Milena Stanislavova

Milena Stanislavova is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She previously served as Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Kansas (KU). She holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Missouri (2000), and earlier degrees from Sofia University, Bulgaria.

Her research focuses on Partial Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, and Mathematical Physics, with emphasis on stability and long-time behavior of waves in nonlinear systems. She investigates coherent structures like solitons and periodic waves, their spectral stability, and applications in physical models. Her work has been continuously supported by NSF grants since 2004.

Stanislavova co-organizes the NSF-sponsored KUMUNU PDE conference and teaches undergraduate courses in differential equations, complex analysis, and game theory. She received the Don and Pat Morrison Award for Excellence in Teaching (KU, 2021). As Chair at UAB, she aims to elevate the department’s national profile through faculty recruitment, graduate student support, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Her 150+ publications span journals like Nonlinearity, SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics, and Communications in Mathematical Physics. Key contributions include spectral stability analysis of periodic waves in systems like Zakharov and Benney, as well as studies on dispersive equations and Hamiltonian PDEs.