Speaker Bios

Jose Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. Jose’s research is in algebraic geometry, a central and highly active branch of mathematics. Algebraic geometers study algebraic varieties, which are geometric objects locally given as the solutions to polynomial equations. Algebraic geometry has interactions with most areas of mathematics and it has practical applications to theoretical physics, engineering and computer science. Jose earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan and held postdoctoral positions at the University of British Columbia and Yale University.

Natalia Komarova is a Professor at the Mathematics Department, UCI. She received her Masters in Theoretical Physics from Moscow State University and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona. She is interested in problems at the interface between mathematics and life sciences, including biology, medicine, social sciences, and linguistics.

Christopher Lopez is a sixth year UC Irvine PhD student who conducts research in geometric analysis. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Columbia University in 2011 and a master's degree in mathematics from UC Irvine in 2013. He will begin a NSF postdoctoral fellowship this fall at UC Santa Barbara, where he will continue to conduct research in geometric analysis.

Laure Giovangigli is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on mathematical modeling of imaging techniques. She received her PhD in 2014 from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France with a thesis entitled ‘Mathematical Modeling for cell membrane imaging.'

Giovanny Marquez is currently senior at California State University Northridge with an expected graduation date of 8/2017. Plans to further continue his education at CSUN as a graduate student in the fall of 2017. Current interests in mathematics include number theory and analysis.

Natalia da Silva is currently a senior at California State Dominguez Hills majoring in Mathematics. After graduating this May, she will be attending graduate school at Oklahoma State where she received a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. She has been participating in undergraduate research which was funded by an NSF grant. This past February, Natalia presented her joint research and won first place at the Dominguez Hills student research day. At the end of April she will be presenting her joint research at a statewide research competition in San Luis Obispo. Natalia's interests include Number Theory and Cryptography. After graduate school Natalia hopes to work in industry for a number of years then work in Academia.

Leah Schulman is a graduate student of mathematics at California State University, Northridge. She received her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara and worked as a math tutor and instructor before deciding to pursue higher math. She is passionate about education, urban sustainability issues, and loves reading and writing in her spare time.

Julian Corpeño is a graduate student of mathematics at California State University, Northridge. He received his bachelor’s degree in music from the same institution, specializing in classical guitar. His current research is in graph theory, and he is also interested in algebraic geometry.

Hector Salgado is an undergraduate at CSU Dominguez Hills. His expected graduation is December of 2017. Following this Hector plans to attend graduate school outside of California. His current research deals with harmonic numbers, which is a topic in number theory. Hector's fields of interest in math are number theory and algebra.

Neil Sahota (萨冠军) is an IBM Master Inventor and World Wide Business Development Leader in the IBM Watson Group. With over 15+ years of experience in business, he works with Global Fortune 500 clients and high growth business partners to ideate next generation products/solutions powered by Watson. Parts of Neil’s responsibilities include identifying target markets, developing business cases, and creating the market launch strategy. His work experience spans multiple industries including healthcare, life sciences, retail, travel and transportation, energy and utilities, automotive, telecommunications, media/communication, and government. Moreover, Neil is one of the few IBMers selected for IBM's Corporate Service Corps leadership program that pairs leaders with NGOs to perform community-driven economic development projects. For his assignment, Neil lived and worked in Ningbo, China where he partnered with Chinese corporate CEOs to create a leadership development program.

Neil is also an active volunteer in IBM’s Academic Initiative program that creates partnership opportunities between the IBM and the country’s top universities. He also serves as a business mentor for IBM’s Extreme Blue program that is an incubator for new product ideas. With Neil’s guidance, IBM developed new products and services in the areas of Business Analytics, Smarter Healthcare, Smarter Energy, Mobile Channel Development, and Social Media Solutions.

Moreover, Neil partners with entrepreneurs to define their products, establish their target markets, and structure their companies. He is a member of the Tech Coast Angels and The Cove Fund Investment committee and assists startups with investor funding. Neil also serves as a judge in the Butterworth Product Competition, mentor in the K5 Launch accelerator program, and coach for various start up competitions.

Cynthia Northrup earned her B.A. from California State University, Northridge and Ph.D. from UC Irvine. She taught as a TA and instructor on numerous courses at UCI before accepting a full time teaching position at Bellevue College. Cynthia is currently the Director of Digital Content for McGraw-Hill Education.

Be confident in what you know, work to communicate it better. Recognize what you don't know, work to understand it better. Always list things in threes, because it works better.

Rachel Winston serves as the Director of Mathematics and has taught at Brandman/Chapman University since 1996. Living in Europe as a child and studying in China for graduate school, she has also become one of the leading cross cultural educational consultants with students primarily from the U.S., China, Korea, and Mexico. Her recent book, What Your Agent WIll Not Tell You About College Admissions, was published in February 2017 and she completed a speaking tour of China in April 2017. Dr. Winston’s educational leadership as an elected state leader, Academic Senate President, Director of the Online Math Community, and the owner of Lizard Education, offers students and parents a lifetime of teaching, writing, curriculum development, and leadership experience. She has trained counselors around the world teaching in the UCLA College Counseling Certificate Program and served as a college math and/or engineering professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Cal State Fullerton, and a half dozen community colleges. Winning Full Time Faculty Member of the Year, her specialties are in curriculum development, educational technology, STEM subjects, and academic writing.

Starting college at thirteen and winning the National High School Senior of the Year from the American Legion, she has earned numerous undergraduate and graduate degrees. She has attended more than a dozen universities including Harvard undergrad and graduate school, Syracuse, USC, UCLA, UCI, Pepperdine, Claremont Graduate University, Maryland, Gallaudet, CSUF, Chapman, and Brandman. Dr. Winston holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin – Hook ’em Horns!!! She recently completed her M.S. in publishing from The George Washington University and started her next graduate program at New York University. Her education is in chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, psychology, higher education administration, and college counseling. She has taught mathematics on television, live interactive satellite, telecourses, online, and in lecture halls. In the community she served on the Board of Directors of the Newport Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Tomorrow, and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, and was the Education Committee Director of the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce. She was also the Regional Coordinator for the Mathematical Association of America. Prior to coming to California she worked on Capitol Hill, the White House, and the U.S. Department of Labor. She won the 2012 McFarland Literary Achievement Award and has spoken at over a hundred local and national meetings and conferences. She was raised in D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland and has traveled to over a hundred countries. Dr. Winston published her first math book in the 80s and intends to spend the rest of her life serving and inspiring students to understand statistics and achieve their college and career goals.

--I am only one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.--

Stacy Musgrave is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics and faculty of the Center for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching (CEMaST) at Cal Poly Pomona. She studied algebra in her doctoral program at the University of Georgia before transitioning her research area to mathematics education during a postdoctoral position at Arizona State University. Her work now spans three main areas: how people think about ideas foundational to calculus, the training of future faculty, and how to support women in mathematics. She is co-PI on an NSF grant that both organizes and conducts research on the MPWR Seminar: Mentoring and Partnerships for Women in RUME (Research in Undergraduate Math Education).

Stacy is a dog lover who strives to make it to the beach once a month. She believes that living authentically in all areas of our life (even the mathematics classroom) enhances our connection to others and inspires a creative freedom with unbounded potential.

-- “What we know matters but who we are matters more.” ~Brené Brown --

Sara Melvin is currently a SMART scholar at the University of California Los Angeles in the Computer Science Master's Program specializing in data science. She researches at the UCLA Scalable Analytics Institute Lab working on an improved unsupervised, robust, real-time event detection algorithm. In addition, she collaborates with the University Of California Institute Of Predictive Technology in modeling students’ tiredness levels via activity tracker wristbands and classifying sleep deprived Twitter activity amongst college students. Through the SMART scholarship, Sara has been placed to work for the U.S. Navy at NAVSEA Port Hueneme comes this June when she graduates. During the various breaks in school, she has been constructing and customizing a video game to aid in building up unique training tools for both sailors and civilians. Sara received a B.S. in Mathematics from San Diego State University.

Daniel J. Vera received his Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT at the age of 21 under Professor Lars Hesselholt. His thesis was in algebraic topology. After graduating, Dr. Vera began a career in quantitative finance. He is currently an accomplished quantitative analyst and investment professional at Surlamer LLC, a boutique investment firm managing private assets in Newport Beach. Since 2006 he has successfully utilized his skill in statistical modeling to generate trading strategies across several asset classes. Dr. Vera has extensive experience researching and implementing quantitative investment algorithms, risk analytics, and portfolio management. In addition to quantitative finance, his areas of interest include mathematical modeling, probability theory, programming, statistics, and data science. Dr. Vera also remains involved with his undergraduate alma mater, UCI, as a mentor for the School of Physical Sciences Undergraduate Mentor (PSUM) Program. He is also an avid J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars, and martial arts fan.

Hosun Kang is an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her work is centrally concerned with promoting powerful science learning of the students from multi-racial and multi-linguistic backgrounds and low-income families in public school settings by working with teachers. Her research interests deal with non-white students’ science identity development, effective instructional practices that facilitate powerful science learning in diverse classrooms, and designing and improving a system that promotes early career science teacher learning. She is the recipient of the 2011 AERA division-K outstanding dissertation award, and her recent article, “Designing, launching, and implementing high quality learning opportunities for students that advance scientific thinking” (published in Journal of Research in Science Teaching) was selected by the NARST (National Association of Research in Science Teaching) as the 2017 NSTA Research Worth Reading.

Roberto Soto is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Math Education at California State University Fullerton. His research interests include representation theory of groups and algebras and their applications as well as active learning in mathematics classrooms. His experience teaching mathematics is broad, having taught at the secondary, community college, and university levels and he enjoys bringing joy to learning mathematics.

Gail Tang is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of La Verne. Additionally, she is the Mathematics Curriculum Lead for Guided Pathways to STEM Success, a DoE-funded program aimed at providing inclusive opportunities for more students in STEM. She is passionate about broadening the participation of women in mathematics through mentorship and engagement in an asset-based mindset. Her research interests are focused on equity in mathematics and fostering mathematical creativity. She is a co-author of a book chapter in the book Creativity and Giftedness: Interdisciplinary perspectives from mathematics and beyond and is an officer for the MAA SoCal/Nevada Section.

Amanda Ruiz is an assistant professor of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of San Diego. She is joined the University of San Diego as part of an AFFIRM cohort of 7 women in STEM fields from Harvey Mudd College where she was a Teaching and Research Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mathematics Department. She received her PhD in mathematics from Binghamton University, and a Masters degree in Mathematics from San Francisco State University.

Amanda enjoys doing research in combinatorics. Previous research has been in enumerative combinatorics and matroid theory. She especially enjoys doing research with undergraduate students.

She is committed to making mathematics more accessible for women and students of color and considers service in this area an integral part of her job as an educator and academic.

When she is not doing mathematics or teaching, Amanda enjoys playing soccer and spending time with her daughter and husband.

Alessandra Pantano is a Lecturer with Security of Employment at the Mathematics Department, UCI. She received her PhD in Mathematics from the Princeton University, but did most of her dissertation work at MIT. She loves teaching and community educational outreach, and is interested in representation theory and mathematics education.

Di Xu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine and Research Affiliate at the IES-funded Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment (CAPSEE). Professor Xu has a Ph.D. in Economics and Education with expertise in higher education. Her research uses experimental and quasi-experimental designs to examine educational practice, policies, and interventions aimed at improving college students’ educational outcomes, with a particular focus on students from low-income and underrepresented groups. She received the prestigious AEFP (Association for Education Finance and Policy) New Scholar Award in 2013 and the Kauffman Foundation Award for the best academic paper of 2016 on the intersection of education and labor market outcomes. She is currently co-leading two NSF-funded projects at UCI: one investigates the virtual learning environment and the other examines effective strategies to improve persistence and success of students in physics.

Ignacio Rodriguez-Brenes is a research specialist at the Mathematics Department, UCI. He received his B.S. in Pure Mathematics at the University of Costa Rica and a PhD in Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU. His research focus is in Mathematical and Computational Biology.

Alina Bucur received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 2006, and has since held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Moore Instructorship at MIT. She is now a an Associate Professor at UCSD. Her work is in number theory, specifically arithmetic statistics. She is currently serving on the Women in Numbers steering committee, AWM Mentor Network Committee and as a co-PI for the Arizona Winter School, the world's largest conference in number theory. Alina has organized a number of activities aimed at promoting women in mathematics ranging from informal get-togethers for female grad-students, postdocs and faculty at Brown and UCSD to research conferences and summer schools.

Armando Martinez Cruz Dr. Armando M. Martinez Cruz is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) with a specialty in mathematics education. He is the graduate advisor of the M.A. in Mathematics, Teaching Option. He received his B.S. in mathematics from the National University of Mexico, and his master’s and Ph.D. in mathematics education from The Ohio State University. He has over 35 years of experience teaching mathematics and mathematics education courses in México and the USA. Over those years, he has extensively collaborated with school districts, state and national organizations, and international institutions of higher education. His research interests include mathematical problem solving and problem posing, learning and teaching mathematics with technology, and the recruitment and retention of all students in higher education, with particular attention to Latino students. He has been the Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator in several funded projects involving mathematics education in grades K-16. He is a co-PI in the three-year NSF funded project Transforming Academic and Cultural Identidad through Biliteracy (TACIB). The goal of TACIB is to leverage existing partnerships to increase sixth to eighth grade students’ achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics and science through an integrated dual language approach in an urban predominantly Latino community in southern California. Dr. Martinez-Cruz is currently co-directing the Project Intermediate Algebra Redesign, a developmental mathematics college course with a large percentage of Latino students. Dr. Martinez Cruz was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from California State University, Fullerton in 2005 and 2015, and recently (2016) receive the Outstanding Latino/a Faculty (Research/Teaching in Higher Education (Research Institutions) Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.

Gail Tang is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of La Verne. Additionally, she is the Mathematics Curriculum Lead for Guided Pathways to STEM Success, a DoE-funded program aimed at providing inclusive opportunities for more students in STEM. She is passionate about broadening the participation of women in mathematics through mentorship and engagement in an asset-based mindset. Her research interests are focused on equity in mathematics and fostering mathematical creativity. She is a co-author of a book chapter in the book Creativity and Giftedness: Interdisciplinary perspectives from mathematics and beyond and is an officer for the MAA SoCal/Nevada Section.

Benjamin Vargas is an assistant professor of Mathematics at Irvine Valley College since 2010. He recieved his PhD, M.S and B.S in Mathematics from UCI (with a PhD Thesis in applied mathematics) and recieved an A.A. degree from Golden West College. He teaches a wide range of courses in community college that range from Basic Mathematics to Differential Equations. He also has served in part time and full time hiring committees for math instructor positions.

Sherry Zhu is a consulting actuary at Willis Towers Watson, a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients turn risk into a path for growth. She is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and an Enrolled Actuary with Internal Revenue Service. She applies her actuarial expertise in managing and improving retirement programs that fit clients’ business objectives and determine the best approaches to design, funding, governance, administration and communication. Sherry graduated with a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Honors Economics from University of California Irvine.

Alejandro Toyofusa Komai is a data scientist for Southern California Edison. Currently, he is working on predictive maintenance modeling. He previously worked as a forecaster for Edison and developed their residential solar adoption model. He completed bachelors degrees in math and economics from UCI. He holds a masters in economics from UCLA and a Ph.D. in economics from UCI.

Vanessa Cerrahoglu started her journey as an educator, curriculum developer, and workshop facilitator over 20 years ago. She taught high school mathematics in Los Angeles and Orange County before joining her local county office as a math coordinator. Through her work with diverse learning communities: a site with predominantly English language learners from low socioeconomic status, a math & science academy, and an academy grounded in the arts, she has developed a unique perspective to the problems we face every day. She currently supports teachers, districts, administrators, and varied stakeholders, grades K through 12, to foster a love for learning mathematics!

Erin Urwin is an Advisory Talent Manager at Deloitte. She earned her PhD in Mathematics from UC Irvine in 2010 and her BS from UCLA in 2003. At Deloitte, she is responsible for Talent related analytic projects predicting human behavior within the organization. Prior to transitioning internally to Talent, Erin helped Fortune 100 banking clients meet their regulatory requirements in the wake of the financial crisis. Erin lives in Orange County, CA with her husband and two small boys and truly believes that if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life.

Mary Whitelaw is a reliability engineer at Boeing Network & Space Systems, working primarily on spacecraft. In her work she helps to quantify and improve the probability of success over mission life for spacecraft systems, units, and electronic components. She graduated from the University of California Irvine with a B.S. in Mathematics in 2012.

Daniel J. Vera received his Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT at the age of 21 under Professor Lars Hesselholt. His thesis was in algebraic topology. After graduating, Dr. Vera began a career in quantitative finance. He is currently an accomplished quantitative analyst and investment professional at Surlamer LLC, a boutique investment firm managing private assets in Newport Beach. Since 2006 he has successfully utilized his skill in statistical modeling to generate trading strategies across several asset classes. Dr. Vera has extensive experience researching and implementing quantitative investment algorithms, risk analytics, and portfolio management. In addition to quantitative finance, his areas of interest include mathematical modeling, probability theory, programming, statistics, and data science. Dr. Vera also remains involved with his undergraduate alma mater, UCI, as a mentor for the School of Physical Sciences Undergraduate Mentor (PSUM) Program. He is also an avid J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars, and martial arts fan.

Doo Ree Kim earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from University of California, Irvine. She is the first in her family to earn a college degree. She was a Chancellor's Excellence Scholar and also a member of the Anteater Mathematics Club. Ever since she was a little kid, she has been taught to participate in community service through church, school, and various organizations that provide education for diverse groups of people. Doo Ree loves to learn mathematics, help others, and do research.

Yu Fu is a graduate student in mathematics at UC San Diego. She originally came from Shanghai, China and received her bachelor's degree from UC Irvine in mathematics in 2016. She is interested in analysis and mathematical modeling. She is enthusiastic in volunteering, especially in the field of math education, outside of her regular study. In her free time, she loves reading and writing.

Mary Lee is an Associate Mathematician at the RAND Corporation. Her research interests include mathematical modeling and simulation of complex systems in the areas of defense/aerospace, cyber policy, and healthcare and biology. Projects at RAND include developing search and detection simulations for personnel recovery efforts in contested environments, analyzing new ship defense capabilities for the Navy, and creating simulation tools to help inform cyber security policies. Mary received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Mathematics from UC Irvine and B.A. in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley. Her dissertation research focused on mathematical modeling of cancer growth and metabolism. Prior to attending graduate school at UC Irvine, Mary worked for many years as Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, where much of her work centered on developing tracking algorithms for airborne radar systems.

Giovanna Miranda is a graduate student part of UCI's Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) and teaching credentials program where she is pursuing a teaching credential in mathematics. She received her B.S. in Mathematics with Specialization in Education from the University of California, Irvine in 2014. After graduation, she worked for the Santa Ana Unified School District as an AVID tutor for two years focusing on the subjects of math and physics and providing students with college resources to pursue higher education. Through her current student teaching experience in Algebra I, she is working on helping students develop mathematical confidence, by incorporating more activities that involve inquiry, student use of prior knowledge and interaction with peers to expose students to different ways of solving. She always looks for creative ways to incorporate writing and the use of technology in the classroom to make the class more interactive and accessible to students.

Neil Gulati graduated from UCI with a degree in Pure Mathematics in 2013. While being a full-time student, he was an internationally competitive Trampoline Gymnast. He competed in 3 Olympic Trials and several World Championships. After the 2016 Rio Trials, he retired from competing and has decided to start his professional career at Applied Medical, a new generation medical device manufacturer. Neil's responsibilities at Applied Medical are centered around inventory management and demand planning.

Ani Asatrayn is a Member of Technical Staff at the Aerospace Corporation. She is responsible for providing analytical and software development support in the areas of algorithm development, kinetic threat modeling and simulations, and resiliency analysis. Her work includes creating models to analyze layers of data transfer networks and developing approaches to help mitigate the impact of various threat scenarios. Ani received her PhD in Mathematics from UC Irvine in 2015 and her BS from UCLA in 2007.

Fanhui Xu is a fourth year Phd student at the Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California, working under the supervision of Prof. Remigijus Mikulevicius. Before this, she received a BS degree on Mathematics from Nanjing University in China. Her current research and specialization is stochastic analysis and stochastic (partial) differential equations, and she is also interested in the theory of partial differential equations.

James Godzik is a graduate student in teaching mathematics at Cal State Fullerton. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley and was a medical student at Indiana University before deciding to join the teaching profession. He is passionate about education and also coaching basketball, something he never saw himself doing in all his years of playing.

Huasong Zhang is currently an undergraduate student in University of California, Irvine majoring in mathematics with specialization in applied and computational mathematics. She will graduate this summer and start attending graduate school this fall to study mathematics for further degree.

Lana Kazma has been studying at Los Angles Pierce College since Fall 2014. She is transferring to California State University Northridge in Fall 2017. She has placed in Pre-Calculus and now I am taking Ordinary Differential Equation and Linear Algebra .I have been working as a Math tutor at my college , and I tutor all math levels . I always do my best to manage my time between my work and my classes to be a great student. I am a very self – confidence and I have a passion to learn new things . In 2016 , I participated in a program called RE-C^2 Research Experience for community college . We did research about Card Shuffling . During this research we have studied some statistics concepts like Chi-square test, Markov Chains and transition Matrices we have learnt how to use many programs like(Mathematica , R- program and Latex and many other things) .

Doo Ree Kim earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from University of California, Irvine. She is the first in her family to earn a college degree. She was a Chancellor's Excellence Scholar and also a member of the Anteater Mathematics Club. Ever since she was a little kid, she has been taught to participate in community service through church, school, and various organizations that provide education for diverse groups of people. Doo Ree loves to learn mathematics, help others, and do research.

Timmy Ma is a 5th year graduate student at UC Irvine in applied math. He received his B.A in Mathematics with an emphasis in Teaching at UC Berkeley. His research interests include mathematical modeling of complex social phenomena such as linguistics. He is a Pedagogical Fellow for UCI’s math department where he trains and mentors incoming math graduate students in pedagogy. He is captain of an intramural sports team, the Mathletes, which comprises of graduate students, faculty, and staff of the math department to promote sportsmanship and team work.

Victoria Arias is a third year undergraduate at UC Merced studying applied mathematics and physics. She is also a research assistant in Dr. Jennifer Lu's functional materials synthesis lab. Most of her spare time is spent singing and playing my instruments, mainly the cello, ukulele, and piano. She also enjoys reading books, especially memoirs. Lastly, Victoria loves to dedicate her time to take leadership roles in on-campus organizations like Society of Physics Students, Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

Melike Sirlanci is a fourth year applied mathematics PhD student at the University of Southern California. She received her BSc and MSc in mathematics from Dokuz Eylul University and Koc University in Turkey. Currently, she is working under the supervision of Prof. Gary Rosen and her research is related to the areas of optimization, estimation and systems governed by partial differential equations.

Jie Zhang from Amoy, China, is a third year UC Irvine undergraduate student who majors in Mathematics and minor in Statistics. Her concentration is in Applied and Computational Math. She is the the spotlight student in 2016 in Physics Science.

Benjamin Juarez is a third year undergraduate at UC Merced. He is currently studying molecularbiology and is involved with the applied mathematics department through his computational biology research with Dr. Suzanne Sindi. Ultimately Benjamin would like to get his masters in public health with an emphasis in epidemiaogy and helath policy as well as becoming an OB/GYN. He beliaves that preventative medicine is the future, and that genomics research will pave the path to cures to today’s most detrimental illnesses. On his freetime, Benjamin enjoys running, writing screenplays, and spending time with loved ones. He also advocates for student ideals as a student Senator for UC Merced’s student government.

Karen Wood is a 6th year graduate student at UCI. She received her bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from Cal Poly Pomona. She currently studies cooperation and competition between organisms under her advisor, Professor Natalia Komarova. Karen is active in the mathematics community and coordinates both the graduate student colloquium and the quarterly women in mathematics meetings at UCI.

Ruonan (Elizabeth) Zhao is a 4th year student majoring in Computational and Applied Mathematics at UC Irvine. She is an international student originally from Beijing, China. She was a board member (Treasurer) of the Anteater Mathematics Club in 2016 - 2017 academic year and a volunteered intern in Legislative Council (now known as Judicial) of ASUCI in Spring, 2015. Her hobby is drawing and now is teaching herself digital drawing.