I am interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning and algebraic combinatorics. Key words describing my research include: gateway math, calculus, repeating courses, DFW rates, matroids, polymatroids, error-correcting codes, and finite groups!
My postdoctoral research program is focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. In particular, I am interested in studying the experiences of students who do not pass gateway math courses (pre-calc, calc I, calc II) at Hopkins and who go on to retake them here. The long term goal of this project is to test interventions to support these students in their repeat attempt and to help more students pass on their first attempt.
My thesis work was in algebraic combinatorics and advised by Ed Swartz. More specifically, I am interested in problems which involve or have arisen from the study of polymatroids representable over finite groups. This includes classifying matroids and polymatroids representable over different classes of finite groups as well as a duality for error-correcting codes over nonabelian groups.
October 2025: On the Flip Side, Natural Sciences and Mathematics Colloquium, St. Mary's College of Maryland (Invited)
February 2025: Investigating Outcomes for Students Repeating Calculus I, RUME 2025, Alexandria, VA
September 2023: MacWilliams Identities for Nonabelian Group Codes, Discrete Geometry and Combinatorics Seminar, Cornell University
April 2023: Matroids, Polymatroids, and Finite Groups, Binghamton University Combinatorics Seminar (Invited)
March 2023: Matroids, Polymatroids, and Groups, Graduate Online Combinatorics Colloquium, Virtual (Invited) (recording)
March 2023: Polymatroids and Groups, Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference, Washington University of St. Louis
November 2022: Matroids Represented by Nonabelian Groups, BUGCAT Conference, Binghamton University
June 2022: Matroids Represented by Nonabelian Groups, Student Symposium in Combinatorics, Virtual (recording)
March 2022: A MacWilliams Identity for Groups, Olivetti Seminar, Cornell University
December 2020: Matroids and An Optimal Assignment Problem, Olivetti Seminar, Cornell University (Expository)
January 2018: A Relaxation of the Total Coloring Game on Trees, Joint Mathematics Meetings, San Diego
As an undergraduate at Swarthmore, I worked in Amy Graves's lab for two years using simulations to investigate how the properties of a jammed solid were affected when the particles were jammed in the presence of a small square pin lattice. I wrote a senior honors thesis on this work - Structured Randomness: Jamming of Soft Disks within Lattices of Pinned Particles.
Structured Randomness: Jamming of Soft Disks and Pins, Soft Matter, 2020, 16, 5305 - 5313 (with S.A. Ridout, B. Jenike, A. Liloia, and A. Graves)
March 2018: Jamming of Soft Disks within Lattices of Pinned Particles, American Physical Society Meeting, Los Angeles
March 2017: Jamming within Lattices, American Physical Society Meeting, New Orleans (Poster)