UCLA Putnam Team ranks #4 out of 427 institutions

In the 2021 Putnam Mathematical Competition, the UCLA team (Ciprian Bonciocat, Runze Yu, and Jacob B. Zhang) were ranked #4 out of 427 institutions.

Individually, Ciprian Bonciocat, Runze Yu, and Jacob B. Zhang received honorable mentions for ranking in the top 100 nationwide. Other high scorers placed in the top 500 were Issac Li, Duc M Hoang, John J. Li, Alvin Liu, Curtis Liu, Sumith R. Nalabolu, Sachin Sahay, Zachary Tu, Eric Wu, Chujun Xu, and Hongyu Zhu. A total of 2957 students participated in this year’s competition, including 47 students from UCLA.

The Basil Gordon Prize, for the top scorer among UCLA students, will be awarded to Jacob Zhang.

For more information visit:

https://ww3.math.ucla.edu/putnam-competition/

https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/member-communities/maa-awards/putnam-competition-individual-and-team-winners

Professor Guido Montúfar awarded 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship

UCLA Mathematics and Statistics Assistant Professor Guido Montúfar was awarded the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship. Eight UCLA professors were selected among 118 scientists and scholars, making UCLA No. 1 among U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities in the number of new fellows.

“Montúfar, who leads the Mathematical Machine Learning Group — centered at UCLA and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, in Germany — works on deep learning theory and mathematical machine learning. Through investigations of the geometry of data, hypothesis functions and parameters, he and his team are developing the mathematical foundations of deep learning and improving learning with neural networks. Montúfar is the recipient of a starting grant from the European Research Council and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and he serves as research mentor with the Latinx Mathematicians Research Community. He and his team have organized a weekly online math machine learning seminar since 2020.”

“Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young scientists and scholars in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 award to support their research from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was established in 1934.”

To read the full UCLA Newsroom article, click here.

To learn more about the Sloan Research Fellowship, click here.