The UC Davis Community Service Office awarded graduate students Mohamed Omar, David Sivakoff, Eva Strawbridge and Rohit Thomas for their community service efforts for the 2007-08 academic year. PhD candidate Brandy Wiegers was recognized as giving the most outstanding community service among all grads at UC Davis. The Explore Math and Math Modeling Experience groups were also honored for their efforts.

Eva Strawbridge, a graduate student in Applied Mathematics, has been selected as the 2008 recipient of the MPS Dean's Graduate Student Prize in the College of Letters and Science.

Professor Alexander Mogilner accepted an invitation by the National Institutes of Health to serve as chair of the Modeling and Analysis of Biological Systems Study Section, which does peer review for the Center for Scientific Review. Mogilner was selected due to the quality of his research, publications, achievements and honors in mathematical biology and biophysics.

Three more of our students have won the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. This year's honors go to Diana Webb, Patrick Dragon and Eva Strawbridge. They are recognized by their students as being exemplary teachers.

Professor Craig Tracy has been named to an Aisenstadt Chair at CRM, University of Montreal for 2008-2009.

Brandy Wiegers has received the Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity and Community for 2007-2008. Brandy is the third graduate student in our Department to be honored with this award. Momar Dieng and Yvonne Lai were previous recipients

Bruno Nachtergaele, professor and chair of the Department of Math, is among 471 members elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this year. Bruno was honored for his work on mathematical physics especially quantum spin systems, and for editorial contributions to journals in mathematical physics.

Craig A. Tracy received the 2007 Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics at the Joint AMS/SIAM meeting in New Orleans on January 6, 2007. The prize was awarded for his work with Widom on Random Matrix Theory, which contributes to "applied mathematics in the highest and broadest sense."

Brian Wissman, Yvonne Lai, and Corrine Kirkbride won UC Davis' 2007 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. They are three of only fifteen students honored on campus.

One of our undergraduate teams from the Math Modeling Experience, Bryan Bell, Yaroslav Gelfand, and Simpson Wong, competed in the prestigious Mathematical Contest in Modeling, and have had their solution designated as outstanding! For comparison, last year's contest had 664 entrants and 11 Outstanding designees (including teams from Harvard, MIT, RPI, Berkeley, Harvey Mudd, and Duke). Their report will be published in an upcoming issue of the UMAP Journal.

Anne Schilling has been selected to be a 2006-2007 Chancellor's Fellow. She is the fourth Mathematics professor to receive this honor.