Rachel E. Roca

Hi, I'm Rachel!

I am a third year PhD student at Michigan State University in Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering under advisors Dr. Liz Munch and Dr. Danny Caballero. I am a member of the Munch Lab and the Computational Education Research Lab. Particularly, I am interested in topological data analysis applied to education and other social systems. In education research, I am particularly interested in identity formation in classrooms.

In my undergrad, I majored in mathematics, minoring in computer science and Spanish at Manhattan College. You can check out my work in undergrad under my Activities and Research tabs. I am still very passionate about the areas of those projects.

I would love to combine my interests for research, teaching, and social justice in my career. As a queer person in STEM, I work hard to bring my whole self into my work. To find out more about me, I encourage you to explore my website. Please feel free to reach out!

Research Interests

My research intersects with three main fields:

topological data analysis
computing and mathematics education
quantitative justice

Announcements

I guest-edited a special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics on Math and Society. Check it out here! (August 2023)
I have accepted an offer to attend Michigan State University's Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering doctoral program starting this coming fall! (April 2021)
My poster was accepted "Task Performance or Artifact Reduction? Evaluating the Number of Channels and Dropout based on Signal Detection on a U-Net with SSIM Loss" was accepted at the ISMRM 2021 Annual Conference. (March 2021)
My poster presentation at the Joint Mathematics Meeting received an Outstanding Poster Award (Jan 2021)
The Shortest Paths on Cubes Manuscript was accepted by the College Mathematics Journal (Nov 2020)
I was named a 2020 Barry Goldwater Scholar (April 2020)