department awards

faculty awards

Sorgenfrey Distinguished Teaching Award

This award was established in 1996. Professor Sorgenfey was a UCLA faculty member from 1942 through 1978. In 1963, he was the first mathematician to win the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. The prize honors faculty for excellence in teaching.

Mason Porter

Heather Dallas

postdoc awards

Awards for Continued Excellence in Teaching

Liggett Instructors Awards

These new awards are supported by The Thomas and Christina Liggett Endowed Scholars Fund to honor the late Professor Emeritus Thomas M. Liggett, for his contributions in research, teaching, and service at UCLA for 51 years.

graduate awards

Balbes Award

This prize was established by Dr. Ray Balbes and his wife Thelma Balbes to support a high-achieving female graduate student.   

Ariana Chin

Edwin and Alice Beckenbach Award

The award was established in 1984 and is named after Professor Edwin Ford Beckenbach, Emeritus Professor. The award is given to a graduate student in their final year so that it may reduce their teaching duties in order to complete their doctoral dissertation.  

Girsky Fellowship Award

This award was endowed by Stephen J. Girsky, a UCLA alumnus to support two meritorious academic performance among graduate students.

Horn-Moez Prize

This prize was established by Dr. Ali Amir-Moez and named in honor of his advisor, UCLA professor Alfred Horn. The prize recognizes high academic achievements and superior results on the qualifying exam for first year graduate studies.

Elias Manuelides, Harahm Park, and Ian Shors

Evan Davis, Griffin Pinney, and Spencer Martin.

Zi Li Lim, David Popovic, and Rushil Raghavan.

Liggett Fellow Award

These prizes were created to recognize outstanding performance among Teaching Assistants. These new awards are supported by The Thomas and Christina Liggett Endowed Scholars Fund to honor the late Professor Emeritus Thomas M. Liggett, for his contributions in research, teaching, and service at UCLA for 51 years.

Nicholas Hu, Victoria Kala, Jack Mauro, and Griffin Pinney. 

Raymond Redheffer Prize

This prize was established by Daniel Gutierrez in honor of his professor Raymond Redheffer during his time at UCLA. The award is given to a graduate student teaching assistant who went above and beyond during their time teaching freshman calculus. 

Olha Shevchenko and Victoria Quijano.

UCLA Mathematics Graduate Research Presentation Prize

To support a graduate student who excels in the presentation of original research.  

Riley Thornton

Austin Christian

Undergraduate Awards

Basil Gordon Award 

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada. This award is to recognize the top scorer among UCLA student competitors.

Jason Liu, Sumith Nalabolu, and Diana Tolu.

Zachary Tu

Jacob Zhang

The Putnam competition was cancelled due to Covid-19. Unfortunately, there is no award recipient this year.

Baumgarten Award 

Awarded to excelling undergraduate students with any major declared in the math department. 

Jane Eunsun Kwak, Kimberly Ngoc Vu, Leila Rose Thompsky, Michelle Fang, Chufei Peng, Katelynn Pi and Melissa Wang.

Laura Teresa Defalco, Xiaofu Ding, Hercy Chen, and Ragini Srinivasan. 

Daus Prize 

To recognize the academic accomplishments of a top-ranked student in mathematics at the undergraduate level.

Yifan Gu, Jonathn Chang, Ruibin Lyu and Erin O’Neil.

Jiayu Li, Zheng Tan, Runze Yu, and Frank Tian-Chen Zheng.

Yuyan He, Mingxin Li, Pengyu Li, Minghao Pan, Sian Wen, and Su Zhou. 

Zheyuan (Kevin) Cui,  Alexandru Pascadi, Junhong Shen, Zhoutong (Diana) Wu, Yin Lei

Girsky Undergraduate Award 

To recognize a top-performing student for high achievement in mathematics.

Max Simon Steinberg and Hercy Shen.

Anshul Adve

Oda-Abe Undergraduate Scholarship

To recognize outstanding undergraduate students in the department of mathematics.

Angelina Sun and Jingxuan Li.

Megan Young.

Outstanding Actuarial Science Student Award

To recognize outstanding achievement and exceptional performance in actuarial mathematics.

Ryan Larson, Shannon Leo, Yanni  Bills, Arman Begi, Jingqi Feng and Emily Widjaja.

Arnaud He and Lindsey Jay Parungo. 

Eva Gabrielle Pando Mars and Yu-Wei Vincent Yeh. 

Erik H. Chen

Outstanding Math/Econ Student Award

To recognize outstanding achievement and exceptional performance in the Mathematics/Economics major.

Zhenye Yang, Kevin Wong, Brianna Xie and Shukai Yin.

Joleen Chiu and Shiyu Ma. 

David Dalton Yu.

Jingyi Li, Claire Nelson, and Jack Krupinski

Putnam Performance Prize 

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada.  This award is given to UCLA undergraduate participants for their outstanding performance.

Zachary Tu and Runze Yu. 
 
Ciprian-Mircea Conciocat, Runze Yu, and Jacob Zhang. 
 

The Putnam competition was cancelled due to Covid-19. Unfortunately, there are no award recipients this year.

Sherwood Prize 

To recognize overall outstanding achievement and exceptional performance in mathematics at the undergraduate level.

Stephen Kelman, Zachary Tu, David  Davini and Bernie Luan.

Matthew Koziol, Hunter Yunze Liu, Naji Ammar Sarsam, and Chenxin Shen.

Ciprian-Mircea Bonciocat and Tachin Ruangkriengsin.  

Shend Zhjeqi, Joshua Enwright, Samanda (Yuting) Hu, and Richard (Shangjie) Zhang

Susanna W. Tang and Albert Scherm III Centennial Scholarship

To recognize outstanding female students in mathematics at the undergraduate level.

Sarah Sotoudeh

Madison Camille Kohls, Sarah Nicole Kosic, and Gloria Wu.