Letter from the Chair 2025

Jun 25, 2025

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Alumni and Friends of the Mathematics Department,

It’s been another busy year here in the Cal Poly Mathematics Department! As has been the case in the past several newsletters, the first thing of note is the many new faces you’ll see if you drop in for a visit as we were joined this Fall by three new tenure track faculty members.

The first, Dr. Saba Gerami, comes to us by way of our own Master’s program (class of 2015) then a stint as a part-time-time lecturer until she started her graduate work at the University of Michigan in 2017. Dr. Gerami earned her Ph.D. from Michigan in Mathematics Education in 2024 under Vilma Mesa, and we’re extremely pleased to welcome her back. Her research seeks to understand interactive methods of teaching mathematics at the college level. In particular, she studies what occurs in postsecondary mathematics classrooms through an examination of the ways in which inquiry is operationalized across instructors by focusing on their decision-making at different stages of teaching.

Second, is Dr. Austin Christian. Dr. Christian earned his Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Tyler in 2015, his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA in 2021 under Ko Honda while moonlighting at Pepperdine as an adjunct instructor during the summers, and then completed a postdoc at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His area of expertise is the topology of contact and symplectic manifolds, the spaces designed to serve as the appropriate setting for Hamiltonian mechanics.

Third is Dr. Jackson Goodman. Dr. Goodman earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania under Wolfgang Ziller in 2020. After an NSF postdoc at UC Berkeley, he taught at Colby College in Maine before making the move to California. Dr. Goodman studies the geometry and topology of Riemannian manifolds and orbifolds satisfying positive and nonnegative curvature conditions.

Special thanks goes out to Dr. Danielle Champney for successfully chairing the Math Ed screening committee whose recommendation led to Dr. Gerami’s hire and to Dr. Dylan Retsek who similarly chaired the Pure Math screening committee resulting in the hiring of Drs. Christian and Goodman.

These are just the new faculty that have already arrived on campus. This past fall/winter/spring we also searched for several tenure track and full-time lecturer positions. Dr. Paul Choboter chaired the screening committee for our applied faulty search. We’re pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Cruz and Dr. Hervé Nganguia will be joining us as assistant professors in Fall 2025 and 2026 respectively, Dr. Cruz from a Postdoc at the University of Florida and Dr. Nganguia from Towson University in Maryland. We will also welcome a new full-time lecturer in Fall 2025, Dr. Chistopher Eblen, who just finished his Ph.D at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Watch this space next year for complete introductions when these three arrive on campus.

So it’s been a busy, but very rewarding year. In the midst of all this hiring, the department has been maintaining the mathematical life and educational mission of the department, offering rich coursework, abundant student research opportunities, and maintaining our own research programs. In May we had the honor of hosting the American Mathematical Society Western Sectional Meeting which was attended by many current and former students several of whom gave talks or presented posters. Throughout the year, we have been able to supervise (and fund) a significant amount of student travel to mathematical research conferences. This latter activity, one of the many made possible by your generosity, constitutes an incredibly powerful and formative experience for budding mathematicians and we are immensely awed, humble, and grateful for your support. 

Please keep in touch and let us know what you’ve been up to. We'd love to see you at the department office if you're ever on campus.

Sincerely,

Ben Richert, Chair, Mathematics Department

Polymath 2025

Jun 25, 2025

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Featured Articles

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Cal Poly Hosts Successful AMS Conference

The event included about 400 participants with presentations, poster sessions, addresses, a student social and more.

Donor Giving Supports Math in Impactful Ways

Apr 21, 2024

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Each year, generous donors support programs, people and initiatives in the Mathematics Department.  Here are two recent highlights of use of this invaluable funding.

Please consider supporting future work at the link below.

Student Awards

Each spring, we recognize exceptional undergraduate and graduate students in categories such as Outstanding Thesis, Outstanding Senior in Mathematics, and Outstanding Mathematics Educator. Selected students each receive a $500 award. At this event, we also announce scholarship recipients that are supported by individual donor scholarship funds—last year the department awarded $140,000 in donor-funded scholarships to 70 students. 

Speaker series and community-building events: 

Throughout the academic year, students and faculty are brought together to hear colloquium speakers and for other community-building events. Colloquia are held weekly throughout the academic year on topics such as “Iteration of rational maps in two complex variables” and “Triangulations in low dimensional geometry and topology.” In addition, regular student socials provide math majors and minors, transfer students, and graduate students opportunities to connect and discover available resources. An annual welcome barbeque kicks off the beginning of the school year, and the year ends with an annual awards banquet to recognize student achievements.

Support Mathematics Department here

 

*Newsletter template photo on linked page by Alexis Kovacevic. The photo is of mathematics professor Professor Elena Dimitrova (left) and  mathematics graduate student Giovani Thai (right)

 

Association for Women in Mathematics Aim High

Apr 21, 2024

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Women in STEM: Opportunity and Achievement

Female representation in mathematics is being enhanced and supported through clubs and scholarship programs. Here are examples of some of the initiatives in place.

Association for Women in Mathematics Aims High

Cal Poly's Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is thriving with ambitious and sophisticated members. The association said that its "members aim high, whether it's to pursue working in the industry or academia."

"Our goal is to cultivate an inclusive community to uplift women and nonbinary individuals in their mathematical endeavors," club officials note. "Our mission is to support our members' professional development at Cal Poly by hosting both social and guest speaker events, connecting members with the overall math community and successful AWM alumni.”

Guests have included Paige Hillen and Leah Hoogstra who shared their experiences in their current Ph.D. programs, offering advice to club members considering a career path in academia.

Social events such as poker and trivia nights foster member connections, ensuring Cal Poly's women in math feel part of the broader mathematical community.

For more information about the club, go to their Instagram page here.

Women in STEM Scholarship Awards $20,000

In 2023, the Bailey College established the new Women in STEM Scholarship for members of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Women in Physics (WiP) student clubs for the 2023-2024 academic year.

This was the first scholarship of its kind for either club, offering $5,000 Women in STEM Scholarships.

The two AWM members selected were Madison Lytle and Madeleine Goertz.

Goertz is a mathematics major who placed first in her category at the 2023 California State University Research Competition, and Lytle is a double major in math and aerospace engineering.

Lytle’s math accomplishments at Cal Poly included award recognition from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) as part of a student team that ranked in the Top 29 among about 15,000 teams that participated in the competition overall.

Lytle is pictured below in the middle and Goertz on the right below with AWM's faculty advisor, Joyce Lin, at the scholarship presentation.

Department Activity: Math Academy, Publications and Conferences

Apr 21, 2024

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The Cal Poly Mathematics Department has remained extremely active over the past year with the coordination of the summer Math Academy, welcoming more than 35 high school students served by the local Migrant Education Program to campus last year. 

Other highlights included the completion of several scholarly publications and faculty presentations given at conferences across the world.

See below to learn more about this outstanding news.

Math Academy

Amelie Schinck-Mikel and Elsa Medina directed the twelfth annual Cal Poly Math Academy in the summer 2023, welcoming a little over 35 high school students served by the local Migrant Education Program to campus. The academy is a one-week mathematics enrichment program in which students have fun with hands-on mathematical activities and puzzle-like problems. During the week, academy participants also do interesting activities across campus to expose them to various STEM majors and university life. After much demand, the Cal Poly Math Academy will be expanded to two weeks in the summer 2024: The first week will welcome high school students and the second week, middle school student.

Publications

*denotes a Cal Poly Student

Chance, B., Medina, E., Silverbush, J. (2023). If you only have one hour…Teaching statistical inference to youth. Statistics Teacher, March 23, 2023.

Charalampidis, E.G., Parker, R., Kevrekidis, P.G., Lafortune, S. (2023). The stability of the $b$-family of peakon equations. Nonlinearity, 36, 1192.

Cooper, F., Khare, A., Dawson, J., Charalampidis, E.G., Saxena, A. (2023). Uniform-density Bose-Einstein condensates of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation found by solving the inverse problem for the confining potential.
Phys. Rev. E, 107, 064202

Dimitrova, E.S., Fredrickson, C.H.*, Rondoni, N.A.*, Stigler, B., Veliz-Cuba, A. (2024). Algebraic experimental design: theory and computation. SIAM J Applied Algebra and Geometry. 8:2, 1-25.

Dimitrova, E.S., Knapp, A.C., Stigler, B., Stillman, M.E. (2023). Cyclone: open-source package for simulation and analysis of finite dynamical systems, Bioinformatics, 39:11, btad634.

Lee, M., Charalampidis, E.G., Xing, S., Chong, C., Kevrekidis, P.G. (2023). Breathers in lattices with alternating strain-hardening and strain-softening interactions. Phys. Rev. E, 107, 054208.

Liou, C., Mendes, A. (2023). Matrix represenations from labeled trees. Journal of Integer Sequences. 26.

Orson, P., Powell, M. (2024). Simple spines of homotopy 2‐spheres are unique. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 128. 10.1112/plms.12583.

Saqlain, S., Zhu, W., Charalampidis, E.G., Kevrekidis, P.G. (2023). Discovering governing equations in discrete systems using PINNs. Commun. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simulat, 126, 107498

Schinck-Mikel, A., Paulding, K., & Medina, E. (2023). Capturing unique teaching experiences of first-year secondary mathematics teachers transitioning from virtual to in-person instruction. Conference proceedings of the Education and New Developments Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. 96-100.

Veliz-Cuba, A., Newsome-Slade, V.*, Dimitrova, E.S. (2024). A unified approach to reverse engineering and data selection for unique network identification. SIAM J Applied Dynamical Systems, 23:1, 592-615.

 

Conferences

Stathis Charalampidis gave talks at:

• Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, February 7, 2023. “Rogue Waves in Continuous and Discrete Models”
• SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems, Portland, OR, May 14 - 18, 2023. “Self-similar collapse to the NLS: A bifurcation analysis approach”
• The 13th AIMS Conference on Dynamical Systems and Differential Equations, University of North Carolina Wilmington, May 31 - June 4 2023. “Extreme nonlinear excitations in lattice and continuum models”
• Department of Mathematics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, June 9, 2023. “The computation of matter waves in Bose-Einstein Condensates: Existence, stability, and bifurcations”
• “Bridging Classical and Quantum Turbulence”, Institut d’´Etudes Scientifiques, Cargese, Corsica, France, July 4 - July 14, 2023. “The Computation of Vortical Patterns in Bose-Einstein Condensates with Deflation: Existence, stability, and dynamics.
• Department of Mathematics, Kennesaw State University, Marietta, GA, October 13, 2023. “Recent advances in atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates: From Theory to Computation”

Elena Dimitrova gave talks at:

• Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM), An Algebraic Approach to Reverse Engineering and Data Selection for Network Identification, January 2024.
• Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) Annual Meeting, A Unified Approach to Reverse Engineering and Data Selection for Unique Network Identification, The Ohio State University, July 2023.
• American Mathematical Society (AMS) Spring Western Sectional Meeting, Algebraic Design of Experiments for Regulatory Network Identification, Fresno State University, May 2023.
• Association of Women in Mathematics Seminar, UC Santa Barbara, Unique Reduced Gröbner Bases of Ideals of Points, March 2023.

Sean Gasiorek co-organized a JMM Special Session on Navigating the Early Years of the Faculty Experience (MAA Project NeXT Special Sessions), Boston, MA (January 2023)

Sean Gasiorek gave talks at:

• The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, “Dynamics and Periodicity Conditions for the Integrable Boltzmann System” (October 2023)
• 11^th Workshop on Integrable Systems, “Dynamics and Periodicity Conditions for the Integrable Boltzmann System”, held at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia (November/December 2023)
• 67^th Annual Conference of the Australian Mathematical Society, “Dynamics and Periodicity Conditions for the Integrable Boltzmann System”, held at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia (December 2023)

Todd Grundmeier and Danielle Champney

• gave a talk at the SIGMAA IBL Spring 2024 Speaker Series on "Leveraging existing tasks into low-floor high-ceiling experiences.” Dec 2023.
• ran an MAA Learning Community in Fall 2023 titled "Rich Mathematical Tasks for Mathematics for Future Elementary Teacher Courses."

Joyce Lin organized a Special Session on Modeling and Analysis of Cellular Processes in Biomedical Problems at American Mathematical Society Western Sectional meeting, Fresno, CA, May 2023.

Joyce Lin gave talks at:

• The Society of Mathematical Biology, Columbus, OH, Jul. 2023
• Association for Women in Mathematics Student Chapter, Santa Barbara, CA, May 2023

Elsa Medina gave talks at:

• The International Conference on Education and New Developments, Lisbon, Portugal. “Capturing unique teaching experiences of first-year secondary

Letter from the Chair 2024

Apr 21, 2024

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Alumni and friends of the Mathematics Department,

If you have a chance to swing by the department for a visit one of these afternoons, you’ll see a number of new faces. The loss of two mathematics education faculty (one to another position and one retirement) and the increasing demand for math classes as the university grows (and contemplates year-round operations) has led to a flurry of recruitments that shows no signs of abating. Allow me to make a few introductions here.

First, we were joined this past fall by Dr. Ciera Street. Dr. Street earned her Ph.D. in educational mathematics at the Colorado State University last spring under Dr. Jessica Ellis Hagman (herself a Cal Poly Master’s degree mathematics graduate in 2011). Dr. Street’s area of expertise is utilizing an intersection lens and critical theories to explore the ways marginalized students experience undergraduate mathematics at the intersection of social, historical, and political influences to promote more equitable mathematics education. Special thanks to Dr. Danielle Champney for successfully chairing the screening committee whose recommendation led to Dr. Street’s hire. The entire Cal Poly Mathematics Department and the Math Ed group, in particular, are so pleased that Dr. Street agreed to come and help us educate future math educators.

We also welcomed three new full-time lecturers to our ranks. The first, Dr. Michael Miller, earned his Ph.D. in 2011 at UC Santa Cruz studying representation theory of finite groups under Dr. Robert Boltjé. Dr. Miller worked as an adjunct instructor at Cabrillo College from 2008 to 2018 and as a math instructor at Prepa UPAEP Santiago, a private International Baccalaureate World School high school in Puebla Mexico from 2019 to 2021. In fall of 2021 he began teaching part-time for the Cal Poly Mathematics Department and we were happy that he agreed to a full-time position beginning this fall.

Second is Dr. Brian Tyrrell-Nic Dhonncha. Dr. Tyrrell-Nic Dhonncha earned his earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, Balliol College in 2022 under Dr. Jochen Koenigsmann, studying mathematical logic, number theory, and algebraic geometry. From 2022 to 2023 he served (simultaneously) as an EPSRC postdoctoral research associate at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford, as well as a stipendary lecturer in mathematics at Keble College, both part of the University of Oxford. Dr. Nic Dhonncha also began teaching for us in fall 2023.

The third new full-time lecturer is Dr. Robert Lopez. Dr. Lopez earned his Ph.D. from UC Riverside in 2021 under Dr. Amir Moradifam with a research area broadly focused on inverse problems, imaging, and partial differential equations. From fall 2021 to spring 2023 he held the position of full-time instructor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Whittier College, but we enticed him to join us at Cal Poly, also in fall 2023.

These are just the new faculty that have already arrived on campus. This past fall/winter we also searched for three addition positions, appointments to begin in fall 2024. Dr. Danielle Champney chaired the screening committee for a second math educator, and Ms. Saba Germani has accepted our offer. Germani holds a master’s degree from Cal Poly and will graduate with her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan this spring. Dr. Dylan Retsek chaired the screening committee to search for two new faculty members in pure mathematics (one position open due to a retirement and the other a new tenure line authorized by the provost). In fall 2024 we will be joined by Dr. Austin Christian, a 2021 UCLA graduate currently a postdoc at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Dr. Jackson Goodman, a 2020 University of Pennsylvania grad, who’s currently a visiting assistant professor at Colby College. Watch this space next year for complete introductions when these three arrive on campus.

We will also welcome two new Frost postdocs this. Last year Dr. Joyce Lin and Dr. Elena Dimitrova wrote a successful proposal and were awarded funding to support a postdoc position to study mathematical biology. In fall 2024, Dr. Alex Ruys de Perez, a 2021 Texas A&M grad currently serving as visiting assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, will arrive on campus to join the research group as well as teaching for the department. Dr. Patrick Orson was similarly awarded funding to support a position in topology, and Ms. Terrin Warren, who will earn her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Georgia this spring, will join his research team at the beginning of next academic year.

Finally, we expect to run an additional recruitment next year for a fall 2025 start. The applied math group will have their turn next fall/winter and search for an applied mathematician to fill an additional new tenure line authorized by the Provost’s Office.

So it’s been a busy, but very rewarding year (so far!). In the midst of all this hiring, the department has been maintaining the mathematical life and educational mission of the department, offering rich coursework, abundant student research opportunities, maintaining our own research programs, and supervising (and funding) a significant amount of student travel to mathematical research conferences. This latter activity, one of the many made possible by your generous support, constitutes an incredibly powerful and formative experience for budding mathematicians and we are immensely grateful for your generosity. Indeed, without you we couldn’t do many of the things — like maintaining the undergraduate study lounge, running Simple Group, bringing speakers to campus, and a myriad of other activities that make a math major at Cal Poly so rich. Thanks so much for your support!

Please keep in touch and let us know what you’ve been up to. We'd love to see you at the department office if you're ever on campus.

Sincerely,

Ben Richert, Chair, Mathematics Department

Polymath 2024

Apr 21, 2024

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Featured Articles

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Math Professor Climbs to New Heights

Find out how mathematics Professor Dylan Retsek is meeting new challenges.

Professors in Action: Math Faculty Present Talks Around the Nation, World

Feb 19, 2023

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Photo 1: High school students participated in the 10th annual Cal Poly Math Academy.

By Nick Wilson

 

Several Mathematics Department faculty members issued talks across the United States and beyond over the past year. The faculty who presented are the following: 

Stathis Charalampidis

• The 12th IMACS International Conference on Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Wave Phenomena: Computation and Theory, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, March 30 - April 1, 2022. “Recent advances in single and multi-component NLS systems”
• Conference on “Nonlinear waves and networks,” Institut National des Sciences Appliquées
•  (INSA) de Rouen Normandie, France, July 4 - July 5, 2022. “Recent Advances on Localized Solutions in NLS systems: Theory and Computation”
• SIAM Conference on Nonlinear Waves and Coherent Structures, Bremen, Germany, August 30 - September 2, 2022. “Novel coherent structures to single- and multi-component NLS systems: Theory and Computation”
• AMS Fall Eastern Sectional Meeting, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, October 1 - 2, 2022. “Recent advances on Rogue waves in continuous and discrete models”
• Colloquium, Mathematics Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, November 19, 2022. “Recent advances on extreme events to discrete and continuum models''

 

Elena Dimitrova

• Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS), Workshop on Multiscale Modeling of Plant Growth, Pattern Formation and Actuation (hybrid conference), “PlantSimLab - a modeling and simulation web tool for plant biologists,” Oaxaca, Mexico. 
• 12th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (a joint event of the European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ESMTB) and the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB)), “Revealing the canalizing structure of Boolean functions – algorithms and applications,” University of Heidelberg, Germany.

 

Todor Todorov

• International Conference on Generalized Functions GF2022, Vienna, Austria, September 19-23, 2022: "Non-Standard Version of Egorov’s Algebra of Generalized Functions”
• A colloquium-seminar on theoretical physics in the Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Sofia, Bulgaria, November 24, 2022: “Infinitesimals in the Field of Complex Numbers”

 

Goro Kato 

Joyce Lin

California State University Joint Math Meeting, November 2022, Northridge, California. “Conduction Reserve Theory in Cardiac Tissue With Reduced Gap Junctional Coupling.”

Elsa Medina

The 11th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS 11), September 2022, Rosario, Argentina. “Stochastics Content Knowledge of Pre-service Chilean Mathematics Teachers”

Amelie Schinck-Mikel

The Annual Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators Meeting, Henderson, Nevada. Feb. 2022. “Lessons from the pandemic; Leveraging unique teaching experiences to inform mathematics secondary clinical practice”

Photo 2: The 10th annual Cal Poly Math Academy, directed by Elsa Medina and Amélie Schinck-Mikel, welcomed more than 25 Hispanic students from local high schools to campus this summer.

Publications and Grants: Cal Poly Math Makes Its Mark

Feb 19, 2023

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Photo caption: Dr. Joyce Lin (right) was among the faculty who received grant awards. Lin is pictured here with student Sarah Ellwein at the Cal Poly Math Symposium.

Publications:

Brussel E. (2022) Hasse invariant for the tame Brauer group of a higher local field. Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Series B, 9, 258–287.

 

Dimitrova E.S., Stigler B., Kadelka C., Murrugarra D. (2022) Revealing the canalizing structure of Boolean functions: Algorithms and applications. Automatica, 146, 110630.

 

Dimitrova, E.S., Hu, J., Liang, Q., Stigler, B., Zhang, A. (2022) Algebraic model selection and experimental design in biological data science. Advances in Applied Mathematics, 133, 102282.

 

Futer, D., Hamilton, E., Hoffman, N. (2022) Infinitely many virtual geometric triangulations. Journal of Topology, 15(4), 2352-2388. 

 

Zhu, W., Khademi, W., Charalampidis, E.G., Kevrekidis, P.G. (2022) Neural networks enforcing physical symmetries in nonlinear dynamical lattices: The case example of the Ablowitz-Ladik model. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 434, 133264.

Mithun, T., Carretero-González R., Charalampidis, E.G., Hall, D.S., Kevrekidis P.G. (2022)

Existence, stability and dynamics of monopole and Alice ring solutions in antiferromagnetic spinor condensates. Physical Review A, 105, 053303.

Jon Chapman, S., Kavousanakis, M., Charalampidis, E.G., Kevrekidis, I.G., Kevrekidis, P.G.
(2022) A spectral analysis of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the co-exploding frame.
Physica D, 439, 133396.

 

Grants:
Stathis Charalampidis received the National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Grant: Collapse, Rogue Waves and their Applications: From Theory to Computation and Beyond”, amount: $142,798, September 1, 2022 - August 31, 2025

 

Elena Dimitrova, Joyce Lin, and Paul Anderson (Cal Poly Computer Science Department) received the Data Science Strategic Research Initiative Incubation grant, funded by Cal poly. Amount: $19,603.50, January-June 2022.

 

Joyce Lin and Elena Dimitrova received a Frost Teacher-Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow Award for 2022-2024.

 

Elsa Medina, along with Roy, S., Chance, B., and McGaughey, K. received an NSF grant: “Integrating the statistical investigation process, data visualization, and simulation into high school statistics” Amount: ($449,984). June 2022. 

New Faces: New Faculty and Staff Join Team

Feb 19, 2023

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The Mathematics Department introduced the following faculty and staff members in the 2022-23 academic year, each of whom brings a wealth of experience and educational background. The new members of the team are coming from around the globe.

SABRINA THOMAS

 

Sabrina Thomas

Sabrina Thomas received her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from USC, where she assisted with research on the Drosophila life span and worked as a student worker in Payroll. Thomas moved home to Victorville, Calif., after graduating to work as a scribe in the ER at her local community hospital. After 3 years, she moved back to Los Angeles, Calif. to attend Cal State LA where she received her MBA. While working towards her MBA, Thomas worked at an organ procurement organization where she was responsible for auditing organ and tissue donor case files in accordance with organizations’ policies and Federal Regulations. She recently moved to the SLO area and has enjoyed working in the Math Department and the lack of LA traffic.

Sean Gasiorek

Sean Gasiorek (re)joined the mathematics faculty in Fall 2022. After receiving his B.S. and M.S. from Cal Poly in 2009 and 2011, respectively, he served as a Lecturer in the department until 2013. In 2019, he earned his Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz studying the intersection of dynamical systems and geometry under Richard Montgomery. He also spent the Fall 2018 semester at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, CA as part of the Hamiltonian systems, from topology to applications through analysis program.

 

Sean’s research then took him to a three-year postdoctoral position at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia, where he studied integrable systems and billiards within confocal quadrics with Milena Radnović. His research interests lie in understanding the dynamical properties of mathematical billiards in various physical and geometric settings, particularly its interplay with integrable systems, electricity and magnetism, and its connections to celestial mechanics.

 

Outside of math, he enjoys running, mountain biking, doing yoga, and playing basketball, and looks forward to re-integrating into the Cal Poly and greater SLO community.

Patrick Orson

Patrick grew up in Winchester near the south coast of England. He got his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge, then received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He has held postdoctoral positions at: Durham (UK), University Quebec, Boston College, ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute in Bonn (Germany). These were a mixture of research and teaching positions. Patrick’s research area is Geometry/Topology, specialising in the geometric topology of 4-dimensional shapes, and Knot Theory. Patrick is excited to join the Cal Poly community and settle down in the beautiful Central Coast.

 

Warren Roche

Warren Roche is the new Frost Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Cal Poly in the Mathematics Department working with Elena Dimitrova and Joyce Lin, and is originally from Waterford, Ireland. Warren has worked as a mathematics and statistics lecturer previously at the South East Technological University in Ireland, and also has extensive statistical experience in clinical trial research and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

 

Warren joined the Mathematics Department in Fall 2022. He originally earned his BSc in Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin in 2012. After spending several years teaching high school and college-level mathematics and physics, he attended University College Dublin to earn a MSc in Mathematical Science in 2016. In 2022, Warren earned his doctorate in Mathematics from the South East Technological University in Waterford, Ireland, where he was a PhD Scholar. Warren's doctoral work explored differential equations and modelling preferential finger flow through a porous media using hysteresis operators and operator splitting techniques. In July 2022, Warren was presented with the Howard Medal at the Brain and Ocular Nutrition Conference at University of Cambridge for his presentation on the importance of effect sizes for clinical trial experiments.  

 

Currently, Warren’s research is in mathematical biology, where he explores the use of agent-based modelling as a tool to develop a deeper understanding of how electrical activity propagates through cardiac tissue.