Chair Update

Kiseok Yeon joined UC Davis as a Krener Assistant Professor this Fall quarter. His main research interest lies on analytic number theory (especially the Hardy-Littlewood method), theory of exponential sums and its applications, and analytic methods in connection with rational points on varieties. 

Aside from mathematics, he loves playing tennis and running. He would love to be contacted if Department members want to do exercise together – he loves all kind of exercises!
 

Oliver Siebert works in mathematical quantum theory, mainly using tools from functional analysis (including spectral theory, operator theory, operator algebras). Currently, he is interested in many-body theory with applications to quantum information (Lieb-Robinson bounds, area laws), and in non-relativistic QED/Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonians. He completed his Ph.D. in 2021 at the University of Jena under the supervision of David Hasler. Following that, he worked as a postdoc with Marius Lemm at EPFL and the University of Tübingen.

Jared Krandel is a new KAP who will be starting at UC Davis in January 2025. He graduated from Stony Brook University in Spring 2024 and is spending this Fall as a postdoc at SLMath in Berkeley. Most of his work so far has been in an area of geometric measure theory called quantitative rectifiability. He studies geometric properties of rectifiable curves and surfaces through things like analyst's traveling salesman problems, characterizations of uniform rectifiability, parameterizability problems, and more. 

Anna Zarkh received her Mathematics Education Ph.D. in May 2024 from the University of California, Berkeley. She holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Mathematics from Bar Ilan University in Israel. Anna’s research focuses on university mathematics education, specializing in socio-cultural theories, discourse analysis, and micro-ethnographic methods. She is interested in the historical development and effects of communication practices in contemporary academic mathematics.

Isaac Neal received his Ph.D. from the Courant Institute at NYU in 2024. He studies partial differential equations with a focus on fluid dynamics. In particular, his research has delved into the formation of shocks in compressible fluids.
 

Yoon Jae "Nick" Nho is a Krener Assistant Professor, mentored by Professor Roger Casals. His research is in symplectic geometry and topology, and he is interested in geometric structures that are related to physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in August 2024, under the supervision of Professor Ailsa Keating. 

He is from South Korea, and his hobbies include reading books, watching films, and listening to music.

Chenchen Zhao completed her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in May 2024, advised by Greta Panova. Her research interests lie in the area of Enumerative and Algebraic Combinatorics. Her dissertation explored the positivity of Kronecker coefficients and the Newton polytope of the Kronecker product of Schur polynomials.

Some of us recall Gary Kurowski, who passed away peacefully at his home on July 26, 2022. Gary was born on March 22, 1931 in Fargo, North Dakota. Summer vacations consisted of spending time at the family cabin on the lake. These experiences instilled a life-long love of being near water. Gary attended schools in Fargo, and then continued his studies at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated in 1954. Like many young men at the time, he was drafted into the army during the Korean War. After his required two years in the army, Gary returned to the study of mathematics.

Our colleague Washek Pfeffer passed away on January 3, 2021, he was 84. Born in Prague as Václav Franticek Pfeffer on November 14, 1936, he changed his name to Washek Pfeffer when he became a US citizen in 1970. He joined the UC Davis Department of Mathematics in 1966, retiring in 1994.

One of Washek’s middle school classmates later rose to prominence, Václav Havel, the famous playwright and President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Washek and Václav became close friends in the 1950s.

Our colleague Donald C. Benson died on May 2, 2019, at age 91. Born on June 6, 1927, in Los Angeles, he studied at UCLA and later Stanford, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1954 under the guidance of Charles Loewner. After teaching at Princeton University and Carnegie Tech (now known as Carnegie Mellon University), he joined the UC Davis Department of Mathematics in 1957, retiring in 1983.