A Nonlinear Path to Mathematics

I didn’t start college planning to become a mathematician. As a business major, I initially wanted to become a lawyer, then began considering a PhD in business management. I started taking mathematics courses in my junior year to prepare, and found myself increasingly drawn to mathematics itself.

I added mathematics as a second major and took courses in real analysis, PDEs, topology, and abstract algebra alongside the business curriculum. I kept taking more classes out of curiosity, and only in my final semester did I decide to pursue graduate study in mathematics.

I entered graduate school with no research experience and spent the first two years feeling lost. In my third year, when I started working with my advisor, Professor Franca Hoffmann, I found questions I wanted to pursue and began learning how to do research. I think of that as the beginning of my research career.

Today, I study interacting particle systems, mean-field limits, and kinetic PDEs, with a focus on long-time behavior and applications to optimization and sampling. My broader interests include fluctuations and large deviations, nonlinear filtering, optimal transport, and classical and quantum dynamics for optimization.

My path has included a few turns. I like remembering that there is no single timetable for finding what you want to study, and that curiosity can take you somewhere you hadn’t planned to go.