Department of Mathematics
Welcome to the Department of Mathematics at USC Dornsife. We offer a wide range of research and education opportunities in pure and applied mathematics. We also form a lively and engaged community of scholars. Please explore our website, from student resources to faculty personal pages, from math clubs to research seminars, to learn more about us and about our offerings and activities.
News: Yu Deng (professor in the department from 2018 until 2024) receives the Fields medal!
Seminars/Colloquia
News
Sheel Ganatra delivered a lecture in the Topology section of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia in July 2026. His talk “Structural Approaches to Fukaya Categories and Mirror Symmetry” opens new directions at the most prestigious mathematics conference.
Aravind Asok, together with Jesse Wolfson (UC Irvine) and Alexa McLain (UC Irvine), receive a $2.6 million DARPA grant to drive AI math breakthroughs.
Unlike evaluations that test AI on closed problem sets with known answers, this project will examine AI’s impact in active research environments. The team will develop a framework to evaluate how these tools affect productivity on unsolved questions relevant to current mathematical research. Researchers will convene groups of about 20 mathematicians for four-day workshops twice a year over three years, with small teams tackling open problems in a setting monitored by the project team.
Evgeni Dimitrov receives the 2026 prize of the Institute for Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The prize is given once every 3 years to one mathematician under the age of 40 of Bulgarian descent for outstanding achievements in mathematics. Congratulations, Evgeni!
Kyler Siegel promoted to Associate Professor
We are pleased to announce that Kyler Siegel has been promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Mathematics. Congratulations Kyler!
Ravi Vakil, Stanford University, will deliver the 2026 Whiteman Lectures. The first lecture will be held on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, 4-5:30pm. See the flyer for more information.
Robert Guralnick and Juhi Jang have been awarded Simons Fellowship
Robert Guralnick and Juhi Jang have been awarded Simons Fellowships in 2026. The fellowship supports an extended research leave of up to a full academic year, enabling recipients to focus exclusively on research. Congratulations to both!
Congratulations Xiaohui Chen
We are pleased to announce that Xiaohui Chen has been promoted to Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Congratulations!
USC Dornsife has introduced a Master of Science in Mathematical Data Science that focuses on the mathematical foundations of artificial intelligence. The program emphasizes probability, optimization, and linear algebra alongside real-world data applications. It prepares students for careers in AI-driven fields or advanced research.
The NSF has awarded a new Research Training Group (RTG) grant to a PI team in the math department. This grant will support new research and training activities in representation theory, low dimensional topology, symplectic geometry and motivic homotopy theory. Congratulations to the PI’s Aravind Asok, Sami Assaf, Julian Chaidez, Sheel Ganatra, and Aaron Lauda!
News Archive
