From the Chair

Message from the Chair

This is a natural opportunity for me to welcome all new and returning members of our Department. As the new chair I am glad to renew our ongoing commitments to excellence in research and mentoring at all levels. Our faculty continues to excel in research and training (see p. 6 for some recent highlights), and we continue to provide very high standards of mathematics instruction to our students. You might be aware that our student enrollments are on the rise. This creates challenges, as well as opportunities, that we plan to meet head on. We have maintained focus on student success and our excellent standards of instruction at all levels, provided additional advising support for our majors, and increased our student support programs.

I would like to thank the entire department, especially the staff and the department administration for their support and ceaseless efforts in improving the Mathematics Department. In closing, I invite you to take a tour of our newly-redesigned department webpage (www.math.utah.edu) and consider donating to our many scholarly pursuits. I look forward to a successful 2017-2018 academic year.

New Chair and New Associate Chair

This summer, Peter Trapa completed his second term as Chair of the Department and stepped down. During his tenure in this position, the Department hired ten outstanding faculty members in a wide spectrum of pure and applied mathematics, grew annual research expenditures to about $4M; secured new departmental endowments of about $1.8M; and implemented a number of student-centered initiatives (like enhanced advising and extra lab sections for many lower-division classes) aimed at improving student success in critical gateway courses. We would like to thank Peter for his service over the past six years.

Davar Khoshnevisan has been named Chair of the Department. Davar grew up, in different stages of his childhood, in Tehran (Iran), London (UK), and New York, with high school degrees in all (one might say he has a very wellrounded high school education). He joined the Mathematics faculty in 1993 as Assistant Professor. In the past, his hobbies have included pottery and skiing, although time limitations have kept him from these in recent years. He prefers to think about mathematics when he can. Davar has a family of 8 (his spouse, 2 children, a dog, 3 cats, and the very recent addition of a gold fish). Davar is looking forward to working with both faculty and staff toward continuing improvement of the Department.

Tommaso de Fernex has been named as an Associate Chair over career-line faculty, a position that is new to our Department. His responsibilities are mainly related to faculty affairs in addition to serving on a number of departmental committees. Tommaso grew up in Italy, and joined our Department in 2005 as Assistant Professor. Besides mathematics, Tommaso likes sports, classical music, photography, drawing, and cooking. He looks forward to sharing some of these passions with his son as he grows up. In his new role, Tommaso is looking forward to the opportunity of workwing closely with the Chair and learning more about the Department, in addition to showing this new position as an asset to the Department leadership.

New Undergraduate Advisor

Natasha Carlton has transitioned to working as the second member of our undergraduate advising team and will be working in collaboration with Angie Gardiner. This second advising position has been created, in part, in response to increased student demand. Natasha joined our department in 2015 as the Program Assistant for the Math for America and Master of Science for Secondary School Teachers programs. Natasha has a M.Ed. in Educational Leadership and Policy with an emphasis in Student Affairs from the University of Utah. She has been heavily involved in student development for six plus years and is excited that she will be able to continue to use that knowledge in her new role. Natasha is looking forward to the opportunity of working more closely with undergraduate students and with Angie Gardiner.