Bernard on top of Ruth Mountain   By Bernard Deconinck October 11, 2024 This might be a very different newsletter opener if I had written it at the end of last academic year, as opposed to the beginning of this one. After a tumultuous Spring Quarter (Gaza protests, grad student union protests) I was ready for a quiet summer to recharge before my last year as chair. A quiet summer it was not! The turbulent summer started with a fire on July 3, in the office of one of…

By Heather Wilber

By Konstantinos Mamis   It was the fall of 2006 in Athens, Greece; and for me the last year of high school had just begun. Having chosen to apply to engineering schools for university studies, one of the main courses I had to take was Physics, and the first chapter of our textbook was on mechanical oscillations. There, an eerie old photo in black-and-white showed a tall suspension bridge that collapsed in 1940 due to aeroelastic flutter, an oscillatory bahavior caused by wind…

By Jake Price My undergraduate years were spent at Kalamazoo College, a small undergraduate liberal arts college in western Michigan. It gained some acclaim from being featured in Colleges that Change Lives, a book presenting small, student-focused institutions that seemed to be read largely by parents in the late 90s and early 2000s (including my mom). Studying mathematics and physics there was a dream, and I benefited tremendously from the personal relationships I was able to make…

By Payton Howell & Wietse Vaes   Over the course of the last year we’ve faced challenges and celebrated wins; we’ve hunkered down studying, researched together, and spent time socializing with everyone around us. This year was different for both of us, while this was Payton’s first year in Seattle, Wietse spent the fall quarter finishing his Master’s Thesis with professor Jingwei Hu. Despite the differences before we started the program, we quickly bonded through getting…

By Arvid Levander Thinking back on my time at UW, I could write about how challenging the program was and the late nights of studying, but that does not stand out to me as being special to this program. It is graduate-level applied mathematics, and it is supposed to be tough. Instead, I would want to write about what got me through the program and what I believe to be special about it.  If you were part of the 2023-2024 cohort at UW Applied Mathematics you have probably seen me…

By Jing (Julia) Xu   Unlike some with clear career paths from a young age, I found my direction through trial and error. When I started undergrad in the early 2010’s, civil engineering was one of the most sought-after fields in China. The challenge of designing high-rise buildings and constructing bridges across bays intrigued me, leading me to pursue a degree in civil engineering. Four years later, I enrolled in the master’s degree program at the University of California,…

By Charlie (Yihan) Yin,   “No matter what, I’ll never work in a math or data-related job because they’re just not cool.” That’s what I swore to the moon when I was 10 years old, but eight years later, I proved myself wrong. I discovered that’s not true at all. Fast forward to three years ago when I received my offer from the University of Washington. I was excited because Seattle is my dream city, and it was thrilling to be able to study and live there. During my first year, I…

By Tony Garcia It’s a typical late winter afternoon in Seattle, overcast skies with some gentle rainfall. I’m at my favorite Indian restaurant on the ave, and the familiar smell of garam masala and star anise fills my head while I scroll through my phone to pass the time until my food arrives. A familiar voice cuts through my focus, and I look up to see Damien Beecroft and Arvid Levander…

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