Ashka graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (a.k.a. Rose or RHIT) in 2024. At Rose, through the R² program, she received a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics with minors in Spanish and Music and a Master’s in Engineering Management. She now works in a Technical Services role at Epic Systems. Ashka's love for math and the mathematical community thrives through her experiences, including: a role as the President of the RHIT AWM chapter, volunteer at high school math competitions hosted by Rose, tutor (math focused) at the RHIT Learning Center, researcher at the 2022 YSU-BUMP and 2023 UConn Summer REU programs, mentor for Rose Prime, and, of course, an organizer of OURFA^2M^2. Ashka is grateful for the connections she has made with people in the math community that have allowed her to feel safe and a sense of belonging in the community. As a bi woman of color, she hopes that she can be a connection that helps others find the opportunities to support their ambitions and feel the same safety and belonging that she has felt and found in mathematics.

Skye is a research and outreach fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Skye graduated with a BA in math from Bard College in 2024. After being introduced to math research at the MathILy-EST REU in 2022, Skye immediately got hooked, attending 17 math conferences within a year (including OURFA2M2!) in pursuit of knowledge and community.

Skye’s career choices have been driven by an interest in joy, exploration, creativity, human connection, and equitable action. In undergrad, Skye was the lead organizer for Dr. Lauren Rose’s math outreach program for middle school girls called MAGPIES (Math & Girls + Inspiration = Success) and her teaching assistant for the course Mathematics of Puzzles and Games.

At MPI MiS in Leipzig, alongside conducting math research in Dr. Érika Roldán's Stochastic Topology group, Skye is also collaborating with the math education company Imaginary to develop two video games which aim to teach quantum computing to the public.

Advocating for equity and inclusion are enormously important to Skye, who is professionally committed to listening to, supporting, and uplifting Black, Brown, trans, non-binary, fem, and queer people.

Bowen is a second-year math PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include combinatorics, graph theory, and their connections to topology and geometry. Bowen is an alum of both the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics(BSM) and Budapest Semester in Mathematics Education(BSME) programs. Feel free to ask him anything about Budapest or the BSM program!

Teaching is a key part of Bowen's mathematical journey. Since his freshman year, he has taught Calculus, worked as a tutor and TA at Carleton's Math Skill Center, and served as a TA at AwesomeMath Summer Math Camp. He also enjoys creating videos and writing expository articles on mathematical concepts he finds intriguing, aiming to share his passion for mathematics with a broader audience.

In 2020, Bowen attended the OURFA²M² conference, where he was moved by personal stories from mathematicians about their challenges in the field. This experience inspired him to join the organizing committee for OURFA²M² 2022. As an international student, Bowen understands the unique struggles that students from diverse backgrounds often face in learning mathematics and hopes to help foster a more inclusive and welcoming mathematical community.

Last updated: July 2025

Gavi graduated from the University of Redlands in December of 2022 with a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science, and is currently working as a Technical Data Analyst for a grid consulting company. As an international student at a small liberal arts college, he didn’t have the easiest time exploring math outside of Redlands via REUs and conferences. His first such experience was OURFA2M2 2020. The unorthodox structure of the conference and the connections he made at the conference opened his eyes to the broader American mathematical community and opportunities. This led him to spend two research summers at Redlands and two impactful semesters at the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program, where he deepened his connection with math and broadened his mathematical network. 

Gavi feels strongly about the common fear/hate against math that exists in the general populace. He believes that most people never get to see the real gems of math that the few of us (who pursue an undergraduate or graduate degree in math) get to cherish, especially people from marginalized communities. Through OURFA2M2, he aims to reduce this fear amongst the people he meets, whether it’s by sharing experiences, or by making people aware of opportunities in the math community.

Salina Tecle is an Eritrean-American undergrad student currently studying Mathematics and Data Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She graduated from Northern Virginia Community College in 2022 with an Associate of Science degree in Mathematics and is currently a research and outreach intern in the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab, where she helps facilitate math education activities for young students and math research projects with her faculty mentors and fellow undergrad researchers. She was a participant in the 2023 CURE summer program run by the Intercollegiate Biomathematics Alliance at Illinois State University and is currently working on predicting the future population of certain fish species using integral projection methods. She was furthermore part of the 2023 Mathematics Climate Research Network program by the American Institute of Mathematics at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Salina is excited to be part of a diverse and interconnected math community and do her part in welcoming new mathematicians to OURFA2M2.

Last Updated: Oct 2023

Zoe is a junior studying Mathematics and English Literature at Swarthmore College. She is the Assistant Producer of “Mathematically Uncensored,” a podcast about people of color in mathematics, and is on the board of GeMS (Gender Minorities in Math and Statistics) at her home institution. Zoe has attended both the Summer@ICERM REU and the Mathily-EST REU. After many years of doubting whether she belonged in mathematics, Zoe hopes to work with OURFA²M² to create a math community where everyone can be their true selves.

Jenna Cruz is a non-traditional first-generation college student. She studies industrial and applied mathematics at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN. She graduated from Century College in May 2024. In 2021, she was awarded the Century College Foundation Mathematics Scholarship. For two years Jenna worked as a peer math tutor in the Century College Math Resource Center. In addition to being a student, Jenna works full-time for Metro Transit as an Associate Communications Specialist.

Jenna’s path to math was not linear. She started and stopped college several times. She eventually resumed college in her early 30's, but studied business rather than math. She decided to change majors to math after taking College Algebra and Statistics. She credits her success to the support she received from her professors and mentors, and helpful friends from Math Twitter. She was especially inspired by attending the OURFA²M² conferences in 2020 and 2021.

Luke is a first-year mathematics PhD student at Michigan State University. His past affiliations include Washington University in St. Louis, Grand Challenge Scholars Program, and Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, and he had his first math research experience with the Michigan State University REU in 2018. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Louisiana Tech University in May 2020 at the onset of COVID-19. While struggling to stay in touch with the mathematics community during his gap year, he attended the OURFA²M² 2020 conference and was inspired to apply to more math programs after meeting other LGBTQ+ mathematicians. As a transgender man, Luke hopes to become the LGBTQ+ representation in math that he did not see as an undergraduate. He is excited to continue working with the OURFA²M² organizing team for a second year to provide valuable resources to undergraduate students.

Shreya (they/she) is an undergraduate in their senior year at Mount Holyoke College. They are an international student from Kolkata, India. One of the first experiences that had a big impact on the way she sees her identity as a student of colour in math was at the Advancing Inquiry and Inclusion in Mathematics Undergraduate Program (AIM UP) in 2020, where she worked on a project involving posets and parking functions. AIM UP was a research program aimed at underrepresented and minority students and it deeply impacted the way she views her role as a researcher, collaborator, and the space she takes up in a classroom. Since then, she has participated in the Fields Undergraduate Research Program in 2021, where she worked on the localisation game played on graphs. Earlier this summer, she was also a guest student researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she studied fisheries models that display chaotic behaviour with riddled basins of attraction. She is passionate about helping build spaces that provide support and work on activism for minority communities. OURFA2M2 is important to her because she hopes other minority students get to experience feeling seen and worthy, the way she did when she finally found her community. 

Last updated: May 2022

Michael N Johnson III is a PhD student in Mathematics Education at The University of Iowa. He is researching how we re-learn mathematics, especially with those who are taking developmental mathematics courses. He is currently involved with the Prison Math Project, Volunteers in Tutoring Adult Learners, and GAMMA-CAT. He began his venture into academia at 21 at Grand Rapids Community College. While there he began a tutoring program to serve other non-traditional and first-generation students. This was his first attempt at giving back to the community that had helped him. After getting an associate degree, dealing with mental illness and addiction, dropping out, and failing out along the way, the journey culminated in him receiving his B.Sc. in Mathematics at Indiana University 12 years later. Returning to university during the lock-down era of the pandemic with barriers and the lack of community he had felt, he was able to find respite in OURFA2M2. Immediately after he joined as an organizer where he would go on to be a Business Chair and a PI on the conference grant. This experience with other marginalized students provided the sense of community he was missing. It inspired him to pursue graduate school and get a Masters degree at Indiana University and continue his education and give freely what was given to him. @michaelnjohnsoniii.myportfolio.com

Last updated: October 2024

Alvaro is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His journey has been everything but linear, or even convex. As an immigrant from Peru, he struggled to identity as a mathematician, taking him two years to leave behind his business major for a math career. With the help of friends and caring mentors, Alvaro found a space in the math community, leading him to pursue graduate studies in math. Not long after starting them, Alvaro decided to abandon his math career to instead focus his efforts on fighting climate change and helping disadvantaged communities that will be impacted by it the most, such as Peru, his first home. Alvaro now uses his math skills to enhance the electric grid’s resilience to climate disasters and improve its capacity for large intakes of renewable energy. Through OURFA2M2, he hopes to equip members of underrepresented communities with the skills needed to give back in the future.

Last updated: September 2024

Lee is a second-year PhD student at the University of Minnesota. She earned a BS in math from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, with minors in German, political science, and astronomy/astrophysics. Her mathematical (and adjacent) interests are in number theory, graph theory, voting theory, mathematical art, astronomy, math education, and math cognition. Some formative experiences of her undergraduate career include being a counselor at Rose-Hulman AMP and PROMYS, TA'ing for The Art of Problem Solving, participating in the REU at Grand Valley State University, studying and researching with Budapest Semesters in Mathematics and Mathematics Education, and working on various research projects, as well as, of course, starting OURFA²M².  At the same time, her undergraduate record includes many failed classes and having to drop out for a year and a half, all due to health concerns, so she understands being forced into a nonlinear academic path and the difficulties of getting back onto a track that works for someone's own unique situation. 

In grad school, she has been a counselor at the Ross Mathematics Program, she TA's for university math classes, and she is a problem writer for the Minnesota State High School Math League.  She has been an active member of oSTEM for many years, including being an officer in both the Rose-Hulman and University of Minnesota chapters, and was awarded the oSTEM Global STEM Service Award. As a queer and genderqueer woman who manages chronic illness and comes from a background without much financial support, Lee has seen many angles of the fight to make a place for yourself in mathematics when you aren’t what people expect a mathematician to be. She hopes to make that fight a little easier for those who come after her. 

Brittany is a PhD student in mathematics at Rutgers University, where she is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Rutgers Presidential Fellowship. She graduated in 2021 from Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. She is interested in topological data analysis, dynamical systems, and machine learning. In summer 2022, she interned at NASA Langley Research Center. During undergrad, she did REU programs at DIMACS and Lafayette College, studied abroad at Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, and did outreach as president of a chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Brittany helped organize OURFA²M² three times, and she found it rewarding to help other people recognize their potential for a career in mathematics, no matter where or when they were starting.

Last updated: June 2023

Amaury is a Dominican first-year PhD student in Mathematics at Colorado State University. his research interests lie in combinatorics. The programs that were most influential during his time in Florida Atlantic University's undergraduate program were the F-LEARN program and MSRI-UP. He has a passion for math communication, and for introducing students to research opportunities. He has mentored students who want to engage with research in STEM, and recognizes the importance of having a strong support network. This conference is important to Amaury because of the difficulty he had in initially finding resources when he started his math degree. He wants this conference to reach students who want to engage with the mathematical community.

Last updated: December 2020

Last updated: September 2024

Vanessa Sun is a proud daughter of Brazilian/Taiwanese immigrants and is from New York (not the city). Her college experience studying pure mathematics at CUNY Hunter College/Macaulay Honors College was an isolating one at first, as the college did not have a math club or seminar talks, and she did not have math research opportunities in her institution. She found solace in the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath), where she later volunteered to attend events for free, and traveled 2 hours away to see presentations at other colleges. With the help of random math students on Tumblr (including OURFA^2M^2 organizers Lee Trent and Amaury Miniño), her luck began to change when she was accepted to MSRI-UP, a summer math research program. There, she had a horrible research experience but a life-changing social experience that filled her with the desire to help other math students who felt like they didn’t have the resources to succeed to learn about math career opportunities and programs. After failing many math classes, notably having to take Calc 3 four times, Vanessa graduated in 2021 with her B.A. in math and studio art, minors in political science and media studies. She did not feel like she could succeed in graduate study for mathematics and decided that climate change was the single most important problem for the next generation of scientists and mathematicians to work on. Post-graduation, she took a “gap year” to enroll in prerequisite chemistry and physics courses for graduate study in the geosciences, while interning with applied mathematicians at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. These roles opened her mind to research career pathways outside of a university academic setting.

Vanessa was accepted into a PhD program at MIT to study geochemistry and for 9 months, she picked minerals with tweezers, learned how to characterize minerals with x-rays, and ran experiments to turn carbon dioxide into minerals. She was forced to master out and decided to pursue computational atmospheric chemistry instead. She graduated with her S.M. in Earth and Planetary Sciences with a successful thesis defense in atmospheric chemistry in 2024, attended by many of her beloved math friends and mentors, including those from MSRI-UP. Vanessa has remained involved in the math community, has spoken on various panels and at math conferences about creating OURFA^2M^2 with her friends, led LaTeX workshops for MSRI-UP and OURFA^2M^2, and served as a Co-Chair for the Lathisms Scholarship for its first year and continues to be on the Scholarship Selection Committee. Currently, Vanessa is an atmospheric chemistry PhD student at the University of Utah, and is still healing her relationship to pure math— it took her 2 years away from mathematics to miss it, and she is learning to love it again. In September 2024, she began studying how to apply graph theory to atmospheric chemistry modeling, as a side project to her main research on improving air quality in Salt Lake City. She hopes that students reading this and attending OURFA^2M^2 will see that they can overcome many failures, that their career path may not be the most linear, and that they feel welcome and encouraged to pursue math careers.