Undergraduate Awards

At each graduation, the Division of Applied Mathematics recognizes its most outstanding undergraduate students with the following awards:

Rohn Truell Premium Prize

2025 Recipients: Michelle Liu, Alan Chen, Matthew McQuistion 

The Rohn Truell Premium Prize was created in 1968 by friends of Truell, a former professor and chair of the Division of Applied Mathematics. It is awarded annually to a member or members of the graduating class concentrating in applied mathematics who achieved special distinction during their studies at Brown.

Rohn Truell was born on April 6, 1913 in Washington DC.  He received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell in 1941.  In 1946 he was appointed as an assistant professor of Physics at Brown.  He was promoted to associate professor in 1946, and became a professor of Applied Mathematics in 1951.  Professor Truell established the Metals Research Laboratory in 1948, and was the chair of the laboratory until he suffered a sudden stroke and died on January 10, 1968.  Professor Truell is remembered as a gifted experimentalist and researcher who possessed great scientific intuition.  He pioneered the study of solids by means of ultrasonics, and the Metals Research Laboratory which he organized at Brown University.  This laboratory quickly became the leading world center in this field of exploration. 

Jerome L. Stein Memorial Award for Undergraduate Excellence

2025 Recipients: Ayushman Choudhury, Grant Landon, Rajen Parekh,  Anna Lapre

The Jerome L. Stein Memorial Award recognizes undergraduate students in one of the applied mathematics concentrations who show outstanding potential in an interdisciplinary area that involves applied mathematics. The award honors the memory of Jerome Stein, a former professor in the Applied Mathematics and Economics departments at Brown.

Jerome Stein was born on November 14th in 1928.  He received his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1955.  Professor Stein joined the Department of Economics at Brown University in 1953, and was a visiting professor in the Division of Applied Mathematics in 1993.  Professor Stein traveled throughout the world as a visiting professor.  He had appointments at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,  the Sorbonne of Paris, Tohoku University in Japan, the University of Melbourne in Australia, the Universite de la Mediterranee in France at the LaSplenza in the University of Rome in Italy, and the University of Munich, in 1994.  He was honored with many awards throughout his world-wide travels, including a Ford Foundation Faculty Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council Faculty Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, to name a few.  Professor Stein was the editor of many Economic and Mathematical journals.  His main research interests were in the interdisciplinary modelling between applied mathematics and important economic problems.  Professor Stein enjoyed fruitful collaboration with Ettore Infante in the Division of Applied Mathematics and with Wendell Fleming studying stochastic optimal control and dynamic programming to international finance.  

Undergraduate Award Recipients