Faculty and students from the Department of Mathematics and Physics represented Marshall University at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January, the largest mathematics conference in the world. The annual conference brings together thousands of mathematicians to share new research, organize specialty sessions, and highlight student scholarship.
Several faculty members served as session organizers and presenters. Dr. Sudipta Mallik organized and spoke in “ILAS Special Session on Algebraic Graph Theory: New Trends”, working with co-organizers from Kuwait University, the University of Belgrade, and Universidade Federal Fluminense. His presentation titled “Moore-Penrose inverse of the complex Laplacian of an oriented graph”.
Dr. Tom Cuchta co-organized “AMS Special Session on Generalized Derivatives: Analysis on Time Scales, Fractional Calculus, Difference Equations, and Others” with Nick Wintz of Radford University. The session featured invited speaker Dr. Stephen Deterding, who spoke on “Bounded point derivations and approximate derivatives”, and included Dr. Cuchta’s own talk, “Dynamic Special Functions”.
Dr. Aleksandra Sobieska also presented her work in “AMS Special Session on Advances in Commutative Algebra”, with a talk titled “Resolutions Of and Over Numerical Semigroup Rings”.
Students in the department also shared their research on a national stage. Graduate student Richard Williams presented work on “Generating Synthetic Seismograms Using Time Scales”, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sudipta Chowdhury from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Undergraduate Macy Skaggs presented her research on “Semimodules of Numerical Semigroups” in the AMS-PME Undergraduate Poster Session, alongside fellow undergraduate Presley Lucas from West Virginia University. Their project was completed during Summer 2025 as part of the department’s REU program and was supervised by Dr. Sobieska.
Participation in the conference was supported by multiple National Science Foundation grants held by mathematics faculty, including LEAPS and REU awards that funded both faculty and student involvement.
The 2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings welcomed more than 5,400 attendees and featured approximately 3,000 presentations. The conference is held annually each January and will take place in Chicago in 2027.