Mathematics and statistics are used in research to address a variety of problems. Some examples include using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to design cleaner diesel engines; using CFD to study flows in visco-elastic fluids and emulsions, including those important to the food industry; developing statistical methods and efficient computer algorithms to identify genes correlated with disease, including diabetes, hypertension, and Lou Gehrig’s disease; designing and analyzing error-correcting codes to improve the transport of information over noisy channels; studying combinatorial designs for applications such as product testing and scheduling, and developing monitoring plans for wildlife populations.

The department is affiliated with the Computational Science and Engineering program, in which students combine mathematics and high-performance computing to solve real engineering or science problems.

The department has a thorough training program for graduate teaching assistants. GTAs are carefully prepared for their instructional duties and for future teaching careers at the university level.