Four members of the MIT Math community were celebrated as the recipients of the 2026 named PRIMES mentorships at our Winter Social on Dec 3.
Three received the Lusztig Mentorship, which is supported by the generosity of George Lusztig through his 2014 Shaw Prize:
Ryan Maguire, a Digital Learning Postdoctoral Associate and Instructor. In 2025, he mentored seven students working on three research groups on Saturn's Rings, Cassini Radio Science, and Jones Polynomial.
Son Nguyen, a graduate student whose main research interest is algebraic combinatorics, specifically Schur positivity and Schubert calculus. He has mentored for UROP, PRIMES, and GUMMI.
Frank Wang, a graduate student whose research interests lie in representation theory, specifically in quantum groups and rational Cherednik algebras. He is a co-organizer of the PuMaGraSS seminar, and has been a mentor for PRIMES, RSI, and GUMMI.
The 2026 Bershadsky Mentor Award, kindly supported by Michael and Victoria Bershadsky, was awarded to Alain Kangabire. Alain is a PhD student, and his research interests are in micro local analysis and dynamical systems. He mentored for various programs including PRIMES, UROP, and RSI. In 2025, he supervised a PRIMES reading group of three students, studying curvature on Riemannian manifolds.
Read more about the mentorship awards on our website.
Congratulations, Ryan, Son, Frank and Alain! Thank you, as well, to George Lusztig, and Michael and Victoria Bershadsky!