UIC math grad student earns inaugural Simons Fellowship

“Notification of Update.” That was the generic subject line of the email that told UIC graduate student Clay Mizgerd he had won a newly created, $30,000 fellowship.  

When Mizgerd opened the note, however, his reaction was far from sedate. He’d been honored, with 39 other mathematics graduate students from across the country, with the Simons Dissertation Fellowship. In its inaugural year, the fellowship provides awardees with a $30,000 stipend over two years plus $2,000 for the student’s university. Mizgerd is one of two awardees from Illinois; the other studies at Northwestern University.  

“When I saw it, I thought, ‘OK, this sounds bad, because nobody sends congratulations using words like ‘notification,’” said Mizgerd, now in his third year in the UIC Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “When I opened it and realized, I thought, ‘Wow, this is fantastic!’” 

The Simons Dissertation Fellowship is from the Simons Foundation, which funds mathematics research across the country. The fellowship marks its first major investment in graduate students.  

For UIC’s mathematics department, Mizgerd’s selection is a point of pride. 

“Clay is technically strong, optimistic and not afraid of learning new things,” said Vishesh Jain, assistant professor of mathematics, statistics and computer science and one of Mizgerd’s advisors. “In terms of signaling the strength of our graduate program and attracting future students, it’s a very good sign.” 

Researching discrete mathematics 

Mizgerd said his head has always been full of math. He was the kid on the soccer field looking at the backs of jerseys and multiplying the numbers he read.  

When he joined UIC’s mathematics department after finishing his undergraduate degree at Williams College, he wasn’t sure what his focus would be.  

“UIC math is very strong in many areas,” Mizgerd said. “There are so many great faculty here that even though I didn’t know what I wanted to do coming in, I thought it was a great place where I could figure out what I wanted to study.”  

Mizgerd found himself drawn to combinatorics, the study of discrete and continuous numbers to analyze structures. His research has implications for computer science, particularly in the design of randomized algorithms.  

Mizgerd is also a fellow with the Institute for Data, Econometrics, Algorithms and Learning with the support of Georgia Tech associate professor Will Perkins. IDEAL is a consortium of Chicago-area universities that partners with members of the Learning Theory team at Google to focus research on the theoretical foundations of data science.  

The IDEAL and Simons fellowships show that Mizgerd’s “work is being seen,” Jain said.  

Mizgerd and Perkins also collaborated on a recent project about triangle-free graphs, significant to the Ramsey theory. In August, Mizgerd joined Perkins to present the paper at the Random Structures and Algorithms conference in Vienna, just weeks after Mizgerd learned he’d received the Simons Dissertation Fellowship. 

Building community and collaborations 

Mentorship and collaboration have shaped Mizgerd’s academic journey. He works closely with both Jain and UIC mathematics professor Dhruv Mubayi and credits them with helping him grow as a researcher. 

“They’ve been instrumental in getting me to where I am today,” he said. “I couldn’t be here without both of them, and the other faculty in the department has been so supportive of anything I need.”  

Jain is quick to praise Mizgerd’s independence and initiative.  

“He’s incredibly proactive,” Jain said. “He’ll come back after reading a 60-page technical paper with thoughtful insights. He’s also built a wide network of collaborators, many of whom he’s connected with on his own at conferences.” 

That collaborative spirit aligns perfectly with the goals of the Simons Fellowship, which provides funding for travel and research. Mizgerd already has several trips planned, including Atlanta, San Diego and Urbana and looks forward to deepening his connections across the mathematical community.