Author: David Galvin

2026 Award Recipients

• Tan Özalp received the award for his project on ultrafilters and Ramsey theory. He is advised by Professor Natasha Dobrinen, and his research area is set theory and infinitary combinatorics.

• Fuxiang Yang received the award for his project on equations and syzygies of binary form loci. He is advised by Professor Claudiu Raicu, and his research area is algebraic geometry and commutative algebra.

With these awards, Özalp and Yang join Notre Dame mathematics doctoral student Atticus Stonestrom (advised by Professor Anand Pillay), who was named a Simons Dissertation Fellow in 2025 for his work in logic and specifically model theory.

The two-year fellowship provides recipients with research support, funding for conference and collaboration travel, and discretionary funds to enhance the department's research environment. These back-to-back honors highlight the research excellence and graduate mentorship within Notre Dame's Department of Mathematics.

Congratulations, Tan and Fuxiang!

Author: David Galvin

The Department of Mathematics celebrates the announcement that Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto has been awarded a 2026 Fields Medal. Awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union to no more than four mathematicians under the age of 40, the Fields Medal is one of the highest honors in mathematics, and recognizes both extraordinary research accomplishments and exceptional promise for future discoveries.

Tsimerman was recognized for a series of profound advances that helped recast the notion of o-minimality from mathematical logic and model theory as a fundamental method in arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, and for his role in the proof of many central conjectures including Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps, and the Andre-Oort conjecture for Siegel modular varieties.

An important part of this story concerns Notre Dame, at multiple stages in its development. The notion of o-minimality was defined and its theory developed in papers of Anand Pillay and Charles Steinhorn in the 1980's (inspired partly by work of van den Dries) , with Julia Knight contributing to the foundational series; Pillay is the William J. Hank Professor of Mathematics at Notre Dame, and Knight is Professor emerita here. The story continues with Sergei Starchenko, Professor of Mathematics at Notre Dame, and his longtime collaborator Ya'acov Peterzil. The citation for Tsimerman's award notes that "The development of o-minimal theory in the holomorphic setting was initiated by Peterzil and Starchenko, who established an affine version of Chow's algebraicity theorem. With Bakker and Brunebarbe, Tsimerman extended this theory ... Combining it with the earlier work of Bakker, Klingler and Tsimerman that placed period maps in the o-minimal domain, they proved Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps, a long-standing problem in Hodge theory."

Starchenko's and Peterzil research, building on foundations laid by Pillay and co-authors, highlight the profound influence that the logic community at Notre Dame has had and continues to have on mathematics.

For Brian Mulholland, a longtime fan and an assistant teaching professor of math at Notre Dame University, it meant collaborating with Vanessa Chan-Devaere, an assistant teaching professor of psychology, to create a game theory and social cognitive neuroscience course called Outwit, Outplay, Outlast: The Dynamics of Survivor.

Like Dawson’s class at Northwestern, the course does not instruct students on how to play the game. Rather, it uses the TV competition as a case study where theories from their respective fields—as well as ethics and theology—can be applied.

In his view, it’s all part of what more broadly unites higher education and the long-running TV show.

“Higher education is sometimes reduced to a credential that allows you to get a job. But I think the idea of a university is the pursuit of something higher. One of the main questions that a university is supposed to ask is ‘What does it mean to be human?’ And Survivor mirrors that in some ways,” he said.

For more details, see the article on 'Inside Higher Ed' by Jessica Blake

This year the prize is awarded to Sourav Ghosh, Annie Holden, Katherine Novey, and Nan Wu

Each year the department presents the Richard Sady Prize to our best second year graduate student based on his/her performance in the basic courses he/she took in their first year. Richard Sady was a graduate student in our department and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1977. He then was an assistant professor at Pembroke State University in North Carolina where he died in 1982. He was beloved by many here. This fund was established in his name.

Ramsey will conduct a project titled “Model theory, independence, and approximation.” Ramsey is specifically interested in smoothly approximable structures, which are infinite geometries that can be seen as “limits” of finite geometric structures. Drawing inspiration from smoothly approximable structures, Ramsey will develop the necessary tools to understand and explore even more complex analogues of these geometries, which will enable meaningful applications to algebra, representation theory and combinatorics.

Alongside his research, Ramsey will expand educational access to model theory by organizing a summer school for graduate students at Notre Dame, as well as collaborating with students in world regions where learning exposure to high-level mathematical logic is limited.

Since the program’s inception in 1995, NSF CAREER awards have been given to 147 researchers at the University of Notre Dame. To learn more, visit the NSF’s information page.

Notre Dame News: September 26, 2025 by Erin Fennessy

This year the prize is awarded to Connor Malin, Emanuela Marangone, and Matt Scalamandre

David Meretzky, a fifth-year graduate student studying logic in the mathematics department, is in his first semester teaching the course. More...

Each year the department presents the Richard Sady Prize to our best second year graduate student based on his/her performance in the basic courses he/she took in their first year. Richard Sady was a graduate student in our department and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1977. He then was an assistant professor at Pembroke State University in North Carolina where he died in 1982. He was beloved by many here. This fund was established in his name.

The Indiana Collegiate Mathematics Competition, often referred to as the ICMC, is a team-based competition for students from area colleges and universities that typically takes place during the spring meeting of the Indiana Section of the MAA. In this competition, students spend two hours working in teams of up to three members to solve a series of questions on a wide range of mathematical topics. The ICMC began in 1966 and is still going strong!

From left to right is Andrew Brooks, Zachary Joseph, and Gavin Dooley. They are the team that got 3rd place at the contest. Then Molly MacDonald, Philip Templeman, and Sam Dekleva, tied for 1st place with the team from Rose-Hulman.

The Richard Sady Dissertation Prize is for the best dissertation as judged by the graduate committee. Richard Sady was a graduate student in our department and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1977. He then was an assistant professor at Pembroke State University in North Carolina where he died in 1982. He was beloved by many here. This fund was established in his name.

This year the prize is awarded to Richard Birkett, Eric Jovinelly, Nikolai Konovalov, and Wern Yeong.

Richard Birkett Dissertation Title: “Algebraic Stability and Skew Products on the Berkovich Projective Line"

Eric Jovinelly Dissertation Title: “Geometric Manin's Conjecture for Fano Threefolds"

Nikolai Konovalov Dissertation Title: “Algebraic Goodwillie Spectral Sequence"

Wern Yeong Dissertation Title: “Algebraic hyperbolicity of very general hypersurfaces and their complements"

Each year the department presents the Richard Sady Prize to our best second year graduate student based on his/her performance in the basic courses he/she took in their first year. Richard Sady was a graduate student in our department and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1977. He then was an assistant professor at Pembroke State University in North Carolina where he died in 1982. He was beloved by many here. This fund was established in his name.