Sloan Fellowship for Dr. Matthew DeVos:
Awarded $50 000 Sloan Fellowship for Graph Theory Research

Matt DeVos, an Assistant Professor in SFY's Department of Mathematics since 2008, has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship.

Matt works principally in graph theory, a particular strength of SFU's discrete mathematics group. His undergraduate work was at Carnegie Mellon, and his PhD was awarded by Princeton in 2000. Matt is broadly interested in topics in combinatorics. In his case that means trying to count things that are hard to count by finding suitable structures in the things being counted. A major part of his research concerns the uses of algebraic and topological tools in the study of graphs, thought of as collections of dots that are connected to each other by lines. Graph theory has important
applications in many fields, including the design of networks for cellular telephones. Matt, however, concentrates on the pure mathematics behind the applications.

The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.  These two-year fellowships are awarded yearly to 118 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

Of the 118 fellowships, 10 went to scholars at Canadian Universities, and 5 of these were for mathematics. Matt is therefore in very select company. The Fellowship consists of $50,000 over 2 years, to be spent in aid of research. Previous recipients include 54 Nobel Laureates and Fields Medallists.

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