News

Congratulations to Elliot Kimbrough-Perry, who is graduating from CCNY in 2024 with a M.S. in Mathematics, and is moving on to the mathematics doctoral program at the University of Warwick in the UK.

Hear about it from Elliot!

Pursuing an advanced degree in mathematics is something I’ve wanted to do since I was in high school, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go, what I wanted to study, or what exactly the whole process would look like.

I started out at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts before transferring to Hunter College to finish college during the pandemic. Although I am very grateful for the experiences I had at both institutions, upon finishing college, I didn’t feel I’d had time to really come into my own yet. I wasn’t doing the kind of research I really wanted to do, and I didn’t feel my background was strong enough for a PhD. So, sort of on a whim, I applied to the MS in math at City College and started in the fall of 2022.

This has turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. For one, I met my advisor, Dr. Tamara Kucherenko, who gave me the opportunity to do serious research in ergodic theory/dynamics. She has been incredibly supportive and generally wonderful—I hope to be like her someday. I had the chance to take advanced courses, many with truly excellent teachers, that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. I also got the chance to adjunct for four terms, which—while difficult—was an incredibly rewarding experience. Finally, my work with the AWM and the CCNY math club led me to meet many great friends and help build a sense of community within the department.

After all this, I’ve been admitted (with funding!) to the PhD program at the University of Warwick in the UK to do work in probability theory and ergodic theory with Prof. Tim Austin. I am so excited, and I of course could not have done this on my own. Besides Tamara, I’d like to thank Drs. Eli Amzallag, Jay Jorgenson, Brooke Feigon, Weilin Li, and Alina Vdovina for their support (and letters of recommendation!) throughout my masters. I’d also like to extend gratitude to George Brathwaite, Andy Trafford, my friends, my roommate Bri, my students, and to my parents, who have more than once stayed up criminally late on the phone with me while I lose my mind about grad school.

Congratulations to all 2024 graduates! The Mathematics Department was pleased to make the following awards:

Bennington P. Gill Memorial Award to:

• Justin Salamon-Cantillo
• Tabitha Ramirez

Emil L. Post Memorial Award to:

• Sebastian Ortiz
• Max Sehaumpai

See award descriptions here.

The CCNY Physics Club is hosting an Integration Bee April 16 and 18, see this page for more information and to sign up. There is an Instagram page for the Physics Club at this link

Professor Vladimir Shpilrain has won a 2024 Interdisciplinary Research Grant for the proposal “Private networks and redactable blockchains” jointly with Alexey Ovchinikov of Queens College.

According to the summary, their project will “address security concerns that naturally arise in private networks of electronic devices such as what has become known as the Internet of Things (e.g. smart cities, smart homes, smart cars, etc.), and especially private networks within financial and government institutions in which security of communications and of record-keeping is crucial.”

The Department of Mathematics at CCNY is pleased to welcome Dr. María Sánchez-Muñiz as a Lecturer of Mathematics, effective Spring 2024. She has experience teaching mathematics across a broad range of levels. Her mathematical research explores connections between dynamical systems and modeling climate. Her dissertation is on a model for permafrost thawing and its effects on the global carbon cycle. She is also interested in ecological models and is a collaborator of the Mathematics and Climate Research Network.

Dr. Sánchez-Muñiz will receive her doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Minnesota in Fall 2023. She has been an instructor and mentor there across various courses and topics in Mathematics and Climate. She has Master's degrees in Mathematics both from Minnesota and CCNY, and undergraduate degrees in Mathematics from CCNY and Accounting from the University of Puerto Rico- Rio Piedras Campus.