School of Data Science Honors First Distinguished Dissertation Award Recipient
The University of Virginia School of Data Science has named Bryan Christ as the inaugural recipient of its 2026 Distinguished Dissertation Award, recognizing exceptional doctoral research that exemplifies impact, creativity, and methodological rigor.
Presented annually by School of Data Science faculty, the award honors one graduating Ph.D. student whose dissertation demonstrates outstanding scholarly achievement and meaningful societal impact. Christ is the first student to receive the distinction.
Christ’s dissertation, Advancing Methodology for Artificial Intelligence for Math Reasoning and Education, explored how artificial intelligence can support personalized math education while deepening understanding of how large language models perform mathematical reasoning. His work focused on building AI systems capable of generating grade-appropriate, standards-aligned math word problems tailored to individual learners.
Drawing on his previous experience as an elementary school teacher in Charlottesville, Christ designed tools that addressed a practical challenge many educators face: creating personalized learning materials at scale. His research demonstrated that students responded as positively to AI-generated math problems as they did to human-written ones, while teachers benefited from a significantly expanded pool of customized practice content.
The dissertation also introduced a novel method called “Math Neurosurgery,” which identifies and selectively modifies the internal components of large language models responsible for mathematical reasoning. The approach offers new possibilities for improving AI systems without broadly altering their overall performance.
“Bryan’s body of work is outstanding, and this award is well deserved,” said Thomas Stewart, director of the School’s Ph.D. program. “Bryan exemplifies creativity, self-direction, and perseverance. It is fitting that he is the first recipient of the Distinguished Dissertation Award.”
Faculty mentors praised both the scholarly quality and practical relevance of Christ’s research.
“Bryan completed his Ph.D. in just over three years while building a scholarly record that would be impressive for many early-career faculty members,” said Paul Perrin, interim associate dean for faculty and academic affairs and professor at the School of Data Science.
Perrin noted that Christ’s research contributed to broader national conversations surrounding responsible AI in education, personalization, and educational equity.
Tom Hartvigsen emphasized the real-world foundation of the work.
“Being an ex-teacher, Bryan used his lived experience to identify a real, focused problem impacting educators broadly,” Hartvigsen said. “Bryan’s dissertation research was multi-disciplinary, data-centric, and impact-focused, all while producing generalizable knowledge.”
Jonathan Kropko, director of the School’s online M.S. in Data Science program, highlighted the broader implications of Christ’s methodological innovations.
“His work not only has had a major impact on academic research, but it also has had a substantive, real-world impact towards solving problems Bryan encountered as an elementary school teacher,” Kropko said.
Christ’s dissertation research resulted in publications at leading natural language processing conferences, including ACL and EMNLP, and informed a graduate-level course on large language model engineering that he developed and taught for the School’s online M.S. in Data Science program.
Since graduating, Christ has joined Microsoft, where he continues working at the forefront of artificial intelligence and machine learning research.