{"id":4036,"date":"2026-03-30T18:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/?p=4036"},"modified":"2026-03-30T19:17:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:17:36","slug":"announcement-of-the-winners-of-the-nancy-d-anderson-undergraduate-research-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/2026\/03\/30\/announcement-of-the-winners-of-the-nancy-d-anderson-undergraduate-research-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcement of the Winners of the Nancy D. Anderson Undergraduate Research Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Nancy D. Anderson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/2024\/09\/25\/nancy-d-anderson-mathematics-research-awards\/nancy-anderson\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3653\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3653 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2024\/09\/Nancy-Anderson-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2024\/09\/Nancy-Anderson-210x300.png 210w, https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2024\/09\/Nancy-Anderson.png 517w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On behalf of the Award Committee, I am pleased to announce the two winning teams for the <strong>Nancy D. Anderson Undergraduate Research Awards<\/strong>. These awards celebrate excellence in research and writing among undergraduate students studying mathematics at the University of Illinois and encourage the use of library resources and services.<\/p>\n<p>The Award Committee received multiple applications for this year\u2019s awards. All submissions demonstrated impressive quality, and each application was evaluated in four categories: innovation and originality of research; excellence and clarity in writing and interpretation; quality of analysis and potential contribution to scholarship; and the depth and breadth of the use of library resources. The two teams listed below stood out in every category.<\/p>\n<p>As head of the Mathematics Library, I especially appreciated their citation to and use of existing literature and research. Scholars today are increasingly reliant on digital publication formats, and the University&#8217;s Mathematics Library works diligently to license and acquire comprehensive access to online scholarly mathematics research as the digital tools (e.g., MathSciNet) that support their discovery and use. I commend both teams for the strong and effective use of library resources.<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to this year\u2019s two winning teams:<\/p>\n<p>Team 1: <strong>Benchmarking Optimization Methods in Quantum Information Theory<\/strong><br \/>\nUndergraduate Scholars: <strong>Tingyu Wu, David Huerta, and Zhiyuan Ma<\/strong><br \/>\nProject Leaders: Sujeet Bhalerao<br \/>\nFaculty Mentor: Professor Felix Leditzky<\/p>\n<p>Team 2: <strong>Searching for Optimal Symplectic Maps<\/strong><br \/>\nUndergraduate Scholars: <strong>Eli Berry, Tianyang Ma, Alex Ware, Eleven Yan<\/strong><br \/>\nProject Leaders: Aline Leite, Yefei Zhang<br \/>\nFaculty Mentor: Professor Ely Kerman<\/p>\n<p>The Award Committee commends all participants for their hard work and dedication, which made this 2nd annual awards a success. We also recognize the faculty members and graduate student mentors who guided these undergraduate scholars throughout their research journey.<\/p>\n<p>Each team will receive $1,000. These awards are funded by the <strong>Nancy D. Anderson Mathematics Library Endowment Fund<\/strong>, which was established in 2024 in honor of Professor Nancy D. Anderson, Head of the Mathematics Library at UIUC from 1972 to 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely yours,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Award Committee:<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Reznick, Ph.D.<br \/>\nKaren Mortensen, Ph.D.<br \/>\nTimothy Cole, Former Head of the Mathematics Library<br \/>\nSarah G. Park, Head of the Mathematics Library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nancy D. Anderson &nbsp; On behalf of the Award Committee, I am pleased to announce the two winning teams for the Nancy D. Anderson Undergraduate Research Awards. These awards celebrate excellence in research and writing among undergraduate students studying mathematics at the University of Illinois and encourage the use of library resources and services. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mtx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}