Two College of Science faculty receive honors from Board of Visitors to support research

Virginia Tech College of Science faculty members Serkan Gugercin and Gerelt Tserenjigmid recently were honored by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

Gugercin received the Class of 1950 Mathematics Professorship. Tserenjigmid received the H.H.H. Faculty Fellowship in Economics. The awards were approved at the Aug. 25-26 meeting of the Board of Visitors.

Class of 1950 Mathematics Professorship

The Virginia Tech Class of 1950 Mathematics Professorship, given to Gugercin, was established through a donation from the Virginia Tech Class of 1950 for the purpose of attracting and retaining eminent scholars to the Virginia Tech Department of Mathematics. Gugercin was nominated by College of Science Dean Sally C. Morton, with the nomination supported by the Class of 1950 Mathematics Professorship selection committee, composed of department faculty members and head Eric de Sturler.

Gugercin, who has held the title of A.V. Morris Professor of Mathematics since September 2016, is a leading researcher in the field of model reduction and data-driven modeling. His research focuses on replacing computationally infeasible simulations of complex dynamical systems by simulations that are computationally tractable yet retain high-fidelity. Gugercin’s research has attracted more than $5.5 million from such agencies as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for projects ranging from analysis and design of power networks to flow control.

His awards include an NSF CAREER Award, a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, and a Teaching Award from Jacobs University Bremen. Prior to joining Virginia Tech in 2003, Gugercin earned a bachelor’s degree from Middle East Technical University in 1997, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Rice University in, respectively, 1999 and 2003, all in electrical engineering.

He is a deputy director of the computational modeling & data analytics program, part of the College of Science’s Academy of Integrated Science; an associate editor of two journals, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ (SIAM) Journal on Scientific Computing and Systems, and Control Letters; and co-author of an upcoming book on model reduction, to be published by SIAM in its computational science and engineering book series.

H.H.H. Faculty Fellowship in Economics

The H.H.H. Faculty Fellowship in Economics was established in the Department of Economics through a gift from Hans H. Haller, who began his career at Virginia Tech in 1986. Haller established the two-year fellowship to provide support to an outstanding faculty member, with a preference for junior or early-career faculty.

Tserenjigmid was likewise nominated by Morton, with agreement from department head Sudipta Sarangi and the department’s Economics Honorifics Committee.

Tserenjigmid works on behavioral decision theory models, with his research focusing on the different, but intersecting areas of individual decision-making: stochastic choice, choice over multi-attribute alternatives, dynamic choice, and choice under uncertainty. He is currently an associate editor for Group Decision and Negotiation.

Tserenjigmid earned his bachelor of arts from the University of Tokyo in 2011 and master’s and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology in 2013 and 2016, respectively, all in economics. He joined Virginia Tech in 2016, and has since become an integral part of the Data and Decisions Destination Area and the newly proposed behavioral decision sciences degree being developed in the College of Science.