Celebrating APAM Graduates

Photo: APAM Senior Award Winners (left-right) Sophia Guizzo, Kaiwen Zhang, Kaylynn Chen, and Prof. Marc Spiegelman

Professor Marc Spiegelman, Chair of the APAM Department, presented awards to three outstanding seniors at the 2024 APAM Senior Dinner and Award Ceremony. Each winner was selected by the APAM faculty in recognition of their outstanding academic achievements.

Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Winner
Kaiwen Zhang

Applied Physics Faculty Award Winner
Sophia Guizzo

Rhodes Prize for Materials Science Winner
Kaylynn Chen

Kaiwen Zhang, Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Winner: This year’s Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Winner, Kaiwen Zhang, is driven by a persistent interest in mathematical problems arising in real-world phenomena. He challenged himself with advanced courses, studying analytical and numerical techniques that produce precise and meaningful insights on mathematical systems. In the senior seminar, collaborating with Anna Mazhar and Siyuan Qiu, he studied cloaking in electromagnetism through the lens of inverse problems. By analyzing invariance under change-of-variable of associated PDEs and related bilinear form estimates, the team presented a scenario in which a large volume of abnormal conductivity can appear identical to a small or nonexistent volume in terms of boundary measurements. The conclusion has implications in medical imaging and resource detection. Supervised by Prof. Kui Ren, he explored stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics, designing energy functions and experimenting the balance of randomness and gradient descent in optimization algorithms using an original step-wise performance visualization tool. He has also gained interest in variational analysis in research reading mentored by Jackson Turner and supervised by Prof. Michael Weinstein. In the reading project, he investigated symmetry-breaking behavior in nonlinear time-independent Hartree equation and the underlying competition between potential energy and nonlinear energy as the solution scales in mass. Outside of school, he has gained industry exposure through internships at Deloitte Canada and Mercer China. After graduating from Columbia, he will pursue a PhD in Mathematics at the Courant Institute of New York University, where he wishes to build on the passion he obtained at APAM, and investigate many more problems in fundamental or applied mathematics.

Sophia Guizzo, Applied Physics Faculty Award Winner: This year’s Applied Physics Faculty award winner, Sophia Guizzo, has engaged in multiple research projects within the Applied Physics department. As a sophomore, Sophia was an undergraduate researcher in the Venkataraman Group where she studied the effect of localized electric fields on chemical reactions. She has spent the last two years conducting research in the Columbia Plasma Physics Lab, where she worked on the initial design of an experiment to measure cryogenic pellet ablation with applications to fusion energy technology.  More recently, Sophia leveraged computational tools to assess the effect of plasma shaping on stability in tokamak fusion reactors.  Outside of research, Sophia served as a project manager of Columbia Engineers Without Borders for two years.  In this role, she led a trip to Uganda to repair a solar microgrid system that powers local schools and businesses. She is also a teaching assistant for the introductory physics sequence for scientists and engineers. Sophia will be staying at Columbia as a PhD student in Applied Physics to study plasma physics with applications to fusion energy.

Kaylynn Chen, Rhodes Prize for Materials Science Winner: The winner of this year’s Rhodes Prize for Materials Science, Kaylynn Chen, is interested in experimental quantum computing, specifically superconducting quantum computing hardware. She was involved in a summer internship at MIT’s Lincoln Lab Group 89 (Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems) developing a code framework for automating the calibration of superconducting qubits and creating a simulation program for efficient software testing. At Columbia University, she worked with Professor James Hone in the Mechanical Engineering Department and Dr. Kin Chong Fong of Raytheon BBN to fabricate hybrid Van der Waals transmon qubits. Her Senior Design Project focused on performing second harmonic generation, a nonlinear optics measurement, on tungsten diselenide crystals to benchmark superconducting qubit device parameters. After graduating with a minor in computer science, she will be pursuing a PhD in Applied Physics at Yale University with plans to research quantum networking and quantum transduction.   

Name: Emily Fernandez, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: Joining Synchrony’s Business Leadership Program as a data analyst on their Credit Team in NYC
Highlights at Columbia? My favorite memory from Columbia has been my Applied Math Senior Seminar. The course was so essential to me building my confidence and skills as a mathematician and allowed me to study an intersection of fields that I love: music recommendation systems built on different machine learning algorithms. I also have immense gratitude for the Computer Science (CS) department. CS is a passion that I haphazardly stumbled into my sophomore year and have taken courses in every semester since because I find it so engaging and fun to work through.
What has Columbia taught you? The most important thing that I learned in Columbia is that it is okay to feel challenged, in fact it is expected, and there is always a path to clarity through community. It is so crucial to ask questions and to rely on peers for their insights and support along the academic and personal journey that is college. I will forever treasure the friends I made at Columbia but know that the SEAS camaraderie I’ve been lucky enough to experience these past years will hold an extra special place in my heart.

Name: William Boyes, PhD ‘24 Applied Physics, Plasma Physics
Future Plans: Postdoc at General Atomics
Highlights at Columbia? I had an incredible experience at DIII-D and APAM Fridays were nice

Name: Thomas Harris, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: I’m now a Ph.D. student at Teacher’s College studying math education. I want to teach college mathematics and conduct education research on student generated teaching materials for college students.
Highlights at Columbia? Dynamical Systems, Statistical Inference, Topology, Fourier Analysis were really interesting.
What has Columbia taught you? “You don’t know unless you believe.” - Amir Sagiv

Name: Michael Tulskikh, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: I’m going to work over the summer, and then move to Australia to work remotely as a mathematical analyst while I travel for a year. After that, I plan to pursue full time traveling, and hopefully join the peace corps in Armenia after I visit Australia.
Highlights at Columbia? I really enjoyed the math courses I got the opportunity to take. The senior seminar class was also fun as it allowed me to explore an area of science I previously knew practically nothing about.

Name: Victor Zhou, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: Work at New York Life and study for FINRA exams and CFA
Highlights at Columbia? Joining in Columbia POPS and taking Modern Analysis

Name: Blake Garber, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: Masters Degree (MAFN @ Columbia)
Highlights at Columbia? Hard work is rewarded. The mandatory seminar for APAM majors was an amazing experience that highlighted the real world uses of all of our studies. It was a great capstone experience for me.

Name: Angeliki Stougiannou, BS ‘24 Applied Mathematics
Future Plans: MS/PhD Earth and Environmental Engineering
Highlights at Columbia? Favorite classes: Analysis and Optimization and APMA senior seminar projects
What has Columbia taught you? The beginners mindset, never assume you know all the answers and make creativity the core of your engineering practice.