Research

The area of research that stemmed from my graduate school school experience is in the algebraic area of representation theory of Lie algebras which is difficult to involve undergraduate and Masters level students since this topic is usually not encountered until further on in graduate studies. Since that research felt exclusionary and counter to my passion of broadening participation, I sought a change of research areas and participated in a mathematical research community provided by the American Mathematical Society on the Inverse Eigenvalue problem of a graph (IEP-G) in summer of 2021. This area is the intersection of matrix theory and combinatorics/discrete mathematics, which allows me to broaden participation and include students of various levels into valuable research experiences. Since my involvement in the MRC, I have established myself in the field with active collaborations with both colleagues and students.

The various active projects I have in combinatorics and discrete mathematics allow me to invite a broader audience to participate in math research. The goals of my research are to work with colleagues and both ndergraduate and graduate students to further the study of this graph parameter and it’s variations. Furthermore, incorporating students in this research is driven by my passion of broadening participation and growing the mathematical community with a goal of highlighting those historically excluded in mathematics. As a Center for Student Research faculty mentor at CSU East Bay, in all collaborations I form with students, I focus on high impact mentoring practices such as personal investment and meaningful interactions which have been shown to be positively associated with undergraduate GPA, retention, and time to graduation.