Chris H. Rycroft

Professor and Associate Chair of Mathematics

Chris is an applied mathematician and joined the UW–Madison Department of Mathematics in summer 2022. He also serves at the Associate Chair (since summer 2025), where he oversees all aspects of mathematics instruction in the department.

Prior to starting at UW–Madison, Chris was a professor in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 2014–2022. From 2007–2013 Chris lived in Berkeley, California where he was a postdoctoral scholar and Morrey Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2007 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his bachelor's degree from the University of Cambridge in 2001.

Chris grew up in the Lake District, a rural and beautiful area in the northwest corner of England. This kindled a lifelong love of the outdoors and he has enjoyed hiking in every place that he has lived. Chris also likes astronomy, photography, science fiction, cooking, and color coordination.

Email / Google Scholar / ORCID / CV / GitHub / Flickr / Last.fm
Fun fact: Co-founded the Cambridge University Jugglers' Association

Ann Bigelow

Ph.D. student in Mathematics

Ann spent most of her life pursuing a career in ballet, but then transitioned to mathematics during college. Ann graduated summa cum laude in 2024 with a bachelor's in applied mathematics from the University of Utah. Ann is broadly interested in using scientific computing for problems concerned with big data manipulation. To tie ballet and mathematics together, Ann also likes highlighting artistry in math and scientific visualization. In her free time Ann enjoys outdoor activities, baking only the best of pies, knitting, and listening to classic rock.

Email / Website

Emma Hayes

Ph.D. student in Mathematics

Emma graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in Computational and Applied Mathematics. She is broadly interested in computational modeling of differential equations, and loves exploring real-life examples of reaction-diffusion systems. Outside of math she enjoys baking, hiking, thrifting, and talking about movies.

Email / Website
Fun fact: Co-founded the Thirfty Mellon

Abigail Jones

Ph.D. student in Mathematics

Abbi graduated in 2023 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from BYU. She is interested in using computation to study math, specifically in how to translate mathematical questions into computational questions. As an undergraduate, this looked like working on projects in computational number theory. Now Abbi is interested more broadly in scientific computing and building open-source software. Abbi is from New Mexico and is still most happy when in, on, or near mountains. She loves hiking, British comedy panel shows, and playing video games.

Email / Website

Arthur Young

Ph.D. student in Mathemtics

Arthur studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol for his undergraduate education. Arthur then completed a master's degree in the computational science and engineering at Harvard University. He is interested in inverse physics problems as well as computational analysis of nonlinear physical systems. Arthur has an ongoing project dedicated to the discovery of Lie Groups in corrupted physical data as a novel manifold learning technique, and spent the 2019–2020 academic year working with Melany Hunt at Caltech as a research fellow investigating turbulent multiphase flows.

Arthur grew up in Los Angeles. True to his California roots, Arthur plays beach and indoor volleyball at every (reasonable) opportunity, and hopes to someday teach history of science and mathematics courses alongside the mathematics courses he plans to instruct throughout his career as an academic.

Email / Website

Yue Sun

Van Vleck Assistant Professor

Yue completed her Ph.D. in the Rycroft Group from 2020 to 2024, and she is currently a Van Vleck Assistant Professor (and an amateur marbler). Her research interests are broadly in computational fluid dynamics, mathematical modeling, and scientific visualization, where she aspires to connect science and art. Her current research focuses on numerical methods for fluid–structure interaction. She also studies paper marbling, both for fun and research. She received her master's degree in Computational Science and Engineering from Harvard IACS in 2020 and her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (with a minor in Interactive Media Arts) from New York University Shanghai in 2018.

When not busy tracking bugs in C++ code, Yue likes to cook, bake, hike, watch (animated) movies, and marble.

Email / Website