Rice alumnus wins UT System Outstanding Teacher Award

Josef Sifuentes '10 is an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistical Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Josef Sifuentes

Josef Sifuentes, who earned a Ph.D. from Rice in computational and applied mathematics (CAAM) in 2010, has received a 2021 University of Texas System Regents Outstanding Teacher Award.

Sifuentes is an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistical Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). He is one of 14 faculty members representing UT academic and health institutions selected for the honor.

A Houston native, Sifuentes joined the UTRGV faculty in 2015. His doctoral thesis was titled “Preconditioned Iterative Methods for Inhomogeneous Acoustic Scattering Applications.” His adviser was Mark Embree, now a professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech.

Before joining UTRGV, Sifuentes worked as a research scientist for the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and as a visiting assistant professor at Texas A&M University.

Photo credit: Paul Chouy, Courtesy of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley