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Toufic M. Suidan is one of 118 young scholars in the U.S. and Canada to receive the $50,000 prize.

By University Communications
February 21, 2008

Toufic Mubadda Suidan, an assistant professor of mathematics at The University of Arizona, has won a two-year, $50,000 research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Suidan is one of 118 young mathematicians, scientists and economists from 64 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada to win the award this year.

Suidan has a bachelor of science degree from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate from Princeton University. He completed his postdoctoral research at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and joined the UA mathematics department faculty in the fall of 2007. His research focuses on probabilistic problems arising in mathematical physics.

“The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work,” said Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Research fellows are free to pursue lines of inquiry that interest them, and employ their funding in a wide variety of ways to further their research aims.

“I was just delighted to learn that Toufic has received a Sloan fellowship,” said Ken McLaughlin, acting associate head for the graduate program in the mathematics department. “He researches in a variety of areas, including stochastic differential equations and random matrix theory. He is quite unique in that he is able to use intricate probabilistic concepts to understand complicated phenomena with inherent randomness, and then provide descriptive explanations that are relevant to non-probabilists.”

Since 1955, when the Sloan Foundation began making these awards, 35 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize and 14 have received the Fields Medal, the top honor in mathematics.

Over the past 10 years, nine UA faculty members have won Sloan Research Fellowships. Seven are still at the UA, including Matthias Steinmetz, Dennis Zaritsky, Daniel J. Eisenstein and Xiaohui Fan from Steward Observatory, plus Alain Goriely from mathematics, Ubirajara van Klock in physics and Suidan.