Math department announces spring 2026 Math Undergraduate Research Award winners
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Department of Mathematics has awarded Undergraduate Research Awards in Mathematics (MathUGRA) to five mathematics majors/minors to support their research projects for the spring 2026 semester.
MathUGRAs are $1,000 scholarships provided to undergraduate math majors or minors pursuing original research or creative projects under the general guidance of a KU mathematics faculty member. The awards are provided by the department’s endowment funds.
MathUGRAs are awarded to students conducting semester long independent projects culminating in an oral presentation or written work, demonstrating the student’s own development of a topic in mathematics and its applications. Recipients of the award were selected on the merit of the applicant's proposal, the applicant's academic record and the recommendation from a faculty member.
The spring 2026 recipients:
Wesley Booth, Lawrence, senior in mathematics and economics: “Semi-supervised Learning with Beta-VAE”. Semi-supervised learning provides a framework for improving classification (labeled data) by using unsupervised methods to learn from the unlabeled data available. This project will investigate how using Beta-VAE (variational autoencoders) can learn latent representations of the data that can improve downstream classification. Booth’s research mentor is Joonha Park, assistant professor of mathematics.
Malek Kchaou, Lawrence, senior in computer science with a minor in mathematics: “Optimization-aware AutoML via Reinforcement Learning: Co-designing Neural Architectures and Adaptive Optimizers for Robust Real-world Training”. Deep learning methods excel in controlled environments but can often lose reliability when deployed in dynamic, unpredictable settings such as robotics or autonomous systems. These failures arise from two coupled factors—sensitivity of optimization algorithms that train neural networks and architecture-dependent geometry of the loss landscape that determines convergence and generalization. This project will bridge these challenges through an integrated mathematical and computational framework via reinforcement-learning. Kchaou’s research mentor is Erik Van Vleck, professor of mathematics.
Kamran Lambert, Wichita, senior in mathematics: “Explorations of Szemeredi’s Theorem”. This theorem (arithmetic progressions in subsets of the integers) ties together many topics in mathematics, forming an expansive and interconnected web of reasoning. Lambert plans to explore Szemeredi’s Theorem—including generalizations, alternative argumentations, numerical bounds, and theoretical nuances—by reading several papers that contribute to this theorem. Lambert’s research mentor is Shuanglin Shao, associate professor of mathematics.
Andrew Lin, Overland Park, senior in mathematics: “Geometric Properties of Levi-Schubert Varieties”. The goal is to study geometric properties of Levi-Schubert varieties in full flag varieties over C. Schubert calculus has a wide range of applications in mathematics and physics, most notably in representation theory. The goal of Levi-Schubert varieties is to provide a more general framework than that of Schubert varieties. Lin’s research mentor is Reuven Hodges, assistant professor of mathematics.
Alex Mustard, Overland Park, senior in mathematics with minors in philosophy and psychology: “The Stability of Lyapunov Exponents for Lorenz ’96 Models”. Lyapunov exponents are a measure of a system’s predictability and sensitivity to changes in its initial conditions. The more positive Lyapunov exponents a system has, the more chaotic the system is. This project will determine the relative stability of Lyapunov exponents for Lorenz’96 models (a system of ordinary differential equations that is a standard test problem in nonlinear dynamics and for testing data assimilation techniques) using spatially and temporally varying dissipation and forcing terms. Mustard’s research mentor is Erik Van Vleck, professor of mathematics.