About
In the NC State Department of Mathematics, excellent teaching and a supportive community combine with cutting-edge research across a broad spectrum of mathematics and its applications.
Excellence in Teaching and Research
The NC State math faculty’s mission is to help students thrive. The quality of our teaching has been recognized by the university, which has inducted 12 of our faculty into its Academy of Outstanding Teachers, and by prestigious awards from the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The department’s size — more than 60 faculty — means that each student has access to personal attention from faculty and to an unusual range of opportunities.
Research topics in our department range from fundamental questions in algebra and combinatorics to mathematical modeling of the eye and circulatory system. Ours is one of the leading U.S. math departments in offering opportunities for graduate students to work on practical problems with industrial collaborators. And our department is one of the most successful in the nation in securing research grants, with annual funding of more than $5 million, much of which supports graduate and undergraduate student researchers.
Our students have won prestigious Goldwater, Churchill and Fulbright awards and have gone on to notable careers in business, government, research, and teaching. The current AMS president, Robert Bryant, is an alumnus of our department, as is the 2015 winner of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies’ Presidents’ Award (the most prestigious prize in the field of statistics), John Storey.
An Award-Winning Department
The American Mathematical Society has recognized the department with its two major program prizes.
A Supportive and Engaged Community
Our department is committed to mentoring and to creating a supportive environment that helps all students succeed in math. In 2011, the AMS honored our commitment to groups that are traditionally underrepresented in math with its 2011 Award for Mathematics Programs That Make a Difference. Our department awarded more than 12% of all doctoral degrees earned by African Americans in the nation’s top 100 mathematics departments between 2000 and 2010. And 45 percent of our department-supported Ph.D. students are female.
“This is a department that manages to do it all — research in a broad range of areas, outstanding teaching and mentoring, strong ties to industry, and a welcoming environment for underrepresented groups.”
American Mathematical Society
Student organizations and seminars in the department are active. The Society for Undergraduate Mathematics, student chapters of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the Association for Women in Mathematics, and graduate student groups in areas such as algebra and applied mathematics sponsor talks, panel discussions, and get-togethers.
We reach into the community, cultivating the next generation of mathematicians through such programs as weekly Math Circle meetings and the Association for Women in Mathematics student chapter’s annual Sonia Kovalevsky Day for middle-school girls. And we share the importance of math with the public through events like the annual Kwangil Koh Lecture on Mathematics in Our Time (a talk by a prominent mathematician) and participation in BugFest at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
