Spring 2026 Graduation & Awards
May 13, 2026
Congratulations Class of 2026!
The Mathematics Department extends its congratulations to the graduating class of 2026. Fifty-eight (58) undergraduates completed degrees in mathematics this spring, and 17 students completed graduate degrees in mathematics. Several of these students received recognition for their accomplishments as Mathematics students at Virginia Tech. Additionally, three of our students participated in the Layman Prize competition for undergraduate research, with Dheemanth Samji winning the prize. Here, we provide more details about each of our graduates and award winners. We are proud of all of our students, all that they have accomplished, and all they will accomplish moving forward. Ut Prosim!
| First Name | Last Name | Degree Option | |
| Amman | Ahmad | Traditional | |
| Aidan | Akbar | Traditional | |
| Dominic | Becker | ACM | |
| Dean | Breeden | Traditional | |
| Keerthi | Buska | Traditional | |
| Paul | Clary | Traditional | |
| Benjamin | Denson | Traditional | |
| Judah | DiStefano | Traditional | |
| Nathan | Dressler | Traditional | |
| Aaron | Gagne | Traditional | |
| Henry | Gantz | Traditional | |
| Tomas | Golcher | ADM | |
| Walter | Gorski | Math Ed | |
| Cody | Gosselin | Math Ed | |
| Christopher | Helmsen | Traditional | |
| Clare | Hinds | ACM | |
| Kayla | Hooper | Traditional | |
| Bennet | Humpton | ACM | |
| Gautam | Iyer | Traditional | |
| Jeffrey | John | ACM | |
| Brady | Jugan | ADM | |
| Haewon | Jung | ACM | |
| Bupe | Katepa | Traditional | |
| Matthew | Kaupin | ACM | |
| Andrew | Kim | Traditional | |
| Trevor | Knott | Traditional | |
| Lybitina | Koene | ADM | |
| John | Kohler | Traditional | |
| Tyler | Kruszewski | ADM | |
| Amelia | Kurowska | Traditional | |
| Alex | Lammers | Traditional | |
| Graham | Lang | Traditional | |
| Arnold | Lapid | ADM | |
| Alex | Levy | ADM | |
| Jason | Little | Traditional | |
| Espen | Lunden | Traditional | |
| Ryan | Mach | ACM | |
| Ryan | Mueller | Traditional | |
| Grant | Mullins | ADM | |
| Carter | Oppleman | Traditional | |
| Kira | Patel | Math Ed | |
| Caitlyn | Peacock | Math Ed | |
| Carson | Russo | ADM | |
| Matthew | Ryan | Traditional | |
| Dheemanth | Samji | Traditional | |
| Stephen | Scott | Traditional | |
| Thomas | Sepulveda | Traditional | |
| Marquis | Skinner | ADM | |
| Jackson | Smedley | Traditional | |
| Harrison | Snyder | Traditional | |
| Sean | Sorek | ACM | |
| Samuel | Stoke | Traditional | |
| Conan | Ugaz | Traditional | |
| Levi | Walker | Traditional | |
| Christopher | Wiencko | Traditional | |
| Grant | Woodard | Traditional | |
| Kevin | Xu | Traditional | |
| Aryan | Yadav | Traditional | |
| Sally | Yang | ACM | |
| Mark | Zhu | ADM |
Kamyar Amini, PhD
advisor: Leonardo Mihalcea
thesis: Lifting I-Functions from the Flag Varieties to Their Cotangent Bundles
Jasmine Burns, MS
advisor: Wenbo Sun
[non-thesis option]
Adam Downs, MS
advisor: Jason LeGrow
[non-thesis option]
Lindy Hearne, MS
advisor: Estrella Johnson
[non-thesis option]
Aryeh Keating, MS
advisor: Chris Beattie
[non-thesis option]
Aditya Khanna, PhD
advisor: Nicholas Loehr
thesis: Combinatorics of Transition Matrices of Symmetric and Polysymmetric Functions
Casey Lang, MS
advisor: Omar Saucedo
thesis: Analyzing an Avian Influenza model with probable human to human transmission
Xuanyu Li, MS
advisor: Andreas Deuchert
thesis: Large Deviations for the Bose Einstein Condensate in the Canonical
Monica Lichtenwalner, MS
advisors: Gretchen Matthews & Hiram López Valdez
thesis: Automorphisms of Hermitian Codes and Applications
Jacob Lineberry, MS
advisor: Megan Wawro
[non-thesis option]
Ian Moore, PhD
advisor: Traian Iliescu
thesis: Filtering and Domain Decomposition Techniques for Intrusive and Non-intrusive Reduced Order Models of Convection-Dominated Problems
Matthew Park, PhD
advisors: Megan Wawro and Anderson Norton
thesis: Thinking Real, Doing Complex: The Case of Exponents and Logarithms
Aaron Pueschel, MS
advior: Johann Rudi
thesis: Viscoelastic Fluid Modeling for Geophysical Applications in an Eulerian Framework
Johnny Rivera, MS
advisor: Dan Orr
[non-thesis option]
Kevin Summers, PhD
advisor: Leonardo Mihalcea
thesis: A Dual Basis for the Equivariant Quantum K-theory of Cominuscule Varieties
Ivan Tarasenkov, MS
advisor: Gretchen Matthews
[non-thesis option]
Teona Zurabashvili, MS
advisor: Jeff Borggaard
[non-thesis option]
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS
Outstanding Senior Overall
- Sean Clark
Outstanding Senior - Traditional Option
- Paul Clary
Outstanding Senior - Applied Computational Option
- Naafay Ghazi
Outstanding Senior - Applied Discrete Option
- Grant Mullins
Outstanding Senior - Math Education Option
- Kira Patel
Outstanding Senior - Undergraduate Research
- Matthew Ryan
PI MU EPSILON INDUCTION CEREMONY
New Pi Mu Epsilon Members
- Yash Agarwal
- Liam Curtis
- Charlie Gleason
- Todd McKnight
- Isaac Santiago
Faculty Advisors
- Maziar Ouliaei-Nia
- Prayagdeep Parija
2025-2026 SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
Patricia A. Caldwell Scholarship
- Isabella Cacciapuoti
Marion & Charlotte Eckert Mathematics Scholarship
- Simon Campbell
- Paul Clary
Ray A. Gaskin Scholarship
- Alex Levy
Daniel S. Kim Memorial Scholarship
- Ethan Strumwasser
Richard & Georgia Kimball / Norfolk Southern Scholarship
- Yash Agarwal
- Justin Holden
- Sofia Vorobjovas
C.B. Ling Scholarship
- Jonathan Hartman
Carl A. Persinger Scholarship
- Aryan Adhikari
David P. Roselle Scholarship
- Sofia Vorobjovas
Kathleen Wampler & Forest Dryden Rollins Scholarship
- Marquis Skinner
T.W. Hatcher Mathematical Scholarship
- Yash Agarwal
- Aryan Adhikari
- Simon Campbell
- Sean Clark
- Brandon Freck
- Holly Greenip
- Athena Georgelas
- Kayla Hooper
- Frederick Jordan
- Taylor Murrell
- Ava Neuhaus
- Ethan Peterson
- Stephen Scott
- Marquis Skinner
- Jackson Smedley
- Alexander Taylor
- Christopher Wiencko
- Kevin Xu
GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS
Outstanding GTA
- Corinne Mitchell
C.B. Ling Scholarship
- Jonathan Hartman
Lee R. Steeneck & Regina Aultice Steeneck Graduate Fellowship
- Michael Ackermann
2026 Jean Ann Russe Skiles Graduate Fellowship
-Monica Lichtenwalner
FACULTY AWARDS
Instructor of the Year
- Cristina Letona Bolivar
Instructional Faculty Service Award
- Kyle Flanagan
- Garrett Fowler
Early on Reading Day, Thursday May 7th, math enthusiasts gathered in the Commons Room to see the annual Layman Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics organized by the Mathematics Department. Three undergraduate students presented their research.
Maximilian Ilyev (advisor Dr. Stanca Ciupe)
Topic: Multiscale modeling of virus-virus interaction, with West Nile Virus and Usutu Virus as a case study
Dheemanth Samji (advisor Dr. Edgar Saenz)
Topic: A classification of bicritical dynamic portraits
Rijul Tandon (advisor Dr. Mirjeta Pasha)
Topic: Tensor Decomposition for High-Dimensional Data: CP, Tucker, and Tensor Train Methods with Applications to Hyperspectral Imaging, Sports Analytics, and Vision Transformers
Each participant was given 20 minutes to present their work and answer questions from the panel of judges. The evaluation committee of Professors Herr, Peace and Yue had the challenging job of selecting a winner, after hearing three great talks. After deliberating the winner of the competition was announced to be Dheemanth Samji advised by Dr. Saenz. Congratulations to both students and their advisors!
We thank all the students and advisors who participated. You can see the complete list of winners posted on the department's undergraduate research page (linked below).
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