Professor and Chair Stewart Johnson announced this year’s Math/Stats prizes at the annual gala Majors’ Dinner at the Williams Inn Tuesday evening, May 13, 2014 (photos below):
ROSENBURG PRIZE for excellent senior: Ilya Amburg and Vu Le.
GOLDBERG AWARD for best colloquium:
Nina Horowitz “The Mathematics Behind Playing Hard to Get“
Joseph Iafrate “Random Walk, Random Strikeout: Baseball as a Markov Chain”
WYSKIEL AWARD in Teaching: Jeff Brewington
MORGAN PRIZE in Applied Math: Carson Eisenach
MORGAN PRIZE in Teaching: David Stevens
ROBERT M. KOZELKA AWARD in Statistics: Faraz Rahman
OLGA R. BEAVER PRIZE for department service: David Stevens
BENEDICT PRIZE for outstanding sophomore:
1st prize: Peter McDonald
2nd prize: Eva Fourakis and Elizabeth Frank
WITTE PROBLEM-SOLVING PRIZE: Samuel Donow, Jared Hallett, Benjamin Kaufman
COLLOQUIUM ATTENDANCE: Michael Gold ’14, John Bihn ’16
Prof. Johnson thanked visitors Michael Biro, Holley Friedlander, and Ed Hanson, and recognized SMASAB, the student math advisory board:
Craig Corsi, Philippe Demontigny, Jared Hallet, Caroline Miller, Faraz Rahman, Jiripat Samranvedhya, David Stevens, Kirk Swanson, Sam Tripp, Carrie Chu, Jesse Freeman, Joe Kinney, Anna Spiers, Phonkrit Tanavisarut, Jaclyn Porfilio.
Following tradition, seniors gave advice, for example:
Michael Gold: “Go to office hours.”
Ilya Amburg: “Do a thesis.”
Sam Austin: “Work with friends, if you have any.”
Alex Albright: “If you think you understand something, try explaining it to someone.”
Caroline Miller: “If you want to stump a job interviewer, start talking about research.”
David Stevens: “Be promiscuous, mathematically speaking, because you never know what you’ll like until you fool around.”
Heidi Chen: “Learn LaTeX.”
Matt Micheli: “Try not to overuse your beverage wrench.”
Gabor Gurbacs: “Work on an unsolved problem in math and never give up.”
The banquet was supported in part by the John and Louise Finnerty Class of 1971 Fund.
