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Biographies of the 1999 SIMU Staff
Krista Blevins, Probability and Statistics Seminar Associate
Krista Blevins grew up in the small West Texas town
of Monahans. She received her
B.S. in Applied Mathematics (1994) from Texas A&M University and her M.S.
in Statistics (1996) from Texas Tech University.
She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Statistics Department of
Southern Methodist University where she is researching a dissertation in the
area of spatial statistics. Her
hobbies include water and snow skiing, watching sporting events (especially
Texas Aggie football and Dallas Stars hockey), and spending time with her
niece and nephew, Bailey Cole and Gunnar Cade. Krista
is also planning a fall wedding to her fiancé, Jack Cohlmia.
Rudy Guerra,
Probability and Statistics Seminar Leader
Rudy Guerra was born and raised in San Antonio,
Texas. He received his B.S. in
Mathematics (1984) from the University of Texas, San Antonio, M.S. in
Mathematics (1987) and Ph.D. in Statistics (1992) from the University of
California, Berkeley. He is
currently Associate Professor of Statistics at Southern Methodist University
in Dallas, Texas. His research
interests include statistical genetics, environmental statistics,
randomization and bootstrap methods, and linear models.
Since most first-year undergraduate students do not look forward to
taking “intro to stats,” he also enjoys exploring different teaching
methods to make it bearable. (This
is where he earns the bulk of his salary!)
When not at the office, he is at home with his wife, Nancy, three
children, Amanda, Andrew, and Olivia, and their dog, Maggie, who likes to bark
at the wind. His personal hobbies include reading, keeping up with
baseball, family outings, opera, and taking long walks.
Karla
Hommertzheim, Probability and Statistics Seminar Associate
Karla Hommertzheim (HOME-ert-zime, when you say it in
English, not German) is a first-year graduate student in Statistical Science
at Southern Methodist University. She
earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Kansas State University in Manhattan
("The Little Apple"), Kansas. After
graduating, she taught geometry at Grand Prairie (TX) High School (a large
suburb south of Dallas) for three years before returning to school to work on
her graduate degrees, for which she actually makes a better salary.
She grew up in a small town in south central Kansas, but knows not one
thing about cows nor tractors and had NO experience with tornadoes until
moving to Texas. Her partner of
five years, Rob, is an architect working in Dallas, with whom she enjoys
attending performances by the Dallas Symphony and Stars hockey games, as well
as travelling to see the KSU Wildcats football team, even when they lose the
big games. When she used to have
free time, she enjoyed reading novels and taking long walks in the park.
John B. Little,
Gröbner Basis Seminar Leader
John B. Little received his B.A. from Haverford
College in 1976 and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University in 1980.
He is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at Holy Cross
College in Worcester, Massachusetts. His
current research interests include algebraic geometry (especially
computational methods such as Gröbner bases, resultants, etc.) and
applications of that mathematics to areas such as coding theory
(error-correcting codes and their encoding and decoding algorithms), integer
programming, techniques for solving systems of polynomial equations, and so
forth. He is also deeply
interested in teaching and in methods such as collaborative learning groups
that aim to promote active participation by students. He is an accomplished amateur violist and loves playing and
listening to chamber and orchestral music.
Herbert A.
Medina, SIMU Co-Director
Herbert A. Medina was born in El Salvador and
immigrated to the United States at the age of eight. He received his B.S. in Mathematics/Computer Science (1985)
from UCLA, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics (1992) from UC Berkeley.
He is currently Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount
University in Los Angeles, CA. He
recently became tenured and was promoted to Associate Professor effective in
fall 1999. His research interests
center on functional analysis, harmonic analysis, and ergodic theory;
recently, he has taken an interest in wavelets.
One of his other passions is working on projects that aim to increase
the participation of historically underrepresented groups in mathematics and
the sciences. His hobbies include
running, the stock market, American history, contemporary Latin American
history, Latin American and Chicano literature, and “música de la nueva
troba.”
Edward Mosteig,
Gröbner Basis Seminar Associate
Edward received his B.S. (1993) in Mathematics from
the University of Michigan, his M.S. (1995) in Mathematics from the University
of Illinois, and his M.S. (1999) in Computer Science from Cornell University.
He is currently working in his last year towards his Ph.D. in Applied
Mathematics at Cornell. His
research interests include commutative and computational algebra, particularly
the study of Gröbner bases, valuation and filtration theory, algorithms,
coding theory and applications to algebraic geometry such as resolution of
singularities. He likes to spend
his free time playing guitar, playing squash, biking, hiking, and listening to
music of all type.
Pablo V. Negrón,
SIMU Co-Director
Professor Negrón received his BS (1978) and MS
(1980) from the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras and his Ph.D. from the
University of Maryland at College Park (1985).
He has received three EPSCoR Scholarly Productivity Awards from the
University of Puerto Rico (1989, 1990, 1992), appeared in the “Models of
Excellence” publication of the National Science Foundation in 1990, and
received an IBM fellowship in 1984-85. Since
1986, Professor Negrón has been involved in various research projects that
have had a significant impact on the development of computational mathematics
in Puerto Rico. He was one of the
original members of the computational mathematics component of the EPSCoR
program in Puerto Rico and actively participated on the proposal
“Infrastructure for Computer Science Research in Puerto Rico” sponsored by
the CISE Division of the National Science Foundation from 1992-present for the
establishment of a Ph.D. program in Computer Science and Engineering in Puerto
Rico. He is currently Professor of Mathematics at the University of Puerto
Rico-Humacao. Professor Negrón’s
research interests are in the theoretical and numerical aspects of bifurcation
theory and their applications to problems in continuum mechanics.
In his spare time Professor Negrón likes to play basketball, do some
jogging, and listen to “classical” salsa music.
Rebecca Pablo,
Gröbner Basis Seminar Associate
Rebecca is a third year graduate student in
mathematics at UC Berkeley. She
is currently working toward an M.A. in math for completion by May 1999 and
will be pursuing her Ph.D. in computational algebra at New Mexico State
University. She received her B.S.
in mathematics at Loyola Marymount University, her home away from home.
Rebecca was born and raised in Guam, one of the islands, like Puerto
Rico, that was ceded by Spain to the United States as a result of the
Spanish-American War. She enjoys
playing classical and jazz piano whenever there’s an opportunity and loves
listening to Euro-pop groups like Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys.
She spends a good portion of her free time in the kitchen, where she
developed a passion for creating culinary delights for friends and family to
enjoy.
Ivelisse Rubio,
SIMU Co-Director
Ivelisse M. Rubio was born and raised in Puerto Rico.
She received her B.S. (1984) and M.S. (1988) in Mathematics from the
University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras and her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics
from Cornell University in January 1998.
Ive is currently Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University
of Puerto Rico-Humacao. Her research interests are Gröbner Bases and its
applications, in particular applications to error-correcting codes. She loves the beach and Afro-Caribbean music.
Paula Rivera
Torres, SIMU Program Coordinator
Paula Rivera Torres was born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico,
and grew up in Las Piedras. She
received her B.S. in Computational Mathematics (1998) from the University of
Puerto Rico – Humacao. Her
participation in the 1998 SIMU helped her to focus her mathematical interests
and plans to pursue graduate studies in mathematics in the near future.
In her non-academic life, she likes to go to the movies, go dancing,
and loves the beach even though she does not know how to swim.
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