Alumnus Ryan Unger an NSF Researcher
Ryan Unger came to UT as an engineering student and started doing undergraduate research on experimental materials science in nuclear engineering. In his freshman year, he treated mathematics as a hobby and did not think it was a viable career option.
The more mathematics courses he took, however, the more he liked mathematics. Taking several upper-level and graduate-level courses with professors including Alex Freire, Theodora Bourni, Mat Langford—in advanced calculus, differential equations, and the calculus of variations and geometric analysis—convinced Unger of his love and passion for mathematics.
He earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from UT in 2019 and then excelled as a graduate student at Princeton University. He earned his doctorate in May 2024 and was a winner of the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, the top graduate student honor from Princeton.
Upon graduation, he received a string of prestigious fellowship offers from many top schools. Unger is now a National Science Foundation postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and simultaneously a Miller Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Well done and congratulations, Ryan!