News

Each summer, uOttawa’s Department of Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) invite a select number of gifted high school students to campus to participate in the CMS Math Camp. 

Listen to the interview (available in French only) with Joseph Khoury, one of the "mathletes" camp organizers and professor at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Ottawa.

Joel Lemay, who recently completed his PhD under the supervision of Alistair Savage, is the winner of the inaugural Best Student Paper Prize 2014-15, for his sole-authored paper  “Geometric Realizations of the Basic Representation of gl_r“ to appear in Selecta Mathematica.  This award distinguishes an exceptional paper published by a student of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics during their studies.   To quote from the evaluating committee:  “The paper is extremely well-written and contains serious results”, having a very high caliber in terms of both mathematical research and mathematical writing. 

Charles Starling, a postdoctoral fellow working with Thierry Giordano and Vladimir Pestov, is the winner of the inaugural Junior Excellence in Mathematics Teaching Award 2014-15.  This award distinguishes an exceptional teacher from among all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows teaching in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.   To quote from his letter of nomination:  “Charles’ devotion to teaching is exemplary and he is already an outstanding teacher of high caliber appreciated by the students.” 

Victor Leblanc, professor of Applied Mathematics, was nominated by his students in MAT2322 for the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award, citing his “tremendous commitment” and his contagious “enthusiasm and positive attitude.”  The nomination concluded “He truly inspires the students to strive to success through hard work.  That is due to the fact that he is challenging and motivating while having high expectations towards attainable goals.”  Dozens of other students, from many other classes over the years, agreed, and the Faculty of Science chose him as the winner for 2014-15.  Congratulations on this well-earned award!

The PIR Mathematics Ambassador Award recognizes a Canadian researcher, his or her outstanding body of work over a period of time which has contributed to the field of mathematics, and their promotion of this research to the Canadian public.

Professor Thierry Giordano's recent 60th birthday will be marked by an international conference in his honour. The conference, Functional Analysis and Dynamical Systems, will be held in the beautiful Brazilian city of Florianópolis from 24-28 February 2015.

The winner of the Peter Rodney book prize, given for the best student talk at the 2015 Ontario Combinatorics Workshop, is Elizabeth Maltais, for her talk “Covering Arrays with Alphabet Graphs”.  “She very successfully made a complex result accessible to a broader audience, by use of examples, colorful diagrams and beautiful slides handwritten on a tablet,” notes Lucia Moura. “The slides are just a part of her interesting 20-minute talk but they give the reader a flavor of her style of communicating mathematical ideas and joy

Elizabeth is currently completing her PhD in our department, working with Profs. Mike Newman and Lucia Moura. She was also recently distinguished as the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Teaching Assistant of the Year 2014-15, at the Faculty of Science Awards Ceremony in November.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!