Serkan Gugercin, professor of mathematics in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, has been named the A.V. Morris Professor by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The A.V. Morris Professorship was established by Laura M. Burrows in honor of her father, Aneurin Varr Morris, a 1923 graduate of Virginia Tech and a mathematics instructor in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences from 1923 through 1965. The professorship recognizes teaching and research excellence in mathematics, and recipients hold the professorship for a period of five years.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2003, Gugercin is a leading researcher in the field of model reduction. This field uses mathematical structure to replace computationally infeasible simulations of dynamical systems by simulations that retain sufficient accuracy in a computationally tractable formulation.

Gugercin’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He has written four book chapters, 26 journal articles, and 33 peer-reviewed conference proceedings.

He received a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2007, and he currently is visiting the Technical University Berlin on a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.

Gugercin is an associate editor of two professional journals, he has been active in conference and mini-symposium organizations, and he has served on the Virginia Tech Commission on Research. His efforts have led to Virginia Tech hosting the 2017 Householder Symposium on Numerical Linear Algebra, which is held once every three years and is the preeminent conference in its field.

Gugercin is a respected teacher who has played a crucial role in the development of two new computationally oriented undergraduate mathematics courses in addition to a graduate course in his research area. He is a department leader in promoting undergraduate research, and he advises many undergraduate and graduate students.

Gugercin received his bachelor’s degree from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Rice University.

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