The Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics, given in recognition of distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise and enthusiasm for mathematics, was awarded to Abhinav Kumar , a senior in mathematics from Jameshedpur Bihar, India. The prize was created as a memorial by the parents of Bucsela, a member of the Class of 1984 who died as a result of congenital heart problems during his senior year.
The Charles and Holly Housman Award for Excellence in Teaching went to John Dunagan , a graduate student from Dallas; a second award was shared by graduate students Baochi Nguyen from Rosemead, Calif., and Igor Pavlovsky of Omsk, Russia. The award is supported by the Charles L. and Holly Housman Fund.
The Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize, established by the support of Charles (B.E. '55) and Jennifer Johnson, is given to a graduate student in mathematics for an outstanding research paper accepted for publication in a major journal. There were two recipients this year: Ryan O'Donnell of Oshawa, Canada, and Donald Yau of Hong Kong. O'Donnell wrote "Hardness Amplification Within NP"; Yau's paper was titled "Maps to Spaces in the Genus of Infinite Quaternionic Projective Space."
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 5, 2002.
