Menu

back to the home page

I am a 26-year-old soon-to-be math professor. I attended Rutgers -- the State University of New Jersey for my Ph.D. I passed my oral qualifying exam in February 2006; you can find my syllabus here. I defended my thesis under Dr. Doron Zeilberger on April 7, 2008, and graduated with my Ph.D. in May 2008. Beginning in August 2008, I will be an assistant professor at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. My main interests are combinatorics, algebra, and experimental math. My thesis focused on using maple to study pattern avoidance problems.

Besides classes, in 2004-2005, I was the Rugters Graduate Pizza Seminar coordinator. Pizza seminar is a weekly meeting where math graduate students gather to hear a student give a math talk and to eat pizza, paid for by the math department. For 2006-2008, I co-organized the Rutgers Experimental Math Seminar.

For summers 2005, 2006, and 2007, I was the graduate coordinator for the DIMACS REU here at Rutgers. My job included planning seminars, field trips, and other such fun for the REU students during their stay in New Jersey, and serving as a general resource/help person for whatever needs to be done. This was my third year with the REU, and I absolutely loved working with the undergraduate research students.

For the 2007-2008 academic year, I was hired to be a graduate assistant with the Rutgers TA Project program. I am now part of a fantastic team that plans an executes an annual TA orientation, various teaching certificate programs, web publications, and various other seminars that are available university-wide.

As far as non-math interests, I have several:

I very much enjoy reading. While several other math students at Rutgers and I have a newly found love for Dr. Seuss books, I also do a bit of non-picture book reading as well. :-) I am an avid reader of Mental Floss magazine. Favorite books include The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, Magnus by Sigmund Brouwer, City of Glass by Paul Auster, Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglass Hoffstadter, and just about anything by Douglas Adams or C.S. Lewis (especially his space trilogy).

Besides reading, I also love to travel. I have currently been to 44 out of 50 states (with Kansas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii still to go). I've made short trips to Canada, Mexico, Iceland, Scotland, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Croatia, and Slovenia. I also spent a fabulous semester in Budapest, Hungary in Fall 2002. I absolutely loved it there and I'm always counting down the time until my next trip back.

Finally, above all my interests comes my faith. I've spent much time evaluating and re-evaluating what I believe. Through all my struggles, I find the existence of God and His love for all creation undeniable. I am currently a member of Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd (Old Bridge, NJ), where I am a member of the altar guild and an advisor for the senior youth group.

And that is me in a nutshell. Enjoy the rest of the site.