The McGehee Award for Excellent Research by a Junior Faculty Member will be awarded this year jointly to Pramod Achar and Hongchao Zhang. This award was established to honor Carruth McGehee on his retirement. The area of the award rotates between Mathematics; Humanities and the Social Sciences; and Natural Sciences. The first winner of the award was Milen Yakimov in 2009. The current award is the first in Mathematics since then. The award is currently valued at $1,400 and will be divided between the two winners.
The award is given in recognition of a specified work, that is, a book, a paper, or a series of papers on a coherent theme. Pramod Achar was nominated for his proof, joint with Laura Rider, of the Mirković-Vilonen Conjecture. Hongchao Zhang was nominated for his work, joint with W.W. Hager, developing the Conjugate Gradient Method with Guaranteed Descent.