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Two faculty members, Bernard Lidický and Jason McCullough, in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, were named Scott Hanna Faculty Fellows in the Department of Mathematics.

The Scott Hanna Faculty Fellowship was created after Scott Hanna (’77 metallurgy) bequeathed a generous seven-figure donation to the math department. Hanna passed away in 2019 after a long illness. The award recognizes outstanding math faculty who demonstrate excellence in teaching, research and service, in addition to making meaningful contributions to the field of mathematics.

Bernard Lidický receives Scott Hanna Faculty Fellowship
Lidický, associate professor of mathematics, is an accomplished mathematician with expertise in combinatorics, in particular extremal graph theory and graph coloring.

He will use the fellowship award to further his research and provide research opportunities for graduate students. Lidický will also organize an Ames-based math conference to broaden awareness of Iowa State mathematics and attract top research talent to the university.

Lidický has built a legacy of achievement during his six years at Iowa State. He serves as principal investigator for two National Science Foundation (NSF) awards totaling $610,000. He is also a co-principal investigator for several NSF-funded research projects. Lidický also played a key role in helping the math department secure a $1.5 million Research Training Group award.

He was recently named associate chair for research and faculty development in the Department of Mathematics. Lidický is also an editorial board member for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Journal on Discrete Mathematics.

Lidický cofounded the postbaccalaureate math certificate program with Michael Young, associate professor of mathematics. He is actively involved with the program which has helped many undergraduate mathematics degree holders smoothly transition into the rigors of graduate mathematics.

Lidický joined Iowa State in 2014 after serving as a research assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2011, he earned his Ph.D. at Charles University in the Czech Republic.

“It is an honor to receive this fellowship. I had the pleasure of meeting Scott Hanna and it was a memorable experience,” Lidický said. “His gift allows me to build on my research and help students in our department to further their careers and become successful mathematicians. I look forward to the additional collaborations that this honor will allow me to do.”

Jason McCullough receives Scott Hanna Faculty Fellowship
Scott Hanna Faculty Fellowship recipient Jason McCullough is an associate professor and nationally recognized mathematician with expertise in the areas of commutative and computational algebra, algebraic geometry and coding theory.

McCullough is an exceptional researcher with 179 citations. He’s published 26 papers in several leading mathematics journals, including the Journal of the American Mathematical Society and the Journal of Algebra.

A talented math educator, McCullough has been invited to speak at numerous conferences, seminars and colloquiums around the globe. He is an editorial board member for the International Journal of Algebra and Computation and is co-principal investigator on a successful NSF conference grant.

McCullough arrived at Iowa State in 2017 after serving as an assistant professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Prior to his time at Rider University, he held postdoctoral appointments at the University of California, Riverside and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. McCullough earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2009.

“It is an absolute honor to accept the Scott Hanna Fellowship. It is gratifying to have my work recognized and I am excited about what these fellowships can do for the department as a whole,” McCullough said. “My current plan is to use the fellowship to fund a postdoctoral scholar at ISU with whom I could collaborate, focusing on problems in computational algebraic geometry. I plan to use the remaining funds for academic travel for myself, my students, and visitors to ISU when it is safe to travel again.”