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.
Department News
John Jumper B.S. Math ’07 wins Nobel Prize
Oct. 9, 2024—John Jumper, who received a BS degree in Mathematics and Physics from Vanderbilt in 2007, has won a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jumper works as American Director at Google DeepMind Technologies. His team created the AI model AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures from their amino acid sequence. About his work Jumper...
Math Department Spurs Nashville SC to Victory
Sep. 20, 2024—On September 18, eighteen members of the Department of Mathematics got the royal treatment as special guests at the Chancellor’s Suite in Geodis Park. Home club Nashville SC defeated visiting Chicago Fire in a 1 to nil thriller. Nashville SC forward Sam Surridge scored on a header, which came off a long-distance cross from NSC...
Math Department Sponsors Yoga Event
Sep. 20, 2024—The Department of Mathematics hosted a free yoga class for the campus community on Friday, September 20. A baker’s dozen yogis were led by Highland Yoga instructor Kelly Swanton in an invigorating session of vinyasa-style yoga. Free yoga mats were distributed to all undergraduates who needed one. Department Chair Dan Margalit participated. In his words,...
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...