When I was in middle school, I can very clearly remember telling myself that I should not have to take any math classes because I would “never ever” go into a field that involved mathematics. Clearly, I was mistaken. Although this flawed point of view continued through high school, I went through a deep change in the first couple of years at Gonzaga University (GU) and it lead me to probe areas in math for the first time.
There I got involved with a small research group lead by Dr. Vesta Coufal where we carried out a couple of research projects in Knot theory. Specifically, we looked at Alexander polynomials for Torus knots, and then studied the relationships between Klein knots and Torus knots. A huge amount of satisfaction came through these small research projects. Not because we were creating new mathematics that would change the way people would tie their shoes, which is absurd; but because the process of collaboration, coming up with questions, and attempting to answer them became something that was (and still is) at the end of the day, very fun.
It became obvious to me that I wanted to go to graduate school for more mathematics, but the choice of where to go was a rather difficult one at first. After much thought I decided that I should go to a school that would both help me grow into a mathematician, and as a person. Through this I decided on WSU where I am now learning as much as I can about geometry, analysis, the intersection of the two, and its related concepts in general metric spaces.
Dissertation Research
I worked on problems in geometric measure theory with Kevin R. Vixie and Bala Krishnamoorthy as well as applications of tools from geometric measure theory to computational chemistry, through my work in Aurora Clark’s research group at WSU.
Current Position
I am Currently a Krener Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at te University of California at Davis
