Painter Undergraduate Research Fellows

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

The Painter family established an endowment in 2019 to fund scholarly initiatives in the Mathematics Department. The Painter Fellowship fund was created to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. James A. Painter. Dr. Painter’s career in Mathematics began at the University of Pittsburgh where he received a BS degree in Mathematics in 1951. After serving in Korea, he returned to the University of Pittsburgh on the GI Bill to earn an MS in Mathematics in 1954. This was followed with a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. After a long and distinguished career at IBM he and his family settled in the DC area where Dr. Painter continued to contribute as an active researcher, consultant and entrepreneur in the computer industry until he passed away in 2018. His family says that Dr. Painter was a big believer in the value of education and that his time at the University of Pittsburgh, especially as a student in the Mathematics Department, proved important in launching his own career. This new endowment created by the family in honor of Dr. Painter provides a $2000 stipend for each of three Painter Undergraduate Research Fellows (PURF) to pursue their research initiatives for 8 weeks during the summer, beginning in 2021.

Thanks to the generosity of the Painter family, we were able to fund 8-week Summer Undergraduate Research Experiences for the following students: 

  • Madeline McCrea, mentored by Jon Rubin and Bard Ermentrout
  • Riley Debski, mentored by Carl Wang-Erickson
  • Gabriel Weiner, mentored by Thomas Gilton.