Chair's Column

Dear Members and Friends of the UNT Math Department,

This has been an unexpectedly tumultuous year. Early in the fall some of the president's advisers visited the department and met with some of our course coordinators. The declared goal of the meeting was to get a first-hand impression of the difficulties teaching students in lower-level math courses. A few weeks later, without any further discussion, we were informed that there will be a new School of Math and Science Foundations (SMSF), starting Fall 2026. The school will be a new unit within the College of Science, and will teach all lower level courses from across the college. For the Math Department, this translates into about 90% of all our semester credit hours. The idea is that SMSF will consist entirely of professional faculty, who can concentrate on teaching this student population. The remaining part of the Math Department, primarily tenure-system faculty, would concentrate on upper level classes, graduate education, and research.

Obviously, such a big change comes with a host of administrative difficulties. Who will schedule the lower level classes, SMSF or the departments? Graduate students will do research in one unit and teach in another; how do we assign and evaluate their teaching? Who gets the student complaints in a lower level MATH class - the chair of the Math Department or the director of SMSF? (I hope it will be the latter!) At the time of this writing a 15-person faculty committee, with two representatives from Math, is trying to make sense out of it all, but many questions are still unresolved.

The president has also announced a broader university-wide academic reorganization effort, which involves the creation of schools and divisions consisting of several departments or parts of departments. In fact, UNT will no longer have any departments at all, only schools and divisions. And instead of chairs there will be directors. At this point there is little indication that Math will be combined with some other unit, so maybe for us it will just be a renaming. But who knows; change can come suddenly these days.

While the general uncertainty is stressful enough, the department also had to absorb a major shock through the untimely death of one of our PhD students. If there is any comfort, then it is that this tragic event brought the community closer together.

But let's not forget that many good things have happened as well. Once again we successfully taught thousands of students, with no major disruptions. Faculty have done great research, with high-caliber publications and successful grant applications. Graduate recruitment is going very well and will result in an excellent class of incoming Master's and PhD students. A generous gift by former faculty member Joseph Kung allowed us to create a new graduate scholarship.

We don't know yet who will lead the Math Department beyond next year. My chair term ends August 2027, and efforts to find an internal successor have failed. We might be heading for an external chair (or director?) search, the outcome of which is never certain. So we have plenty of things to figure out next year, and my goal will be to hand it all over in an orderly fashion.

Ralf Schmidt
Chair

Professor Mariusz Urbanski Published a Book

Professor Mariusz Urbański, in collaboration with Tushar Das, Giulio Tiozzo, and Anna Zdunik have published the second volume of a series of books entitled “Functional Analysis and Thermodynamic Formalism of Countable Shift Spaces”. These books are aimed at researchers, graduate and postgraduate students on dynamical systems and ergodic theory. Professor Urbański received his Ph.D. from Nicolaus Copernicus University (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika) in Toruń, Poland in 1985. He is among the top 2% of the most-cited mathematicians and his research interests are extensive and include fields such as dynamical systems, ergodic theory, fractal geometry, conformal dynamical systems, holomorphic dynamical systems, open dynamical systems, iteration of transcendental meromorphic functions, iterated function systems, thermodynamic formalism, gas lattices, statistical physics, potential theory (harmonic measure), number theory, Kleinian groups, and topology (topological dimension).

Using the full power of countable alphabet thermodynamic formalism and modern functional analysis, the book presents a systematic treatment of the perturbative approach to open dynamical systems, covering those generated by a large class of naturally occurring holes through which the dynamical medium escapes. It highlights escape rates, conditionally invariant measures, surviving equilibrium states, and Hausdorff dimension of surviving sets.

Career Talks

Informational Actuarial Career Talk

On February 25 from 5:00–6:30 PM, Dr. Jingxi (Jeffery) Liao organized an informational actuarial career talk. The invited speaker, Matthew Moskal, from ASA, CERA, MAAA (Lewis & Ellis, LLC – Actuaries and Consultants), introduced the actuarial profession, discussed the roles actuaries play in industry, and shared valuable insights from his professional experience and provided an overview of the actuarial industry. Through the presentation and interactive discussions, participants gained practical advice, mentorship, and inspiration for their own professional journeys. The session also broadened students’ understanding of potential actuarial career paths.

Meet Our Alumni: Career Paths & Conversations

On March 27 from 2–3 PM, Dr. Nam Trang and Dr. Kiko Kawamura organized a mathematics career event titled Meet Our Alumni: Career Paths & Conversations. Alumnus Joseph Prein, who graduated from UNT in 2022 with a Master of Science in Mathematics and now works as a Software Consultant at RESPEC, delivered a talk titled “In the Age of AI, You Have a Superpower—You Studied Math”. Meet Our Alumni: Career Paths & Conversations connects current UNT mathematics graduate students with distinguished alumni to explore career opportunities beyond academia. Following his presentation, a panel discussion featured PhD graduates Mani Dhakal and Erin Pierce, with Brandon Walker serving as moderator. The panelists shared their career journeys, discussed how and why they pursued mathematics, and reflected on how the skills they developed during their studies have contributed to their professional success. Through the presentation and discussions, attendees gained practical guidance, mentorship, and inspiration for their own professional journeys.

Health Insurance for Doctoral Students

In a positive development, the university announced a plan to fund health insurance for all doctoral students on a fellowship, including within the Math Department.

Donation from former faculty member Joseph Kung: Joseph P.S. Kung Scholarship

Thanks to a generous gift from former faculty member Joseph Kung, the department established the Joseph P.S. Kung Scholarship Endowment. It will allow for an annual scholarship to be given to one of the department's graduate students. Joseph joined the University of North Texas and was a faculty member until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 2017. Throughout his career, Joseph made nu­merous contributions to mathematics and to the mathematical community.

New Faculty Members

McKenzie Fontenot

McKenzie Fontenot joined UNT as a Lecturer in Fall 2025. McKenzie is in her final year of her studies for her PhD and also earned her BS and MS degrees here at UNT. She is excited to teach Business Calculus classes and mentor students. Her graduate research focuses on real analysis and topology of the real line, and she is currently conducting research with undergraduate students in the areas of game theory and symbolic dynamics. McKenzie loves playing video games and, as one of her favorite hobbies, often makes miniature sculptures of slugs out of clay that are inspired by her favorite video game characters.

Sean Griffin

Sean Griffin joined UNT in Fall 2025 as an Assistant Professor. His research specialty is in algebraic combinatorics and algebraic geometry. Prior to coming to UNT, Sean worked postdoctoral and visiting positions at the University of California in San Diego and Davis, Brown University’s mathematical institute ICERM, and the University of Vienna. He also traveled to present his research across the world. Sean was convinced that UNT would be a great place for him after meeting many of the graduate students and faculty in the math department while visiting. He is passionate about teaching and looks forward to contributing to the cutting-edge math research done here at UNT. Sean is an avid rock climber and enjoys vacationing in the mountains. The longest single route he completed was 1500 vertical feet, which took about 8 hours.

Hannes Jakob

Hannes Jakob joined UNT in Fall 2025 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He is from Freiburg, Germany, where he recently completed his doctorate in the field of set theory. Hannes had never stepped foot outside the Central European time zone of his hometown, but he was drawn to UNT for its renowned researchers in set theory and made the move to Texas last summer. Alongside collaborating on mathematical problems with his peers, Hannes is excited to start teaching Honors I Calculus classes. His advice to students seeking to study mathematics is to not give up because it gets much easier with time.

Jingxi Liao

Jingxi Liao (goes by Jeffery) joined UNT in Fall 2025 as a Lecturer. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a financial math track from the University of Central Florida. He earned his M.S. in statistics from Columbia University and his B.A. in actuarial science from the University of Connecticut. Jeffery passed and transferred seven actuarial exams from the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and will soon be an Associate of the Society of Actuaries. He teaches math and actuarial science classes at UNT and is excited to share his enthusiasm and love for actuarial science with students.

Shilpi Mandal

Shilpi Mandal joined UNT in Fall 2025 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She completed her PhD at Emory University, where she was also awarded the 2025 Graduate Research Award for demonstrating outstanding research activities in mathematics. Her research focus is on pure mathematics, and she looks forward to working on rigid analytical geometry with her postdoc mentor Dr. Jackson Morrow while teaching Linear Algebra and Vector Geometry at UNT. Shilpi is excited to teach students that mathematics is lovely and is nothing to be feared of, and maybe even encourage them to be math majors in the future. She loves reading math blogs and puzzles, has a red belt in taekwondo, and enjoys foraging for wild mushrooms.

Michelle Thompson

Michelle Thompson joined UNT in Fall 2025 as a Lecturer. Michelle received her bachelor’s (BS) in mathematics and physics from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and her master’s (MS) in actuarial science from Georgia State University. She comes to UNT with several years’ experience teaching both secondary and tertiary level students. Whether it is the logic of pre-algebra, or the everyday relevance of probability and statistics, or the practical applications in business and economics, Michelle wants to show students that math is not just about numbers, but it is also a powerful way to understand and solve problems in life. Michelle is passionate about cooking, reading, dancing, and watching Hallmark movies.

Jing Zhang

Jing Zhang joined UNT in Fall 2025 as an Assistant Professor. He received his PhD in mathematical sciences from Carnegie Mellon University. Jing’s research interests are in set theory, including infinite combinatorics, large cardinals, and forcing theory. Jing serves as a member of the UNT math Social Activities Committee and also serves as a co-organizer of the UNT Logic Seminar.

Promotions

• Yanyan He – Dr. Yanyan He received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
• Giordano Tierra Chica – Dr. Giordano Tierra Chica received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.

Congratulations on these milestones!

Grants

• Walter Bridges – Simons Grant - "Asymptotics and statistics for partitions and related objects"
• Steve Jackson – NSF Grant - "The Determinacy and Definable Equivalence Relations"
• Nam Trang – NSF Grant - "Inner Models, Combinatorics and Determinancy"

E=mc^2 Award: Kristi Loera

When she was still the department's Grants & Travel Coordinator and Graduate Program Coordinator, Kristi Loera was awarded the November 2025 Excellence in Mastering Challenges Continuously (E=mc^2) Award from the College of Science. This award is given by Dean Ed Dzialowski to recognize outstanding efforts among full-time staff members within the College of Science and its departments. "Every day is different, which makes my job interesting!” said Kristi, “Nothing is more satisfying than helping someone solve a difficult problem; math pun intended.”

Promotion

Kristi Loera was promoted to Senior Administrative Coordinator in February of 2026 and is now the Office Manager for the department. Well done, Kristi!! Her responsibilities include reconciling budgets, assisting faculty and visitors with travel processes, making purchases for grant holders, helping graduate students navigate department procedures, assisting the department chair, and many other things large and small. Due to expanded duties, Dottie (the Math Department Therapy Dog) is taking a leave of absence until Kristi can get settled.

Retirement

Jana Watkins retired in December 2025 after after almost 15 years of dedicated service to the Mathematics Department, where she served as Senior Administrative Coordinator. On her last day of work, the department held a small retirement celebration in her honor to recognize her years of commitment and contributions. In the photo, Jana is reading heartfelt messages and best wishes from the many department members she worked with throughout her career. We sincerely thank Jana for everything she has done for the department and wish her all the best in her retirement!

2026 Integration Bee

The 2026 Integration Bee was held on April 10. In this contest students attempt to solve challenging indefinite integrals within a fixed period of time. This year we had 40 competitors, and as always – we had great cake!

Our fearless winners were the intrepid : first place - Larry Lee (TAMS junior), second place - Orion Jordan (UNT junior Math major), and third place - Aayush Pal (TAMS junior).  In the attached  photo, Aayush is on the left, Larry is in the center, and Orion is on the right. and Dipansh Regmi (tied for 2nd). Here is the photo of the winners of the Bee, the winners from left to right are Brandon, Sudeep, and Dipansh. Congratulations to all the winners and participants!

Math Club

The Math Club is devoted to promoting interest in mathematics and fellowship among students of all mathematical backgrounds. This year the club, led by Ali Diwan, Gabriella Williams, and Miguel Gonzalez-Carriedo, hosted weekly colloquia. Graduate students from UNT departments and other Universities were invited to speak about their research. On October 31, the Math Club had a Murder Mystery Game that was emceed by College of Science Dean Ed Dzialowski. The semester picnics take place at North Lakes Park. The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Student Chapter at UNT organized a Trivia Game at the picnic site.

Problem of the Month

Every month during regular semesters, the math department and the math club feature the Problem of the Month competition. This contest is open to all currently enrolled undergraduate students. Students who submit correct solutions receive cash prizes and certificates of excellence. The winners of the Problem of the Month Competitions from September 2025 through April 2026 were: Rishit Anand (2 times), Hansan Yun (2 times), Hitaishi Chillara (1 time), and Amani Morrow (1 time).

Great Math Grads Spotlight: Miguel Gonzalez-Carriedo and Jonathan Leung

Miguel Gonzalez-Carriedo and Jonathan Leung, mathematics majors at UNT, conducted undergraduate research in fractal geometry and will graduate in Spring 2026. Inspired by Miguel’s research presentation at the STaRS seminar, Jonathan joined the undergraduate math research group in November 2024. Since then, both students have worked closely with Dr. Prokaj and Dr. Kawamura. Although their individual strengths differ, their complementary approaches have made their collaboration especially productive and have enriched the overall research environment. The pictures show Jonathan Leung (left) and Miguel Gonzalez-Carriedo (right).

Together, Jonathan and Miguel have achieved several notable distinctions:

• Both Miguel and Jonathan gave their research talks at UNT Scholars Day, where each earned Undergraduate Research Fellowships in both 2024 and 2025.

• Miguel was the only UNT undergraduate selected to present research at Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC) in 2024, and Jonathan was the only UNT undergraduate selected in 2025.

• Jonathan was the only math undergraduate to receive the College of Science Undergraduate Research Presentation Award in 2025.

• Jonathan was the only Honors College student in 2026 to successfully defend an original honors thesis in mathematics. His honors thesis is published in arXiv.

• A former TAMS student, Jonathan made the thoughtful decision to remain at UNT. Remarkably, at just 20 years old, Jonathan was featured as an Undergraduate Student Spotlight in the College of Science.

• Jonathan was invited by Dean de Oliveira of the UNT Honors College to speak with Dr. Francis, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, about K–12 education in Texas.

Their original research paper, coauthored with Dr. Prokaj and Dr. Kawamura, has been submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal.

Faculty Awards

• Faculty Research Award: Nam Trang
• Faculty Teaching Award: Helen Elwood
• Faculty Teaching Award: Pieter Allaart
• Faculty Service Award: Krista Hines
• Faculty Service Award: Olav Richter

Adjunct Awards

• Outstanding Mathematics Adjunct Award: Celeste Hernandez

Graduate Awards and Scholarships

• Academic Excellence Award: Matthew Ortiz
• Outstanding Teaching Fellow: Erin Pierce
• Outstanding Teaching Fellow: Eduardo Martinez-Mendoza
• Outstanding Graduate Student: Ethan Jensen
• Outstanding Arborist Award: Brandon Duebel
• Outstanding Arborist Award: Brandon Mather

Graduate Scholarships

• John Ed Allen Scholarship: Randall Rickel
• Richard D. Mauldin Scholarship: Kathryn Altman, Cory Greger
• John W. Neuberger Scholarship: Joey Chen

Undergraduate Awards and Scholarships

• David F. Dawson Scholarship - Yaneth Puentes
• E.H. Hanson Scholarship - Xuan Huynh Nguyen
• E.H. Hanson Scholarship - Eduardo Campos Reyes
• Mildred Masters McCarty Scholarship - Ethan Seifi
• Ram Lal Seekri Scholarship - Brooke Herman
• Outstanding Student in Actuarial Science - Rachel Sears
• Outstanding Math Lab Tutor - Sierra Flynn
• Outstanding Undergraduate Student - Jonathan Leung

It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of Ian Champion on January 20, 2026. Ian earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of North Texas. In pursuit of further education, he became a PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Mathematics. The department held a memorial event in Ian’s honor on February 13, 2026.

Ian was exceptionally talented musically and earned the distinction of 1st Chair Trumpeter in high school. He also represented his school at District, Regional, and State competitions in Band, Academics, and Current Events, receiving numerous honors and awards.

As a member of the UNT graduate community, Ian was remembered as a kind, thoughtful, and deeply caring friend who made people feel heard, welcomed, and appreciated. He cared deeply for his friends and showed that care through his actions, becoming someone others naturally turned to for support, advice, and encouragement. Ian loved spending time with friends and worked hard to build community within the department through his involvement as graduate student liaison, organizer of the GLG, and mentor program leader.

Above all, Ian will be remembered for his selflessness, compassion, and genuine care for the people around him. He was a cherished friend to many and will be deeply missed by all who knew him.