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Welcome to the Department of Mathematics!

Our Department is at an exciting time in our history. We expect to grow dramatically over the next decade, and continue to make advances in fundamental science and our teaching mission.

Our goals as a department are:

1. To provide world class education to our undergraduate and graduate students, and to do this in a way that is welcoming and supportive to all.

2. To perform mathematical research at the highest level, on the fundamental problems in the world.

3. To be ambassadors for mathematics within Vanderbilt, in the Nashville community, and beyond.

Among our 21 research faculty, our research covers a wide swath of mathematics, including homotopy theory, operator algebras, geometric group theory, epidemiology, differential geometry, approximation theory, signal processing, differential equations, numerical analysis, mathematical physics, graph theory, and number theory.

Our faculty has 3 International Congress of Mathematicians speakers, 9 Fellows of the AMS, 2 Fellows of SIAM, 5 Sloan Fellows, 2 NSF CAREER awardees, a Conant Prize winner, a Steele Prize winner, a Simons Fellow, a Humboldt Prize winner, 3 AMS plenary speakers, and a Mirzakhani lecturer.

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Department News

Tea + Cookies brings Faculty and Students Together

Sep. 14, 2024—On Friday, September 13, 2024, the Department of Mathematics held a Tea + Cookies event, open to the Vanderbilt community.  While we did not count attendees, we can confidently  announce that over 400 Crumbl (and Christie’s) cookie units were consumed (1 large Crumbl cookie = 4 cookie units). Aside from the cookies, tea, and a...

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Prof. Webb named Centennial Professor

Sep. 10, 2024—Prof. Glenn Webb has recently been named Centennial Chair of Mathematics by Vanderbilt. Prof. Webb has been a dedicated member of the Department for 56 years, beginning in 1968. Prof. Webb received his Bachelor’s degree in 1965 at Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from Emory University in 1968. Centennial Professorships were created during...

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Ryan Matzke is co-recipient of 2024 Alexanderson Award

Aug. 12, 2024—Dr. Ryan Matzke, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mathematics, has recently been announced as a co-recipient of the 2024 Alexanderson Award.  This award is presented by the American Institute of Mathematics, an NSF-sponsored mathematics institute in Pasadena, California. Gerald Alexanderson was Professor of Mathematics at Santa Clara University and founding...

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Prof. Bohmann hosts Collaborative Research Workshop on K-theory and Scissors Congruence

Jul. 26, 2024—Vanderbilt University’s Math Department is hosting the Collaborative Research Workshop on K-theory and Scissors Congruence during the week of July 29 to August 2, 2024.  The theory of scissor congruence starts with the classical fact that if we have two polygons of the same area, we can cut the first one into pieces and reassemble...

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