Andrew Bernoff
Andrew Bernoff, PhD, Professor of Mathematics, is a mathematician whose research applies dynamical systems methods to understanding physical and biological phenomena. He is passionate about undergraduate education, mentoring undergraduate research, and helping students find careers and pursue graduate studies in applied mathematics.
Bernoff was an undergraduate at MIT, receiving degrees in both math and physics. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge where he studied the application of dynamical systems to fluid dynamics and was supported by a Marshall Scholarship. His research career features collaborations with experimentalists and theorists in physics, engineering, chemistry and biology in addition to other mathematicians, both applied and theoretical. His recent work on swarming has received international recognition. His paper “A Primer of Swarm Equilibria” (co-authored with Chad Topaz) received a SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize, was chosen to be republished in SIAM Review and in 2015 was an ESI highly cited paper in the top 1% of its academic field. More broadly he has published over fifty papers that have received more than two thousand citations. His work has been supported by multiple NSF grants and most recently a Simons Foundation Collaboration Grant.
Bernoff’s passion for undergraduate education led him to Harvey Mudd College where he has supervised over sixty undergraduate research experiences. Of his twenty-six senior thesis students, thirteen have received PhDs (from institutions including Princeton, MIT and Cambridge) and five more are presently pursuing graduate study. He was an Education Section editor for SIAM Review for over a decade and has served on the editorial board of multiple undergraduate research journals. He has co-authored papers with dozens of undergraduates in leading journals in applied mathematics and physics.
Bernoff was the Director of the Claremont Center for Mathematical Sciences (2018-2020) and Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Dynamical Systems (2018-2019). He was on the William Lowell Putnam Competition Problems Committee and co-authored the Putnam Exam from 2019-2021.