Ryan Hunter Receives 2026 KU Graduate Studies Summer Research Scholarship

Ryan Hunter received a 2026 Summer Research Scholarship from the KU Office of Graduate Studies.  The award comes with a stipend of $6,000 to assist with Hunter’s dissertation research during the summer session.  The award places him among a select group of graduate students, all of whom have excellent academic records and the strongest endorsements from their respective departments.

Ryan is a graduate student in the KU Department of Mathematics working on his Ph.D.  His research interests are mainly in commutative algebra, with a focus on describing positive characteristic singularities via the Frobenius morphism. He is interested in how this relates to the theories of D-modules and local cohomology, as well as related invariants. Ryan highly values explicit computation and concrete examples.  He has given talks at a variety of conferences.  His advisor is Emily Witt, professor of mathematics.

 He is currently a graduate teaching assistant, was an officer for the Math Graduate Student Organization, and has been a co-organizer of the Kansas Mathematics Graduate Student Conference.  From the math department, he has received the Paul Conrad graduate scholarship (2026), Himmelberg graduate student award (2025), and was a finalist for the Florence Black Award for Excellence in Teaching (2026).