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For the fifth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fifth year in a row, MIT swept all five of the contest’s top spots.

The highest scorers are named Putnam Fellows: Senior Brian Liu and juniors Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille are now three-time Putnam Fellows, sophomore Jiangqi Dai earned his second win, and first-year Qiao Sun earned his first. Each receives a $2,500 award. This is also the fifth time that any school has had the top 5 students being named Putnam Fellows.

Also coming in first was MIT’s team, made up of Lapate, Robitaille and Sun; Lapate and Robitaille were also on last year’s winning team. This is MIT’s ninth first-place win in the past 11 competitions. Teams consist of the three top scorers from each institution. The institution with the first-place team receives a $25,000 award, and each team member receives $1,000.

First-year Jessica Wan was the top-scoring woman, finishing in the top 25, which earned her the $1,000 Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize. She is the eighth MIT student to receive this honor since the award was created in 1992. This is the sixth year in a row that an MIT woman has won the prize.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!

A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.

Math majors Serena An, Luke Fitzgerald, Yongao Hu, June Kayath, Jiwoo Park, and Leqi (Alexis) Zhou are among 36 MIT students named 2025 Burchard Scholars by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).

The Burchard Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the humanistic fields, but can major in science, design, and engineering fields as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

Congratulations, Alexis, Jiwoo, June, Luke, Serena, and Yongao!

Graduate students Ryan Chen and Alex Cohen have been awarded 2025 Clay Research Fellowships, for a term of five years.

Ryan Chen is an arithmetic geometer whose research focuses on themes surrounding Gross–Zagier-type formulas for high-dimensional Shimura varieties. He is advised by Wei Zhang.

Alex Cohen researches harmonic analysis, combinatorics, and microlocal analysis. He is advised by Larry Guth.

Other current Fellows with MIT Math connections include former postdocs Maggie Miller and Alexander Smith, in 2021; postdoc Alexander Petrov in 2022; and 2024 PhDs Ishan Levy and Mehtaab Sawhney, who received it last year.

Congratulations, Alex and Ryan!