Vaughan Jones has accepted a faculty position as Distinguished Professor with the Department of Mathematics beginning in the fall of 2011. A preeminent mathematician from UC Berkeley, Jones will be a tremendous addition to the department’s already strong research group in operator algebras.

The Department of Mathematics hosted a two-day Shanks Workshop on “Conformal Field Theory and Von Neumann Algebras” October 29-30, 2011. The workshop explored the deep connections between CFT and the theory of subfactors and planar algebras.

Several exciting conferences and workshops are scheduled for the 2011-2012 academic year, demonstrating the department’s support for faculty-organized conferences that bring mathematicians from all over the world to Vanderbilt each year.

Constructive Approximation, an internationally recognized mathematics journal headquartered in the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics, was ranked No. 10 out of 277 mathematics journals by Journal Citation Reports.

Graduate student Xuemei Chen won the award for best student paper at the 9th International Conference on Sampling Theory and Applications (SampTA) held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in May 2011.