News

The Colorado School of Mines has achieved its highest ranking in recent history at the 86th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Finishing 43rd out of 487 universities across North America, Mines secured the top spot in the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The Putnam Competition is widely regarded as the most challenging undergraduate mathematics exam in the world, with a median score this year of only 2 out of 120. Individual Highlights: Top...

Isabella “Is” Chittumuri, a PhD candidate in applied mathematics and statistics, was selected for the Fulbright National Science Foundation Arctic Research Award. She is conducting an independent research project focused on assessing climate-related hazards in the Hornafjörður region of southeast Iceland using geospatial analysis and machine learning. By modeling climate-driven risks, such as extreme weather, Chittumuri’s project aims to support the Hornafjörður region in making data-informed...

Diniz Behn, a mathematical biologist, named inaugural Joe and Jane Gray University Chair Cecilia Diniz Behn, PhD, professor in applied mathematics and statistics at Mines, has been named the inaugural Joe and Jane Gray University Chair. A university chair is the highest level of distinction a Mines faculty member can hold. Diniz Behn is an expert in the field of mathematical biology, which uses advanced mathematics to solve complex biological problems. She’s known for her impactful...

Jackie Simens Gant ’13, MS’15, a double Mines graduate in Applied Mathematics, is the CEO of Bond Consulting Services and a leader in digital transformation for small and mid-sized businesses. With more than a decade of experience across Microsoft business applications, change management, and enterprise technology, she has led global teams, launched new service lines and earned multiple industry awards. Jackie founded the Society for Women in Mathematics and has remained a strong advocate for...

Congratulations to Brandon Knutson, whose first-author paper On logical extrapolation for Mazes with Recurrent and Implicit Networks was accepted for oral presentation at AAAI-26! His work addresses the question "can certain kinds of neural networks really learn an algorithm?” in the context of a simple problem: find a path through a maze. His thorough and surprising results drew much interest from the reviewers. AAAI is a top conference in AI, and this year received a record-breaking number...

Congratulations to Cecilia Diniz Behn on being named the inaugural Joe and Jane Gray Endowed University Chair! Alumnus Joe Gray (Mines '68) established this chair to support a faculty member who is a leader at the intersection of biology/medicine and other STEM disciplines, reflecting his own career as a groundbreaking inventor of biomedical engineering technologies for cancer research. Cecilia’s work in the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department and the Quantitative Biosciences and...

A paper (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw8997) co-authored by Dr. Dorit Hammerling and Mines colleagues Elizabeth Holley, Karlie Hadden, Rod Eggert, Erik Spiller, and Priscilla Nelson, and published in the prestigious journal Science, was recently cited during a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee hearing. The Committee discussion, focused on byproduct recovery and critical mineral opportunities, included bipartisan recognition of Mines’ leadership in this area. Importantly,...

We are proud to share that Professor Deb Carney is part of a research team recently awarded a Gates Foundation grant. Project Title: Impact of Coordination and Common Course Model on Student OutcomesPrincipal Investigator: Chris Rasmussen (SDSU)Co-Principal Investigators: Deb Carney (Mines), Naneh Apkarian (SDSU) The project involves a mixed methods research design over two years, focusing on 12-15 math departments that coordinate foundational courses such as Precalculus, Calculus 1, and...

We congratulate Cash on receiving an Honorable Mention for his poster at the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics meeting in Breckenridge, CO!    

An image from a paper Dr. Brennan Sprinkle published with Ning Wu, Dave Marr, and Yan Gao made the cover of Nature Physics this month! The article “Direct observation of colloidal quasicrystallization” was published on March 31, 2025 in the Nature Physics journal.  Below is the link. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02859-z   Issue cover: Image: Gao Yan, David Marr, and Ning Wu, Colorado School of Mines Cover design: Laoise Mac Gabhann Nature Physics (Nat. Phys.) ISSN 1745-2481...

Congratulations again to Jordan Pettyjohn, who won first place in the 2024--2025 Grand Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) student research competition. Jordan qualified for this competition via his winning presentation at an ACM conference held in November 2024. For the grand final, Jordan's research paper was judged against first-place winners from twenty other ACM conferences held in 2024—2025. Jordan's work applies techniques from computational linear algebra to...

We are proud to announce that Isabella Chittumuri, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program Grant to conduct research. "Chittumuri, a PhD candidate in applied mathematics and statistics, will spend her Fulbright term conducting research in Hornafjörður, Iceland in collaboration with the University of Iceland, focusing on climate-induced vulnerabilities affecting glacier-based tourism and the surrounding community." (Rusch, "2 Mines students awarded Fulbright Scholarships...

Their co-authored paper, "Glycemia, Insulin Sensitivity, and Secretion Improve 3 Months Post-Sleeve Gastrectomy in Youth With Type 2 Diabetes," has been selected as a Featured Article in the Journal of the Endocrine Society. This prestigious recognition means their work will be prominently displayed at the top of top of the Journal of the Endocrine Society homepage for about a week. Congratulations!