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LSU students fared well on the 2013 Putnam exam that took place on . 4113 students participated. Two students reached the prestigious top 500 list: Paxton Turner reached 30 points and was ranked 266th, Avery St. Dizier reached 22 points and was ranked 408th. 

The LSU students were coached by Professor Karl Mahlburg. Out of the 11 LSU students who took the exam, 6 scored 9 points or higher. As usual, the overall median this year was 1 point.

Professor Susanne Brenner was named 2013 Distinguished Research Master. Susanne Brenner is the Michael F. and Roberta Nesbit McDonald Professor of Mathematics. Previous recipients from the Math Department were Gestur Olafsson (2008), James Oxley (1999), and Neal Stoltzfus (1981).

Professor Stephen Shipman has been awarded the first annual Marion "Soc" Socolofsky Award for Teaching Excellence by the LSU College of Sciences.

Professors Michael Malisoff and Hongchao Zhang were named 2013 LSU Rainmakers. Michael Malisoff was recognized as Mid Career Scholar, and Hongchao Zhang as Emerging Scholar.

Brandon Oubre (Double major: Computer Science and Mathematics) and Paxton Turner (Mathematics) were two of about 280 recipients of the 2014 Goldwater Scholarships. Rachael Keller (Mathematics) was recognized with an Honorable Mentions.

Congratulations to Peter Lambert-Cole (soon-to-be LSU PhD, advisor Prof. Baldridge), who has been appointed as a Post-doctoral Fellow at Indiana University

LSU is hosting the annual meeting of the Louisiana-Mississippi section of the MAA this year. The meeting will be held March 7-8 in the Cook Conference Center. The Plenary Session speaker is MAA President-Elect Francis Edward Su of Harvey Mudd College, who will speak on "Combinatorial Fixed Point Theorems". The R.D. Anderson Lecture will be given by Prof. Jesus De Loera of UC-Davis, who will speak on "100 Years of Helly's Theorem".

Michael Neilan, who was an NSF-postdoc at LSU under Professor Susanne C. Brenner from 2009-2011, received a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. Michael Neilan is currently assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jasson Vindas who received his PhD in 2009 under Professor Ricardo Estrada was awarded the Costa Rica Science Prize "Clodomiro Picado T." of 2013. He is currently Assistant Professor at Ghent University, Belgium.

It is only the second time that a mathematician received this prize; Ricardo Estrada was the winner in 1996.

Professor Guillermo Ferreyra received the BASF Professor of Excellence Award. He was recognized during the LSU-Texas A&M Football game.

Guillermo Ferreyra was chairman of the Department of Mathematics from 2000 to 2003, dean of the LSU College of Arts & Science from 2004 to 2009, and currently serves as the interim dean of the LSU College of Science.