News updates from the Department of Mathematics for the year 2016.

• Elizabeth Scribner, Sandeep Vejandla, and Jarrod Hicks were chosen as the department's Outstanding PhD Student, Outstanding Master's Student, and Outstanding Undergraduate Student, respectively.
• On November 7 Caleb Moxley successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Homotopical Complexity of Several Billiard Models. His studies were directed by Dr. N. Simanyi. Caleb has accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va.
• Christoph Fischbacher has joined us as a Visiting Assistant Professor for the coming two years.
• The following have been awarded Scholarships for 2016-2017:
  • Jarrod Hicks won the Chernov Scholarship.
  • Sandeep Vejandla won the Kauffman Scholarship.
  • Simon Harris won the O'Neil Scholarship.
  • Elizabeth Scribner won the Ward Scholarship.
  • Kenneth Davis won the Warner Scholarship.
  • Kaitlyn Lee won the Travis Wood Memorial Scholarship. She also won a CAS Scholarship.
  • Garrett Higginbotham and Ian Kewish won Department of Mathematics Scholarships.
• On June 23 Seoung-Uk Kim successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Perturbation Formulas for Gross-Pitaevskii Equation with Periodic Potential. His studies were directed by Drs. Y. Karpeshina and R. Shterenberg.
• On June 17 Dr. Louis Dale was appointed Professor Emeritus of Mathematics. He devoted 45 years to UAB, moving through the ranks beginning as Assistant Professor in 1973 finally becoming UAB’s first vice president for Equity and Diversity in 2003.
• Graduate student Patrick Hartley won funding from the organizers to attend the Topology Symposium in Prague, Czech Republic, July 25-29.
• Ph.D. student Kwadwo Antwi-Fordjour has accepted an offer from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, as an assistant professor of mathematics.
• Graduate student Houssam Abdul Rahman won funding from the organizers to attend the Great Lakes Mathematical Physics Meeting 2016 at Michigan State University.
• Graduate students Patrick Hartley and Ivan Mann won funding from the organizers to attend the 13th Annual Workshop on Topology and Dynamical Systems at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario.
• Fast-track student Jarrod Hicks has been selected for the Amgen Scholars U.S. Program.
• On April 29 Houssam Abdul Rahman successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Entanglement in Disordered Quantum XY Chains. His studies were directed by Dr. G. Stolz.
• Ph.D. student Caleb Moxley won funding from the organizers to attend the 2016 Houston Summer School in Dynamical Systems.
• Former Fast-Track student Rachel Ejem (BS and MS, 2015) won second place at the 15th Annual University of Alabama Honors Research Conference in Huntsville for her poster Rational Irrationalism which represents her work in the Art Studio program. Her work can be seen at the Spring 2016 BFA Exhibition at AEIVA from April 27 through May 7 and the poster currently hangs next to CH 458.
• On April 8 Kwadwo Antwi-Fordjour successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis Pattern Formation and Semilinear Evolution Equations in Function Spaces. His studies were directed by Dr. M. Nkashama. Kwadwo is our 50th Ph.D. recipient.
• Math and Neuroscience major Hriday Bhambhvani received an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Goldwater Scholarship competition.
• Faculty member Paul Jung will leave us effective August 14. He has accepted a faculty position at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). We wish him and his wife Jane all the best for the future.
• Fast-track student Alexandra Fry was accepted into UAB's Medical School.
• Logan Hoehn (Nipissing University) and Lex Oversteegen have solved a classic problem dating back to 1920. Their paper A complete classification of homogeneous plane continua will appear in Acta Mathematica, widely considered to be one of the top 5 mathematical journals.
• Through a generous gift by alumna Debbie Jo Severin the Lars Gunnar and Debbie Jo Severin Endowed Scholarship in Mathematics was established. Proceeds will fund scholarships for mathematics students.
• M.S. student Robert Mann has been admitted to the Doctoral Program in Finance at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School.
• Ph.D. student Houssam Abdul-Rahman has accepted an offer from the University of Arizona as a Postdoctoral Research Associate.
• Houssam Abdul-Rahman, Yeonok Cho, and Andrew Arnold were chosen as the department's Outstanding PhD Student, Outstanding Master's Student, and Outstanding Undergraduate Student, respectively.