Recognizing the efforts that support our community 

The Department of Mathematics wishes to recognize the contributions of this year’s math majors and graduate students, whose tireless efforts and academic achievements made the mathematics community a better place.

Top from left: Jonathan Bloom, Prof. Bill Minicozzi, and Miguel Moreira; Bottom from left: Bill with Keita Allen.

The 2025 Charles and Holly Housman Award for Excellence in Teaching was presented to three MIT Math community members for their skills and dedication in undergraduate teaching.

Graduate student Keita Allen was recognized for his “true passion for education” and for helping other students, including as a UROP mentor.

Housman awards for instructors were given to Jonathan Bloom, for his ability to teach complex math concepts in a dynamic and engaging way, and to Miguel Moreira, for his supportive teaching style, including as a UROP mentor.

From left, Prof. Bill Minicozzi, Kyle McKee, and Prof. John Bush; Ilya Dumanski.

The 2025 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize, for a research paper accepted for publication in a major journal, has been awarded to graduate students Ilya Dumanski for his paper “A Geometric Approach to Feigin-Loktev Fusion Product and Cluster Relations in Coherent Satake Category,” International Mathematics Research Notices, Volume 2024, Issue 22, November 2024, and to Kyle McKee for his paper “Magnetohydrodynamic flow control in Hele-Shaw cells,” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Cambridge University Press, Sept. 13, 2024.

Kyle is also the recipient of the David J. Benney Prize, which recognizes excellence in applied mathematics, with preference given to students in physical applied math, computational science, numerical analysis, computational biology, or theoretical physics. He was recognized for a mathematical style “which is directed toward elucidating the physics of complex continuum systems via mathematical modeling.”

This award honors David Benney, an applied math professor who died in 2015. Benney chaired the Applied Mathematics Committee from 1983-1985, and served as Department Head for two terms, 1989-1999.

Top, from left, Prof. Steven Johnson with Pitchayut (Mark) Saengrungkongka; George Shaker; bottom, from left, Matija Delic; Max Daniels with Prof. Bill Minicozzi.

Three undergraduates and a graduate student received the 2025 Peter Baddoo Community Building Award, for individuals who have made significant contributions to building and strengthening our MIT Math community.

  • Pitchayut (Mark) Saengrungkongka was awarded for his involvement in organizations such as HMMT and for helping out the community by typing up lecture notes, coordinating psets collaboration, reaching out to prospective math majors, and setting up Discord servers for advanced graduate courses.
  • Matija Delic was recognized for organizing collaborative problem-solving sessions, mentoring fellow students, and initiating events.
  • George Shaker was acknowledged as “the GOAT” for his ability to introduce many to the “beauty of math” and to department resources. He also often leaves math problems on random boards across campus that draw interest from students, faculty, and even visitors.
  • Graduate student Max Daniels was called “a cornerstone of our community” for his work with the PuMaGraSS Seminar, this past fall’s N.H. retreat, and the graduate student open house.

This award is named in honor of the late Department instructor Peter Baddoo, who received the Community Building Award in 2022 for organizing social events for the postdoc community.

Senior math major Sanjana Das, with Prof. Steven Johnson, received the 2025 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and enthusiasm for mathematics.

The Department of Mathematics also would like to recognize the work of students, instructors, and everyone else who coordinated all of our wonderful events, served as academic, outreach, and social chairs, and otherwise helped to create a more supportive atmosphere within the department. These outstanding participants include, but are not limited to:

  • Putnam Exam proctors Andrey Bryutkin, Ziqi Fang, Yi Han, Max Lipton, Luping Qu, Ashutosh Tripathi, and Yuan Yao 
  • Beverage and cheese night hosts Ludovico Giorgini and Robin Zhang
  • Undergraduate Society of Women in Mathematics (USWIM) president Anushka Aggarwal. treasurer Bridget Jiang ’28; mentorship chairs Stephanie Mei ’28 and Joy Zhuo ’28; social chairs Isabella He ’28 and Nikki Truong ’28; advisors Rachael Cai ’26 and Serena An ’26.
  • The Council for Math Majors (CoMM)  officers Lauren Aguilar, Claire Mao, and Jakin Ng
  • Undergraduate Mathematics Association (UMA) President Laasya Nagareddy; VP Zara Yu; Academic Cochairs Lucas Bautista and Sean Li; social chairs Atul Shatavart and Andrew Yuan; Outreach Chairs Isha Agarwal and Joyce Qu; and Tech Chair Leo Gagnon.
  • Grad-Undergrad Math Mentoring Initiative (GUMMI)’s 54 mentors!
  • MIT SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) President Bianca Champenois, VP Vaibhav Dixit, Treasurer Evelyne Ringoot, Event Coordinator Tony Ryu, and secretary Max Pierce.  
  • Directed Reading Program (DRP) organizers Elisabeth Bullock, Michael Law,  Natalia Pacheco-Tallaj, Alex Pieloch. Mentors also included  Eran Assaf, Ilani Axelrod-Freed, Karol Bacik, Kenneth Blakey,   Joye Chen, Shi Chen, Anlong Chua, Jonathan Rodríguez Figueroa, Yi Han, Felipe Hernandez, Johannes Hosle, Henry Hu, Ryota Inagaki,Yonghwan Kim, Cameron Krulewski,  Saba Lepsveridze, David Lee, Joonsoo Lee, Zhengjiang Lin, Jeffrey Lu, Jonathan Lu,  Weixiao Lu, Ryan Maguire, Josh Messing, Shivam Nadimpalli, Ayan Nath, Yuchong Pan, Michael Panner, Alexander Petrov, Elia Portnoy, Thomas Rüd, Ashutosh Tripathi, Harry Walden, Zeyu Wang, Nicholas West, Dora Woodruff, Jiahui Yu
  • RSI mentors  Shrey Aryan, Diego Israel Chavez, Ryota Inagaki,  Alain Kangabire, Yonghwan Kim, Michael Law, Oriol Solé Pi,  Hamilton Wan
  • SPUR mentors Lior Alon, Merrick Cai, Edgar Costa, Haoshuo Fu, Zhiyang He, Brice Huang, Andrei Ionov, Ron Nissim, Sam Schiavone, Xinyu Tan, Tristan Yang, Kai Zhe Zheng
  • UROP+ mentors Eran Assaf, Kenneth Blakey, Ziang Chen, David Darrow, Max Fishelson, Felix Gotti, Alain Kangabire, Simon Langowski, Joonsoo Lee,  Junhong Lin, Isaac Lopez, Ryan Maguire, Nitya Mani, Kyle McKee,  Ivan Motorin, Son Nguyen, Aleksandr Petrov,  Christopher Rackauckas, Thomas Rued,  Nathan Sheffield,  Mayuri Sridhar, Kenta Suzui, Foster Tom, Joseph Vulakh,  Jiahui Yu,  Shijie Zhang
  • PRIMES program mentors and other volunteers include:
    • Menezes Challenge PRIMES Circle mentor coordinators Marisa Gaetz and Mary Stelow, and MIT mentors Sabine Chu, Kai Edickq, Ezra Guerrero, Amy He, June Kayath, Julia Kozak, Sean Li,  Luis Modes, Sam Packman, George Shaker, Tomasz Slusarczyk, Katherine Taylor, Katherine Tung, Zoe Xi, and Honglin Zhu 
    • MathROOTS Academic Mentors: head mentor Vijay Srinivasan, Trajan Hammonds (Princeton), Assistant Program Director Enrico Colón ’23, Paige Bright ’24; and Ilani Axelrod-Freed; residential counselors: Program Director Serina Hu, Saba Zerefa of Harvard, Rachel Mohammed, and Enrico, Ilani, and Paige.
    • PRIMES STEP head mentor Tanya Khovanova, who also was a Menezes Challenge Lecturer.

“In addition to world-class research, I am proud that the MIT Math Department does incredible teaching, mentoring, and community-building work,” says Community and Outreach Officer Michael King. “None of that is possible without the contributions of a great many undergraduates, graduate students, instructors, staff, and faculty. They are the ones who create our rich and welcoming sense of community.”