What does the surface of a desk and the surface of a beach ball or bagel have in common? The answer is, if you zoom in close enough on each item, they all look flat. Of course, we all know beach balls and bagels are not flat. They actually are examples of curved mathematical spaces called Riemannian manifolds. Lee Kennard, assistant professor of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study symmetry in Riemannian manifolds. Kennard’s award is one of ten current NSF grants in the Department of Mathematics. Read more here.