By Bernard DeconinckSeptember 22, 2022 Seven years in, these things don’t get easier to write. Each year is different with its own challenges. That said, I can’t complain too much about this past year. It was a relatively quiet one for the department, with the main thing being our return to campus, first with masks, then optional masks, then mostly without masks. We’re getting back to normal, although with most department members only spending a few years with us getting their degrees…

By Yuna LiuMajoring in Applied Mathematics was a surprise for me. Before being admitted to the University of Washington, I wanted to pursue math and continue my study in a Ph.D. program. I initially applied to Applied Mathematics out of curiosity with only an obscure image of the field. I had no idea what I could find within the department. The first turning point happened when I started working at Asbury Lab as a research assistant. My mentor, Bonnibelle Leeds,…

By Daniel Hobbs After earning a master’s degree in physics and taking a high school mathematics and physics teaching job overseas in South Korea, I kept telling other people and myself that I was planning to go back to graduate school to do a PhD. One year turned into two years and eventually into twelve years. At that point in time in 2019, I was still teaching mathematics and physics albeit in Shenzhen, China, and note that over the years, I had gone on many travel adventures in…

By Navid BahadoranIt was all initiated by my passion towards math and immigrating to the USA.   When I passed the university entrance exam back in my home country, Iran, I was ranked 52nd among more than 200,000 students and entered the best engineering  university to start learning electrical engineering. As time passed in my engineering degree journey, I realized that I am mostly interested in math, programming and  algorithm parts of the field and did not have…

By Ellie Byrnes & Alex HsuHello dear reader! We (Ellie Byrnes and Alex Hsu) just finished our first year as PhD students in Applied Math at UW. It was a really exciting time to begin graduate school and finally start seeing people again (in real life!) after the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was definitely a bit scary after over a year of limited social interactions to immediately be thrust into a new environment, and it’s easy to be nervous about making new friends in such a…

By Katherine Owens Reflecting on my time as a student in the applied mathematics department at the University of Washington I feel grateful for the ways that the community has inspired, equipped, and supported me. Starting at the University of Washington as a masters, student I was uncertain about whether graduate school was for me. My imposter syndrome stemmed from feeling underprepared and lacking a clear sense that math was my only possible calling. However, between dedicated…

Doctors of Philosophy Tyler Chen - Advisors: Anne Greenbaum, Thomas Trogdon Lanczos based methods for matrix functions  Jorge Cisneros - Advisor: Bernard Deconinck The Unified Transform Method and its semi-discrete analogue for numerically solving IBVPs Ryan Patrick Creedon - Advisor: Bernard Deconinck Spectral Instabilities of Stokes Waves by Perturbation Methods Roman Levin - Advisor: Aleksandr Aravkin Applications of…

Congratulations to our 2022 Department Award Winners!  SIAM UW Award Recipient: Katherine Johnston For exceptional service to the University of Washington Chapter of SIAM for the 2021-2022 academic year Joseph Hammack Endowment AwardRecipient: Alison WalkerFor exemplary work by a student in the Department of Applied Mathematics Boeing Research AwardRecipient: Matthew FarkasFor outstanding research by a student in the Department of Applied…

By Susie Sargsyan  I have already written a small article when I was about to graduate from UW. Now it’s a new look back from an alumnus perspective. I came to the US in 2011 to join the Department of Applied Math at UW. This was the first time I left my country and first time I had to live far away from home (Armenia), family and friends. As you can imagine, beginning wasn’t easy: challenge…

By Yue Wang During 2013-2018, I was a Ph.D. student at UW AMath, under the supervision of Prof. Hong Qian. Then I went to IHÉS in France and UCLA to continue my applied math research. Hong had many ideas that I could try, although most of them didn’t work. The most common scenario in my Ph.D. was that Hong told me some ideas, and I came back several days later with some counterexamples. Certainly, we finally found a good idea in thermodynamics and finished a decent probability paper.…

By Becky Beard First, an introduction!  My office window has a beautiful view of trees and ferns behind Lewis Hall.  When I joined the Applied Mathematics Department part-time in January 2021 as the Undergraduate Program Advisor, we were all working remotely, so I first visited my office in Autumn 2021!  I started advising for the program on a full-time basis in January 2022.  Before coming to the College of Arts & Sciences, I advised undergraduate and…

By Ingrid Richter It’s always interesting starting a new tech job. In addition to the practical questions (“What type of tech is everyone using?” “Where is everything located?”), there are some larger issues (“What works really well?” “What might become a problem in the future?” “What would make the department even stronger?”)  I’ve been working for AMATH for half a year and I’m still working on these questions. I’ve worked for a handful of universities across the country. My…

By Bamdad Hosseini I joined the Department of Applied Mathematics (Amath) at University of Washington (UW) as an Assistant Professor in October of 2021. In celebration of this event and as the new junior faculty in the department I was invited to write this article for the department’s newsletter. I decided to use this opportunity to introduce myself to our community and in particular to those that I have not yet interacted with. I will start with an informal section that summarizes…

By Jingwei Hu About one year ago, I joined the University of Washington as an Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics. Before that, I was an Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Purdue University, where I also held a courtesy appointment in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The past year has marked a big change in my career. While exploring the new culture and lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest, I am excited to join the Department of…