University-CA Berkeley Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, 201 Gilman Hall, Spc 1462, Berkeley, CA 94720, US

Cal's Department of Mathematics is peer-ranked as one of the top three math departments in America. It hosts the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), which draws 1,700 mathematicians from around the globe yearly for research projects. Additionally, the department conducts interdisciplinary research in the Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics and the Research Training Group in Representation Theory, Geometry and Combinatorics. There are 600 undergraduate majors and 150 graduate students in the department. Several Cal mathematicians - including current faculty members Richard Borcherds and Vaughan Jones - have won the Fields Medal, math's quadrennial equivalent to the Nobel Prize. In addition, not many other math departments can boast their own adult-movie star. Prof. Edward Frenkel, who teaches multivariable calculus, co-produced and starred in "Rites of Love and Math," an homage to writer Yukio Mishima in which Frenkel tattoos the "Formula for Love without Death" on a woman's unclothed body. Paris' Le Monde newspaper called the film "stunning," but some Cal folks were upset that Frenkel appeared to be endorsing Mishima's neo-Fascist views. "Mishima is misunderstood to this day, but Berkeley, we are the home of controversy," Frenkel told crowds at the sold-out Berkeley premiere in December 2010.