Rate My Professor Evelyn Sander

Dr. Evelyn Sander is a Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University, where she currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies, a position she assumed in 2023 after acting as Co-Director of Graduate Studies from 2018 to 2023. She holds affiliations as Instructional Faculty in Mathematical Sciences and Research Faculty in the Neuroscience Program. Sander earned her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1990, graduating with honors and induction into Phi Beta Kappa, and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1996 under advisor R. McGehee. Her research specializes in numerical and theoretical methods of dynamical systems, encompassing period-doubling cascades and chaos, quasiperiodicity, Turing instabilities in reaction-diffusion equations, rigorous computation, spinodal decomposition, nucleation in Cahn-Hilliard and diblock copolymer equations, and mathematical visualization including 3D printing of invariant manifolds. She directs the GMU Math MakerLab, which produces mathematical 3D prints, and has served as an IBM Visiting Professor in Applied Mathematics at Brown University in Fall 2014.

Sander's contributions to the field include serving as Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems from 2018 to 2023 and currently as Associate Editor, as well as election to the SIAM Council in 2021. She has organized the SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems (DS17 and DS19) and the Midwest/McGehee Dynamical Systems Conference in 2018. Notable grants include the Simons Collaboration Grant for 'Computation and visualization of dynamical structures' (2019–2024), NSF EXTREEMS-QED as co-PI (2014–2019), Research Member at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in 2018 focusing on Hamiltonian systems, AWM Travel Grant in 2014, and Mason 4-VA Innovation Grant in 2014. Key publications feature 'The many facets of chaos' with J.A. Yorke (International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 2015), 'Degenerate nucleation in the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook model' with D. Blömker and T. Wanner (SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems, 2016), 'Generalized Lorenz equations on a three-sphere' with Y. Saiki and J.A. Yorke (European Physical Journal Special Topics, 2017), 'Quantitative quasiperiodicity' with S. Das, Y. Saiki, and J.A. Yorke (Nonlinearity, 2017), and forthcoming '3D Printing of Invariant Manifolds in Dynamical Systems' (AMS Notices, 2026).