UIC mathematician named 2018 Simons Fellow

Roman Shvydkoy, UIC professor of mathematics.

University of Illinois at Chicago professor Roman Shvydkoy is among 40 researchers from across the U.S. who have been awarded a 2018 Simons Fellowship in mathematics.

The competitive grant from the Simons Foundation extends faculty sabbaticals from one academic term to a full year, enabling recipients to focus solely on their research. Recipients are selected based on their scientific accomplishments and on the potential scientific impact of the work to be done during their fellowship.

Shvydkoy, who is based in the department of mathematics, statistics, and computer science, will focus on a project studying models of collective motion and self-organized behavior.

“These models aim to describe a wide range of natural phenomena, such as swarming of insects, alignment of birds flying in a flock, dynamics of schools of fish, and even emergence of a consensus in politics on a large scale,” he said. “I will particularly focus on the unanswered question: how does a global alignment of agents happen over time when the only communications between the agents are local?”

Shvydkoy, who has received approximately $825,000 in research support from the National Science Foundation, has research interests in the general area of mathematical analysis with a particular focus on partial differential equations. His work and widely published research covers the study of evolution equations of viscous fluids, turbulence and, more recently, models of collective motion.

Prior to arriving at UIC in 2003, Shvydkoy completed postdoctoral work at the University of Missouri at Columbia and a lectureship at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his doctorate from Missouri in 2001.

The Simons Foundation’s mathematics and physical sciences division, established in 2010, supports research in mathematics, theoretical physics and theoretical computer science by providing funding for individuals, institutions and science infrastructure.