Katherine Perry

At the tri-border of Slovenia, Austria, and Italy!

Associate Professor of Mathematics

Soka University of America - Go Lions!

kperry at soka dot edu

Office: Gandhi 416

Welcome! I am an Associate Professor at Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, CA. Before Soka, I was a postdoc at the University of Denver where I was mentored by Paul Horn. And before that, I attended graduate school at Auburn University in southern Alabama (War Eagle!) where I was advised by Chris Rodger for both my PhD and MSc. I feel incredibly lucky to have had such wonderful mentors.

Broadly speaking, my research focuses on graph theory, combinatorics, and design theory, but lately I have also been interested network science.

I'm also a member of the U.S. - Africa Collaborative Research Network, which aims to improve the human infrastructure in mathematical sciences in both the US and Sub-Saharan Africa, especially among underrepresented groups, with hopes of creating high quality, long-term U.S. - Africa research partnerships among researchers from diverse backgrounds. Through this research network, I have been attending the Masamu Advanced Study Institute's research workshop since 2016.

For more information, please see my cv.

News and Announcements

I was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and am on Sabbatical for AY 2025-2026 ! 🥳🎉
Spring/Summer 2026:
- Giving a talk on AI and Everday Life at the Aliso Viejo Chamber of Commerce's April Networking Lunch
- Speaking in the NY Combinatorics Seminar May 15 🗽🍎
- Speaking at the Auburn University REU June 5 🦅🐯 WDE!
- SiMEGG: Structure in Matroids, Embedded Graphs and Graphs at ICMS, Scotland June 29 - July 3🏰🐮
- British Combinatorial Conference at Cardiff University Wales July 6 - 10 🐳
- Looking forward to visiting the Discrete Mathematics Group at the Institute for Basic Science in Daejeon, South Korea July 12 - Aug 29 🛸, attending ASIACOMB, and visiting Prof. Hung-Lin Fu at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan Sept 1 - 4 ! 🧋

Most recent paper: On fixing and distinguishing numbers of trees, joint with Calum Buchanan, Peter Dankelmann, Isabel Harris, Paul Horn, and Emily Rivett-Carnac. You can see a talk I gave at IBS on these results here.

I am also so excited and proud to share the following updates from my current and former students and RAs:
- My research assistant, Hiroshi Nonaka, will be starting a PhD at Okinawa Institute of Technology in Machine Learning this fall. Congratulations, Hiroshi !
- My former capstone student, Mahir Anand, just finished his first year of a PhD in Computer Science at Iowa State University and will spend the summer doing CS research on campus. Multiple Soka students reached out to Mahir for grad school advice this past academic year we were all grateful for his time and guidance.

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