UCLA Professors Andrea Bertozzi and Anne Andrews Collaborate for DNA Aptamer Design

Pictured from left to right: UCLA Mathematics Professor Andrea Bertozzi, UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Professor Anne Andrews.

“Stress is a silent force impacting human health. In addition to roles in mental health, stress is linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders through chronic inflammation. But while existing stress monitors rely on measurements of heart rate and other nonspecific indicators, UCLA researchers are pioneering an approach to studying stress at its molecular roots.

Supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Simons Foundation, mathematician Andrea Bertozzi and chemist Anne Andrews have developed an innovative machine learning method to identify aptamers—synthetic DNA-based receptors. Their work, recently published in Mathematical Biosciences, is opening new avenues for individuals and healthcare providers to quantify stress to improve health and wellness.”

Read the full UCLA Newsroom article here.

Professors Anton Bernshteyn, Rowan Killip, and Monica Visan, invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2026

Professors Anton Bernshteyn, Rowan Killip, and Monica Visan have been named speakers for the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 23 to July 30, 2026.

Professor Anton Bernshteyn will be presenting for the Logic section. He specializes in descriptive set theory and combinatorics, focusing on their interactions and connections to other fields, such as computer science and dynamical systems.

Professors Rowan Killip and Monica Visan will be presenting jointly for the PDE section. Killip’s work has focused on the application of tools from analysis to problems in mathematical physics, touching on spectral theory, random matrix theory, dispersive PDE, and integrable systems. Visan and her collaborators most recently developed new techniques that have proven effective at advancing the theory of completely integrable systems. This includes the resolution of longstanding optimal well-posedness problems for several much-studied equations such as the Korteweg-de Vries, the Benjamin-Ono, and the cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equations.

The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest mathematics conference in the world, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). This historic conference brings together pure and applied mathematicians to promote international cooperation in the field of mathematics.

To learn more, visit ICM’s website.