FACULTY AWARD
Kevin Wortman honored with MAA Teaching Award Kevin Wortman, an Associate Professor and Director of Undergradu-
ate Studies in the University of Utah Department of Mathematics, has been honored with the 2022 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Distinguished Teaching Award for the Intermountain Region.
Kevin Wortman
The award honors professors of mathematics whose efforts have been recognized as influential beyond their own institutions. Since 2004, Wortman is the fifth U mathematics faculty member to receive this honor. Previous U math faculty recipients include Don Tucker, Nicholas Korevaar, Peter Alfeld, and Anne Roberts. Wortman joined the U’s Math Department in 2007. The Mathematical Association of America, with more than 25,000 members, is the primary professional organization for teachers of undergraduate mathematics. The MAA Intermountain Region includes all colleges and universities in Utah and southern Idaho.
POSTDOC AWARDS
NSF Fellowships awarded to Eamon Quinlan-Gallego and Alex Rasmussen Two professors in the Department of Mathematics have each received a Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. The three-year fellowship is awarded to support future leaders in mathematics and statistics by helping them participate in postdoctoral research that will enhance their development. Eamon Quinlan-Gallego Eamon Quinlan-Gallego, who joined the department in 2021, serves as an Assistant Professor (Lecturer). “Receiving this fellowship is an incredible honor, and it will allow me to dedicate myself to research full-time for four semesters and extend my stay in Utah for an extra year. It will also give me funds to travel to conferences and visit collaborators,” he said. Quinlan-Gallego studies solutions to polynomial equations and their singularities. For example, in pre-calculus, the equation y = x^2 defines a parabola in the plane. This parabola is smooth—it doesn’t have any sharp corners; however, occasionally, polynomial equations can fail to be smooth. These non-smooth points, called singularities, are ubiquitous across mathematics, and their study is a fundamental problem.
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