Community

PROMYS has been sustained and enriched over the past 24 years by a belief that math is a deeply human activity best experienced within a richly interacting and mutually supportive community of learners including high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, and research mathematicians.  For six summer weeks, over one hundred mathematicians wrestle joyfully with math. Often for the first time in their lives, talented young people tackle math that is beyond their immediate grasp; are exposed to math which is beautiful and daunting; are held to exacting standards of rigor and precision; meet others with the same level of talent and passion; and learn, not just as students, but as scientists.  PROMYS is non-competitive and students learn from each other.  

The advanced students and counselors help create a deeply rich mathematical environment for each other and for the first-year students by offering seminars, minicourses, and lectures to augment those of the faculty and of the guest lecturers.  Similarly, it is crucial that the PROMYS students witness older students, counselors, and adult professionals engaging actively, intensely, collaboratively, and joyfully in creative mathematical endeavors. PROMYS proves to participants that many of the pervasive math stereotypes are inaccurate. They see for themselves that math is a creative and collaborative enterprise, that mathematicians can be engaging and happy, that there is a vibrant community they can choose to join, that math need not be a solitary activity, and that members of the community give each other social and intellectual support. Many alumni have told us that this exposure revolutionized their attitude towards having a career in math.  They say they came first for the math, and they returned for the people. 

PROMYS Community in the Summer of 2012 

60 First-Year Students

22 Returning Students

22 Counselors

Andrew Ardito - Princeton University
Eva Belmont - Harvard University
Charlotte Chan - Stanford University (Head Counselor)
Zev Chonoles - Brown University
Sheela Devadas (Junior Counselor)
Michael Dunn-Goekjian (Junior Counselor)
Ian Frankel - Princeton University
Michael Greenberg - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tim Holland - McGill University
Derek Hollowood - UC Santa Barbara
Hirsh Jain (Junior Counselor)
Erick Knight - Princeton University
Djordjo Milovic - Universita Degli Studi di Milano
William Perry - Oxford University (Head Counselor)
Tomer Reiter - Carnegie Mellon University
Elena Slobodyan - Princeton University
Heidi Soderstrom - Missouri University of Science and Technology
Joseph Stahl - Boston University
Kate Thompson - University of Georgia (PhD program)
Jenny Yeon - Washington University in St. Louis
Dylan Yott - Boston University
Qiaochu Yuan - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Distinguished Alum in Residence

Ben Harris (Also a Research Mentor)

Research Mentors

Professor Amanda Beeson (University of Rochester)
Professor Ira Gessel  (Brandeis University)
Professor Paul Gunnells (UMass Amherst)
Professor Ben Harris (Louisiana State University)
Dr. Kirsten Wickelgren (Harvard University)

Faculty

Professor Glenn Stevens (Boston University)
- Director of PROMYS since 1989
Professor Marjory Baruch (Syracuse University)
Professor David Fried (Boston University)
Dr. Jay Pottharst (Boston University) 
Professor Steven Rosenberg (Boston University)
Professor Jared Weinstein (Boston University)

35 Teachers in PROMYS for Teachers program

15 Teacher Counselors in the PROMYS for Teachers program

Professor Caleb Shor (Western New England College)
- Director of PROMYS for Teachers
Joshua Zelinsky (Boston University PhD program)
Hudson Harper (Boston University PhD program)
Ander Steele (Boston University PhD program)
Paul Sherman
Patrick Harless
Brian Infante
Mary Elizabeth Matthews
Tanya Finkelstein
Aditya Karnataki
Ben Fischer
Dan Ford
Alison Langsdorf
Matt Enlow
Matt Chedister
Tim Westfield

Visiting Mathematicians and Alumni

PROMYS FACULTY

Glenn Stevens has been Director of PROMYS since he co-founded the program in 1989. He is Professor of Mathematics at Boston University where he has taught and conducted research since 1984. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1981. His research specialties are Number Theory, Automorphic Forms, and Arithmetic Geometry. He has authored or edited three books and published numerous articles on these topics. Professor Stevens has organized two major research conferences including the Conference on Modular Forms and Fermat's Last Theorem held at Boston University in 1995, and has delivered well over a hundred invited lectures around the world. Professor Stevens is Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Focus on Mathematics Math and Science Partnership and co-Principal Investigator of the NSF Noyce grant, Math for America Boston: Teaching Scholars Program. He is also President of both the PROMYS Foundation and Math for America-Boston.

David Fried is Professor of Mathematics at Boston University and co-founded PROMYS. He has taught at PROMYS every summer since its inception in 1989. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkley in 1976. His research interests are dynamical systems, topology, and differential geometry.

Marjory Baruch teaches mathematics and computer science at Syracuse University and has taught at PROMYS every summer since its founding in 1989. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Trustee of the PROMYS Foundation.

Steven Rosenberg, who is Professor of Mathematics at Boston University, has taught in the PROMYS program every summer since 1991. His research interests are in differential geometry in finite and infinite dimensions, particularly with applications to/from mathematical physics. He is the author of the book, "The Laplacian on a Riemannian Manifold" aimed at graduate students.
 

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