Angarone, Beckelhymer, and Kong earn Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (7/10/2025) – Three School of Mathematics PhD students – Robbie Angarone, Daniela Beckelhymer, and Tianyu Kong – recently earned the 2025-26 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) from the University of Minnesota Graduate School. The DDF gives the University's most accomplished PhD candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to write and finalize their dissertation during the fellowship year.
Robbie Angarone joined the UMN Mathematics PhD program after completion of his undergraduate studies in mathematics and philosophy at Macalester College. Under the advisement of Pavlo Pylyavskyy, he is currently studying Pólya Frequency (PF) series, which are power series that generalize real-rooted polynomials. “In particular, I am interested in lifts of PF series to the settings of combinatorics and representation theory,” Angarone says. “In my current projects, these lifts are achieved by ‘upgrading’ the coefficients in a power series to one of (i) graded pieces of an algebraic structure, (ii) symmetric functions, or (iii) totally nonnegative matrices.” Over the course of the next year, Angarone’s main goals are to continue building his research portfolio and to work on applying for academic jobs.
Daniela Beckelhymer came to UMN in 2020 after completing her undergraduate studies in Computational Mathematics and Psychology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Her research interests blend applied mathematical modeling, dynamical systems, and a number of global challenges including climate change, social justice, policy, STEM education accessibility, artificial intelligence, and natural intelligences. She is currently focused on publishing preliminary results from her thesis, which focuses on modeling Arctic Sea ice melt. She is also wrapping up collaborations from several recent workshops, including an American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) Mathematics Research Community collaboration and the Mathematics of Intelligence Long Program at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Los Angeles. “Over the summer and fall, my goals are to complete my thesis research, begin writing my dissertation, and actively engage in the job market while attending conferences to share and discuss my work,” Beckelhymer says.
Tianyu Kong earned an Honors BS in applied mathematics and BA in physics at University of Chicago in 2021, then joined the UMN Mathematics PhD program the following fall. His research focuses on applying mathematical tools to real-life problems, especially within the subject of condensed matter physics. “My current research focuses on modeling twisted bilayer graphene, which consists of stacking two sheets of one atom thick graphene on top of each other with a small twist,” Kong says. “Such materials have exhibited phenomenal properties including superconductivity in recent experiments. I am interested in how changing the mechanical properties, such as moving the atoms through straining the material, may affect the electronic properties. I use techniques from analysis to give some rigorous estimates on my predictions, and compare my results with actual experiment observations.” When he looks towards the future, Kong says he aims to continue conducting research in academia on the interface of applied mathematics and physics. “There are still many interesting problems to study in the field of two-dimensional materials. New experiments are being done every day, motivating new theories to explain the findings,” he says. “One interesting direction for me to work on is the system with interacting electrons. While modeling the system of one electron is (relatively) easy, if the system contains many electrons, each allowed to interact with each other, the computation can be extremely complicated. I would like to develop efficient ways to model and compute properties in such systems, and try to shed light on the mysteries behind phenomenons like superconductivity.”
Congratulations Robbie, Daniela, and Tianyu!
About the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
The University of Minnesota DDF program aims to give the University’s most accomplished PhD candidates – those who have passed the written and oral preliminary examinations and their program coursework – an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write their dissertation during the fellowship year. The fellowship grants awardees a $25,000 stipend, academic year tuition, subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan for up to one calendar year, and a $1,000 conference grant.