News updates from the Department of Mathematics for the year 2009.

• Profs. Blokh, Oversteegen, Shterenberg, and Zhang recently won individual research grants from NSF.
• The Greater Birmingham Mathematics Partnership (GBMP), a partnership among nine local area school districts, UAB, and Birmingham-Southern College, has recently received a $2.1 million "Phase II Research" award from the National Science Foundation for providing and studying professional development for middle school mathematics teachers in the partner districts over the next three years. In addition, GBMP received a $300,000 supplement to support a selected group of middle school teachers in the Noyce Master Teacher Program.
• Roger Nichols won the prize for best poster at the 16th International Congress on Mathematical Physics which was held in Prague, Czech Republic, from August 3 to 8, 2009. The prize comes with 300 Euros worth of Springer books.
• Newly minted Ph.D. Clinton Curry began a postdoc position at the prestigious SUNY, Stony Brook.
• Catherine Case and Wendy Hopper were awarded the 2009-2010 Travis Wood Memorial Scholarship.
• Travis G. Bryant was awarded the 2009-2010 O'Neil scholarship for a second year. Travis is a double major in mathematics and physics.
• Graduate student Jacob Chapman won the the 2009-2010 Kauffman award for excellence in first year graduate studies.
• Prof. Ian Knowles is a recipient of the Graduate School Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentorship.
• Clinton Curry was chosen as the Outstanding Ph.D. Student in the Mathematics Department and also received the Dean's Award For Outstanding Graduate Student in NS&M. Ross Ptacek and Clayton Kelleher are departmental Outstanding Master's student and Outstanding Undergraduate Student, respectively. Congratulations to all.
• Professor Ian Knowles has been selected as the 2009 recipient of the Presidents Award for Excellence in Teaching from the School of Natural Sciences & Mathematics.
• Ph.D. students Clinton Curry and Ali Al-Sharadqah won first and third prize, respectively, in Session 8 of the 2009 Graduate Student Research days. Session 8 featured 12 participants.
• Dr. Nandor Simanyi published the paper Conditional proof of the Boltzmann-Sinai ergodic hypothesis in Inventiones Mathematicae, widely considered to rank in the top five of all mathematical journals.