Hi there! My favorite part of teaching at Beloit is the close relationships I have with my students. I believe that everyone deserves to experience the joys of math and computer science, and I like to start my courses with discussions of Dr. Federico Ardila’s axioms. Students from marginalized groups (women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals, folks with disabilities, and more) have been and continue to be excluded from these subjects and STEM in general. Additionally, many of my students’ future employers in government and industry do not encourage or welcome challenges to the status quo, frequently putting employees in positions of unknowingly or unwillingly furthering systemic injustices. I am committed to decolonizing and demilitarizing all of these subjects in any way that I can, in particular by equipping undergraduates to interrogate potential uses of their newfound technical math and computer science skills through the liberal arts framework. Let’s work to tip the scales together!

I love to teach all kinds of courses. In intro-level courses like calculus, I get to meet students from many different majors, and we often learn together the ways that mathematics can serve their interests in other disciplines. In more advanced courses like topology, I get to help students deepen their creative problem-solving abilities and logical reasoning, skills which serve them well regardless of their career goals.

In my research, I am most interested in topics blending theoretical math (especially geometric group theory and topology) and computer science (computability and complexity theory as well as practical algorithms). I am currently thinking a lot about loops, topological objects that you have seen if you have ever charted your path on an exercise routine, or even written the number eight. With Christopher-Lloyd Simon and others, we are studying games about pinning loops in surfaces. We have shown that the one-player game is interesting (in the sense that there is no easy way to compute an optimal strategy). The game opens onto a whole world of unanswered questions, and lots of opportunities for interested students to get involved.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my family and volunteering in my community. I like skateboarding, listening to and making music, and learning new things about math, computer science, and physics. I am fascinated by the hacking, reverse engineering, and glitch hunting carried out by communities dedicated to video game speedrunning. I love puzzles and games with a low floor and high ceiling; that is, ones with few and simple rules from which complex logic and deep strategy emerge, and my favorite multiplayer ones also tend to riff on some notion of information asymmetry. Some of them include Baba is You, Hanabi, Poker, Mafia, and the Game of Life.