Alumni News: Ryan Hynd receives 2022-2023 Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship

March 14, 2022

In the news recently, Ryan Hynd a Georgia Tech SoM alumni was awarded a Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship. Ryan was a graduate in the B.S. Applied Mathematics program and completed his MSc in mathematics at Georgia Tech in 2004, he then went on to receive his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2010, studying under Lawrence Evans.

From the AMS News:

Ryan Hynd, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded the AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Hynd researches partial differential equations arising in mathematical models for fluid mechanics, control theory, and finance, as well as eigenvalue problems. During his fellowship year, he will visit the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Sweden for collaborations in the fall and continue consulting with various mathematicians in the spring. He will investigate the Blaschke-Lebesgue problem, seeking to characterize minimum-volume bodies of constant width.

“This has been an outstanding problem in convex geometry for a number of years,” Hynd said. “My current hunch is that a time-dependent flow can be used to deform shapes in a way that leads to some new insight.”

Hynd earned his PhD in 2010 from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Craig Evans. After a postdoc at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, Hynd joined the Penn faculty in 2012. In 2016–2017 he was a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship was established to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians. Recipients are recognized for their achievements as well as their significant potential for further contributions to mathematics.

“Gloria Ford Gilmer and William Schieffelin Claytor are both mathematicians whose efforts helped pave the way for someone like me. I think the work they did early in their careers is an indication that men and women from all walks of life can do mathematics at a high level,” said Hynd. “I’m also especially proud of their accomplishments as they both earned graduate degrees in my department. In fact, we have a permanent exhibit highlighting Claytor’s PhD thesis and the professional struggles he later encountered.”

Receiving the fellowship named for Claytor and Gilmer is “a tremendous honor,” Hynd said. “It’s wonderful that the AMS has dedicated a fellowship in their honor, and I’m thrilled to be a Claytor-Gilmer Fellow for the upcoming academic year.”

In addition to his outstanding research, Hynd is a passionate teacher dedicated to promoting diversity in STEM. He helped create and coordinate the Bridge to PhD program at Penn, and he was a research leader for the 2020 African Diaspora Joint Mathematics Workshop (ADJOINT).

About the Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship

The AMS Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship aims to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians. Awardees may use the fellowship in any way that most effectively enables their research—for instance, for release time, participation in research programs, travel support, childcare, etc. The most likely awardee is a mid-career Black mathematician based at a US institution whose achievements demonstrate significant potential for further contributions to mathematics. The fellowship is named for Dr. William Schieffelin Claytor, the first African American man to publish a research article in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal, and Dr. Gloria Ford Gilmer, the first African American woman to publish a research article in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal.

See the full article on the AMS News website here:

https://www.ams.org/news?news_id=6981