and creativity in all fields."

    Election to RSC is the highest honour that can be attained by scholars, artists and scientists in Canada.

    More information about the Royal Society of Canada can be found here:
    RSC Home Page
    Press Release of New Fellows
    Citations

  • Joel Feldman has been awarded the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize for 2007. This prize is awared jointly by the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) of l'Université de Montré'al, the Fields Institute, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. An announcement of this prize has been posted on the PIMS and CRM web sites:

    2007 CRM-Fields-PIMS Award Announcement
    English: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_an.shtml
    French: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_fr.shtml

  • Joel Feldman has also been awarded the 2007 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. More information about this prize can be found at the Canadian Association of Physicists website:

    English: http://www.cap.ca/awards/crm.html
    French: http://www.cap.ca/awards/crm-f.html

  • Nassif Ghoussoub has won the 2007 Jeffery-Williams Prize given by the Canadian Mathematical Society.

    Canadian Mathematical Society Press Release
    Jeffery-Williams Prize Description

  • Nassif Ghoussoub and The Ha both won Faculty of Science Achievement Awards for outstanding service and leadership.

  • Alexander Holroyd has been awarded the 2007 André-Aisenstadt Prize. This award is given by the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) of l'Université de Montréal to a young talented Canadian researchers. More information about this prize, as well as other prizes given out by CRM, can be found here:

    English: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_an.shtml
    French: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_fr.shtml

  • Leah Keshet, Izabella Laba and Zinovy Reichstein have been awarded in the 2007 competition NSERC accelerator Supplements.

    These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.

  • Izabella Laba has won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2008 Krieger-Nelson Prize, which recognizes outstanding research by a female.

    For more details, please see the press release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself can be found at the CMS web site.

  • Don Ludwig was elected as a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, announced in their press release.

    Professor emeritus Donald Ludwig is one of two Canadians inducted this year into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

    One of 203 fellows and 24 foreign honorary members elected to the academy in 2007, Ludwig joins a list of inductees that includes former vice-president Al Gore, former U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Sandra Day O'Connor, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and filmmaker Spike Lee.

  • Ronald van Luijk is the winner of the 2007 G. de B. Robinson Award. He will receive the award at the Society's 2007 Winter Meeting in London, Ontario.

    For more details, please see media release on Nov 9, 2007 from CMS.

  • Yoichiro Mori, a Post-Doctoral Fellow, has won the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis at Oxford University. This award was based on a paper he wrote on a convergence proof for the immersed boundary method.

    More information about the prize can be found here:

    Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis
    Photos of this year's winners

  • Ed Perkins has won the Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship. Ed is one of only ten awardees this year in a competition that encompasses humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, engineering and interdisciplinary studies within these fields. These fellowships enable Canada's best scientists and scholars to devote two years to full-time research.
    The Canada Council for the Art's press release can be found here:

    http://www.canadacouncil.ca/news/releases/2007/hq128166321106725706.htm

    A busy year for Ed as he has also been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), as announced in their press release.

  • Dale Rolfsen will receive an honorary doctorate (Docteur Honoris Causa) from the University of Caen, France. The award will take place in Caen in November, where Dale will be giving a course of lectures and finishing a new edition of his book "Why are braids orderable?"

  • Jozsef Solymosi has won the 2008 CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize. The Andre-Aisenstadt Prize is a major national award in mathematics that is awarded to rising young Canadian stars. The selection committee was "... struck by the extraordinary efficiency and elegance of his results at the cutting edge of a new field, additive combinatorics."

    The announcement of the awards can be found at

    CRM Home Page
    and a description of the CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize can be found on their web page
    CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize page

  • Nike Vatsal has won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2007 Coxeter-James Prize. This prize recognizes young mathematicians have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

    For more details, please see the press release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself can be found at the CMS web site.

Teaching awards:

  • Joel Feldman has won the 2007 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize. This prize recognizes instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate students and stimulate critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and development of innovative approaches to teaching methodology and curricula." The recipient of the prize also receives $5000.

    For more details on this prize, please see

    www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24

  • Greg Martin has won the 2007 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize. This prize recognizes instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate students and stimulate critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and development of innovative approaches to teaching methodology and curricula." The recipient of the prize also receives $5000.

    For more details on this prize, please see

    www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24

  • Katya Yurasovskaya is one of 5 winners in the Faculty of Science of a UBC Graduate Teaching Assistant Teaching Award. The award includes a prize of $1000, and was awarded for Katya's work organizing problem-solving workshops for MATH 180 and 184 students.


Student awards:

  • James Bailey has won the Accelerate BC Award of Excellence in Life Sciences for his internship project,"Determining the kinetics of self-assembly of islet amyloid polypeptide in type 2 diabetes", conducted at BC Children's Hospital.

    See http://www.math.ubc.ca/~keshet/MITACS/index.htm for more information on the project.

  • The following students are winners of the 2007-08 University Graduate Fellowship:

    Sandra Kliem
    Ryan Lukeman
    Roger Mullen Woodford
    Samara Pillay
    Liang Zhu

  • The following students received NSERC awards. Their proposed research titles are as follows:

    Karsten Chipeniuk (Graduate)
    Fourier Analytic Detection of Structures Contained in Sumsets of Primes and Continuous Analogues
    Tyler Dodds (Undergraduate)
    Approximations for Probability Densities of Pseudo-Periodic Bistable Climate Processes
    Alexander Duncan (Graduate)
    SAGBI Bases and Invariant Theory
    Hardeep Gill (Graduate)
    Superprocesses with dependent spatial motion
    Alexandra Jilkine (Graduate)
    Mathematical Modelling of Cytokinesis
    John Lang (Undergraduate)
    Mathematical Biology: Modelling the Spread of Disease
    Alan Lindsay (Graduate)
    Plate Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Capacitor Devices and blow up behavior of fourth order partial differential equations
    Andrew Staal (Graduate)
    Algebraic Geometry - Singularities, Jet Schemes, and Multiplier Ideals
    Justin Tzou (Undergraduate)
    A Numerical Optimization Algorithm
    Erick Wong (Graduate)
    Combinatorial properties of binary quadratic forms

  • The UBC Putnam Team was awarded an honourable mention in the 2006 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. They ranked 11th out of 402 participating institutional teams. A total of 3640 students from 508 colleges and universities participated.

    The 3 members of the UBC Putnam Team consisted of Farzin Barekat, Cedric Lin, and Samuel Wong. A total of 23 students from UBC participated, the highest participation rate in our history.

    The top scorer among the UBC Putnam Team was Cedric Lin, who achieved an outstanding ranking in the top 25. Three other UBC students earned spots in the best 300 participants overall, and a total of seven UBC students were ranked in the top 520.

    More information about the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition can be found here:

    http://math.scu.edu/putnam/

    A complete list of winners and outstanding achievers, and the prizes they've won, are posted at

    http://www.math.harvard.edu/putnam/2006_results/

2006 Awards

Academic awards and honours:

  • Robert Miura has won the 2006 Leroy P. Steele Prize with C.S. Gardner, J.M. Greene, and M.D. Kruskal for the seminal paper Korteweg-de Vries equation and generalization. VI. Methods for exact solution. Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 27(1974), 97--133. The Steele Prize is a prestiguous award given by the American Mathematical Society. More information about this prize can be found at

    MS Prize - Leroy P. Steele Prize web site

  • Jozsef Solymosi has won a 2006 Sloan Research Fellowship which is awarded annually to approximately 20 outstanding young mathematicians who have received their doctorate degree from a college or university in the US or Canada less than 6 years ago. A list of recipients for this award (including one of ours from last year) can be found here:

    http://www.sloan.org/programs/fellowshiplist.shtml

  • Nike Vatsal has won the 2006 Ribenhoim Prize awarded by the Canadian Number Theory Association. This prize is awarded every 4 years to a young number theorist (as defined as having received their doctorate less than 12 years ago) who is Canadian or has connections with Canadian mathematics. For further details, see

    http://www.pims.math.ca/science/2006/06cnta/prize.html

Student awards:

  • Miguel Angel Moyers Gonzalez has been awarded the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2006 for his doctoral thesis

    Transient Effects in Oilfield Cementing Flows

    The recipient of the award receives a trophy, a monetary prize and a one-year membership in the Society, as well as being invited to present their thesis at the Annual Meeting of the CAIMS.

    More information about this prize award can be found on CAIMS's web page:

    http://www.caims.ca/Awards/DDaward.html

2005 Awards

Academic awards and honours:


NSERC Strategic Grants and Research Chairs:

  • Alejandro Adem has been awarded a Tier I Canada Research Chair. A profile of his research is here:

    Research profile

    Details about Canada Research Chairs can be found here:

    Program Details

  • James Feng, Ian Frigaard and Mark Martinez (Chemical Engineering) have been awarded a NSERC strategic grant to research smart spacers for extended reach horizontal well cementing.

  • Richard Kenyonhas been awarded a Tier I Canada Research Chair. A profile of his research is here:

    Research profile

    Details about Canada Research Chairs can be found here:

    Program Details

  • Philip Loewen, Guy Dumont (ECE), Michael Davies (ECE) have been awarded a NSERC strategic grant to research autonomous cross-directional systems.


Honorary degrees:

  • Nassif Ghoussoub was awarded a "Doctorat Honoris Causa" from the University of Paris, June, 2004. This is in recognition of Nassif's research accomplishments in mathematics and for his many contributions to the discipline worldwide, through his role in the founding of PIMS, MITACS and BIRS.


Teaching awards:


Student awards:

  • Kristen Shaw has won an international competition for her USRA project from the Cryptologia journal.

  • UBC Putnam Team placed 2 students in the top 75 contestants in the 2004 Putnam Competition, a challenging North American mathematics competition for undergraduates. This achievement awarded Daniel Brox and Dustin Tseng Honorable Mentions. A total of 15 students from UBC entered this competion.

    Keeping up a tradition of strong performance, UBC's team was ranked 13th out of all institutions in North America. In all, we had thirteen students place in the top 1200 in North America, and nine in the top 600.

    More information about the Putnam competition can be found here:

    http://math.scu.edu/putnam/

2004 Awards

  • James Carrell has won the Faculty of Science Achievement Award for dedicated service to the Mathematics Department and the Canadian mathematical community.

  • Adriana Dawes was a co-winner of the joint CMS/CAIMS poster award. Details are posted on the webpage of the CMS/CAIMS Summer 2004 Meeting.

  • Mary-Margaret Daisley has won the Faculty of Science Achievement Award for dedicated service to the faculty, staff and students of the UBC Mathematics Department.

  • Liam Watson was one of ten winner's of the U.B.C. Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.



2003 and earlier Awards

  • Izabella Laba is the winner of the Canadian Mathematical Society's Coxeter-James Prize for 2003. This award recognizes outstanding young mathematicians who are either Canadian or work in Canada. The citation refers to her work on the Kakeya conjecture on Hausdorff and Minkowski dimension of Besicovitch sets with Nets Katz and Terence Tao, which surmounts a natural barrier to improving earlier lower bounds by Thomas Wolff and Jean Bourgain. Her current work with Michael T. Lacey deals with questions in combinatorial number theory and measure theory, constructing, with Michael T. Lacey, "large" sets of integers without k-progression.

  • Gordon Slade is the co-winner of the Prix de L'Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) 2003 with Remco van der Hofstad of the Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics, Delft University, for the paper

    Convergence of Critical Oriented Percolation to Super-Brownian Motion Above 4+1 Dimensions
    Remco van der Hofstad and Gordon Slade Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré (B) Probabilités et Statistiques, Volume 39, Issue 3.

  • UBC Putnam Team placed in the top-10 among participating universities and colleges in North America in the 2003 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. More information is found here.

 
 
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