News

David John earned the 2026 Provost’s Award for Pedagogical and Curricular Innovation. The award recognizes his outstanding contributions to teaching, curriculum development, and student support, especially work that goes beyond content delivery and meaningfully improves student learning and retention.

Through his work in the Department of Mathematics and the Artino Mathematics Tutoring Center, John has played a central role in strengthening student support structures, improving course materials, and creating more engaging learning experiences for students in foundational mathematics courses. His work has focused on helping students build stronger study habits, improve their mathematical confidence, and succeed in courses that are critical to their academic progress.

The award also recognizes excellence in service as acknowledged by members of the CCNY community, including peers as well as current and former students. John was formally honored on May 12, 2026, at the President’s Faculty & Staff Appreciation event in the Great Hall of Shepard Hall.

Congratulations, David John!

Associate Professor Shirshendu Chatterjee was awarded the 2026 President’s Award for Excellence. The award recognizes his significant scholarly contributions as well as his excellence as a mentor and an instructor. In addition, the President just approved his promotion to Professor.

Professor Chatterjee’s research has made significant advances in theoretical mathematics and he has used his mathematical approach to tackle many real-world challenges. In addition, he is extremely prolific, having published 24 research papers (some still being prepared for publication) since his 2021 promotion to Associate Professor.

Prof. Chatterjee has done significant work in theoretical probability and statistics, and has published recently in numerous prestigious journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association, Communications in Mathematical Physics, and Annals of Probability. As a result of his work, he has been continuously funded since 2018 by grants from the NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences, with awards totaling approximately $400,000. These awards are currently very competitive, and so this speaks highly of the significance of Chatterjee's research.

In addition to his theoretical work, Professor Chatterjee applies his discipline to science (including to biology, epidemiology, and atmospheric science) and to many other areas (such as agriculture, cyber security, economics, public health, and political science). It is remarkable that he successfully collaborates across vastly different fields.

Last year, he won a “Best Paper Award” from the International Symposium on Intelligent Computing and Networking 2025 conference, and in 2023 he won the “Outstanding Article Award” from Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Professor Chatterjee is dedicated to integrating students into his high-level research, especially students in our M.S. program in mathematics. Recently, he has mentored students in projects such as:

• “Neural networks-based algorithms and applications” (2025)
• “Change-point estimation using Graph Neural network-based method” (2025)
• “Studying effects of socio-economic status on human activities during Covid pandemic” (2025)
• “A simulation study seeking optimal economic control of an aerially dispersed plant pathogen” (2024)
• “Math models for Epidemiology” (2023)
• “Network Inference Based on Partially Observed Data” (2022)
• “Change-point Detection Methods” (2022)
• “Topics of Statistical Machine Learning” (2022)

Both the promotion and the award are well-deserved!

Congratulations, Prof. Chatterjee!

The Mathematics Department at The City College of New York is pleased to announce that Siobhán O'Connor, CCNY mathematics instructor and PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, has been selected to participate in this year’s Inside the CUNY Graduate Center: A Dissertation Showcase.

O'Connor will represent the field of mathematics, sharing her doctoral research with a general audience as part of this fast‑paced, celebratory event. She is the only representative from Mathematics who will participate, and one of only three from science departments.

Siobhán O'Connor successfully defended her thesis on Algorithmic Problems in Automorphic Orbits of Free Groups this April. The thesis was completed under the guidance of her advisor, Professor Vladamir Shpilrain.

Congratulations Siobhán!

Congratulations to undergraduate student Christopher Barbosa, who will be participating in an REU at Iowa State University this summer, using temporal logic to improve autonomous driving. The project uses the RoboRacer autonomous driving research infrastructure and will explorie how to incorporate temporal logic to detect when a vehicle is violating rules, and/or to preempt a vehicle from taking actions that may violate rules. This project will draw upon Christopher's interest in non-classical logics and experience in constructive foundations and intuitionism to apply the tools to a modern application. The project is supervised by Prof. Kristin Rozier of the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science.

His REU funding has a $5000 stipend, and also covers travel to and from Iowa, room and board in Iowa, and travel to Mathfest in Boston in August. Christopher will be working with a distinguished mentor and a select group of students from around the country with similar interests.

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is a nationwide mathematics examination, held each December, requiring exceptional ability and creativity to achieve a non-zero score.

Two CCNY undergraduates, Rehan Mannan (Sophomore) and Melika El Wadany (Senior) represented CCNY in the prestigious Putnam Math competition on Saturday, December 6th. Congratulations to Rehan and Melika! Dr. Auth leads the CCNY Putnam Team and students interested in competing or preparing should contact Dr. Auth.