I am a mathematician and educator living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. For details about my academic work, you can look at my CV -- but I bet you're not here for that!

I trained as a pure mathematician but I grew up in a practical world, raised to know how to cook, knit, and fix household objects and basic computer problems. Somehow I fell in love with mathematics and grew to really care about things like the quantum cohomology of Grassmannians. It's hard to explain, but math is beautiful and everywhere. I like to wonder about the differential geometry built into my knitting (I like fitted garments that fit) and the fractal patterns followed by the veins in the leaves of trees. (Yes, the growth of leaves can be described mathematically!) Sharing the beauty and power of these ideas is what I enjoy most in teaching.

This year (2015) I am looking to

• continue to explore mathematics, especially the collisions of algebraic geometry and combinatorics
• find venues to popularize the math I love outside of the academy
• explore how mathematics can be applied to the problems of people I know, and how visualization can communicate the results
• implement some of the educational and curriculum development ideas that have been stewing through semesters at Cornell, MSRI, St. Olaf, and the University of Minnesota
• think critically about how our changing economy will impact academia, especially through technology.

I am working on these goals by publishing my book, EarthCalculus, based on the EarthCalculus blog. I'm also blogging on technology and math at the Limit Institute blog and now working full-time with the Minnesota Center for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics to produce innovative and effective educational materials in probability. I've also picked up some Ruby on Rails development on the side, using it as a vehicle for furthering some of these goals. If you want to chat, we should have coffee! I want to apply math to your problems and understand how teaching and learning must adapt to our newly-wired world.