Contemporary Mathematics: Contemporary Mathematics at Nebraska

Akinpelu was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University when she first encountered applied mathematics. She completed a dissertation in inventory systems management and in 1980 joined AT & T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ, where she worked for 25 years. The projects she worked on included developing new models for planning and managing telephone network call capacity under specific traffic conditions, and developing strategies for maintaining network stability.

Christina Eubanks-Turner is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Seaver College of Science and Engineering. She was one of the two first African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Nebraska in 2008. Her academic areas of interest include graph theory, commutative algebra, mathematics education, and mathematical sciences diversification. She is also the Director of the Master’s Program in Teaching Mathematics at LMU.

Christine Kelley is a Professor of Mathematics at UNL and works in coding theory. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2006, she held postdoctoral research positions at the Fields Institute and The Ohio State University. Her areas of research includes graph-based codes and algorithms, and coding applications such as flash memory storage, data streaming, and communication networks.

Steven Klee received his BS in mathematics from Valparaiso University in 2005 and his PhD in mathematics from the University of Washington in 2010. After a two-year postdoc at UC Davis, he started at Seattle University in 2012, where he is currently an associate professor of mathematics. His primary research interest is in combinatorics, but research articles that include phrases such as "spanning tree enumeration" and "minimal length lattice paths" are indicative of the connections to graph theory. In his free time, Klee enjoys cooking and spending time with his family.

Hiram Lopez grew up in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the CINVESTAV-IPN in Mexico City in 2016. He spent part of his Ph.D. program at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, having won a Swiss Excellence Scholarship Award. After completing a postdoc at Clemson University, he joined the faculty at Cleveland State University in 2019. His main area of research is coding theory and network coding, using tools from graph theory, combinatorics, and other areas of mathematics. He actively supports Mexican Ph.D. students by linking them to research visits and postdoctoral positions at U.S. universities.

Sang-il Oum is a mathematician from South Korea in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at KAIST and also at the Discrete Mathematics Group (DIMAG) of the Institute for Basic Science. He grew up in Yecheon, Korea, received his BS in mathematics from KAIST in 1998, and his Ph.D. in applied and computational mathematics from the Princeton University in 2005. He works in graph theory and discrete mathematics. He is best known for his work in structural graph theory and graph algorithms.

John Urschel began a PhD program in mathematics at MIT in 2016. After playing football at Penn State, he was a 5th round draft pick into the NFL in 2014. He played for three years until he retired in 2017 to dedicate his time to studying. In 2021, he graduated from MIT and is currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Urschel’s research interests are in graph theory, numerical analysis, and data science/machine learning.

Mariel Vazquez obtained a BS degree in mathematics from the National University of Mexico and went on to earn her Ph.D. from Florida State University. After joining the faculty at San Francisco State University in 2005, she became a CAMPOS Scholar at UC Davis in 2014, where she remains a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. Her research combines mathematics and biology and uses tools such as knot theory and graph theory to study the packing of DNA.

Michael Young joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University as the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Mellon College of Science. Young’s mathematical research focuses on graph theory and combinatorics. Young also promotes equity and inclusion in mathematics, especially the impacts that (1) race, (2) mathematics culture and (3) learning have on one another. (Which can be thought of as a TRI-partite graph!)