News
Prestigious NSF Career Grant Awarded to Dr. Humpherys
Assistant Professor Jeffrey Humpherys, of the Mathematics Department at Brigham Young University, was recently selected to receive the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award.
According to the NSF website, the CAREER award is the NSF’s “most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.”
The CAREER award includes $400,000 in research funding, which will allow Dr. Humpherys to continue his research in nonlinear partial differential equations and stochastic dynamical systems. But more importantly, he will use the funds to mentor graduate students in BYU’s Interdisciplinary Mentoring Program in Analysis, Computation, and Theory (IMPACT), a program that Humpherys co-directs with BYU statistics professor Dr. C. Shane Reese.
The panel that reviewed Dr. Humpherys’ proposal commented, “[Dr. Humpherys] and his department have a proven track record in training undergraduates in this manner... The mentoring team and the problems they have assembled will give students exposure to a wide variety of problems and the ability to gain deeper experience... The plan for assessment and follow-up was among the strongest seen.
One panelist remarked, “While relatively young, it is clear that IMPACT is already achieving a good deal of success...I am very impressed with the educationally-related broader impacts associated with this proposal. Undergraduate research is clearly a very strong component of the proposal, and I am pleased to see such strong institutional support.”
And with the continuing support of the math department and its NSF funded Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics program, there is strong potential that the work of Dr. Humphery’s and BYU Mathematics will be looked to as other colleges and universities attempt to establish their own mentored research programs.