Research Highlights
Our faculty is engaged in world-class research in several areas of pure and applied mathematics. The department includes a good number of winners of prestigious awards, and the research conducted at the department is supported by multiple research grants awarded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the US Army Research Office and the Simons Foundation. It is an exciting place to discover, study, explore and analyze the amazing structures that surround us in nature, art and science.
Our researchers lead first-rate research groups in algebra and logic, algebraic geometry, approximation theory, combinatorics and graph theory, geometric group theory, geometry and topology, harmonic analysis, mathematical biology, mathematical data analysis, mathematical physics, operator theory, operator algebras and quantum symmetries, number theory, partial differential equations, signal processing, and other research areas. See Faculty by Specialty for more information about current research projects undertaken in our department.
Our weekly research seminars feature numerous talks in these areas, and the weekly colloquium brings well-known mathematicians in all areas of mathematics to the department. Our research groups also run learning seminars that help doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows successfully navigate research frontiers.
The research groups in the department organize every year the Shanks Lecture, a distinguished lecture or lecture series that features a high-profile mathematician. It is always combined with a stimulating international research conference. For more information, see Shanks Conferences. In addition to the annual Shanks conference, our research faculty typically organizers several Shanks workshops on current hot research topics, see Upcoming Events.
For additional information, read more about our faculty and their areas of expertise.
Highlights
Prof. Alex Lupsasca appears in Discover magazine
Alex Lupsasca, Assistant Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Vanderbilt University, was recently asked by Discover magazine to share his thoughts on wormholes: hypothetical structures that could bridge two points across space and time. In the article, he discusses their purely (at this point) theoretical nature, their potential resemblance to…
Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Akram Aldroubi’s Research Cited in Industry Patents
Prof. Akram Aldroubi is a world-renowned expert in harmonic analysis, functional analysis, and signal processing. While his research is classified as theoretical mathematics, his work has had far-reaching implications in industry. His papers are referenced in several industry-owned patents, indicating that his work has had significant impact on real-world applications…
Prof. Osin publishes in Annals of Mathematics
Prof. Denis Osin recently published a paper in Annals of Mathematics, widely considered the most prestigious journal in pure mathematics. The paper, “Wreath-like products of groups and their von Neumann algebras I: W*-superrigidity” was written with Adrian Ioana (UCSD), Ionut Chifan (U Iowa), and a former Vanderbilt Ph.D. student Bin…
Prof. Speck publishes research breakthrough on the big bang
Prof. Jared Speck, along with Grigorios Fournodavlos (University of Crete) and Igor Rodnianski (Princeton University) recently published a breakthrough paper about the stability of the big bang theory. Their paper answers a 50-year-old conjecture made by physics. It was published in the highly-prestigious Journal of the American Mathematical Society, which…