Personal background

I come from a family with deep mathematical interests, although I am not detailing these interests here. I was an undergraduate at Williams College. Among other things, while I was there, I participated in the Putnam Exam and was a Putnam Fellow my senior year there.

After that, I was a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics at Harvard University. I received my Ph.D. remarkably quickly (although I know some people who took less time) and worked with Persi Diaconis. My Ph.D. thesis involved probability on finite groups. Another area of interest involves hyperbolic 3-manifolds. For some information on SnapPea, a computer program which computes various properties of these manifolds, check out Jeff Weeks' home page.

Since receiving my Ph.D., I have worked at a number of places. I spent 3 years teaching in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. I then spent a year at The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications which is located at the University of Minnesota. That year featured the IMA's program in probability. I then taught for a couple of years in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin.

One summer I was at the Park City Mathematical Institute at the Institute for Advanced Study.

I am now in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Some people may refer to the University at Albany as SUNY-Albany even though university guidelines now frown upon such usage.

I have had several Ph.D. students receiving degrees at the University at Albany. My first Ph.D. student is Joseph McCollum. He received his degree in 2006, and he teaches now at Siena College. The second, Rick Neville, finished his Ph.D. in spring, 2011, and he teaches now at Dean College . The third, Scott Bianco, finished his Ph.D. in spring, 2012, and teaches at Hudson Valley Community College. A fourth, Logan Martin, received his Ph.D. in spring, 2019, and is teaching some courses for the EOP here at the University at Albany. A fifth, Kseniya Klyachko, received her Ph.D. in spring, 2020, and is teaching as a lecturer at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute.

I am a member of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America.

The above material sounds very academic, but as an undergraduate I did have a summer job (and more) programming computers for Market Analytics near Philadelphia.