About

Hi! I'm Jessica! I'm passionate about a lot of things, and have a lot of eclectic/disjointed interests. Some of the largest parts of my life include math (duh), math/science communication, religion, politics, music, and missing snow.

I'm a sixth year math PhD student at the University of California, Irvine. I have interests in mathematical logic, specifically model theory, and always love learning about foundations of mathematics. I’m currently thinking about topics at the intersection of model theory and group theory. My advisor is Isaac Goldbring. Technically a working mathematician, albeit with only a bit of category theory.

When I’m not doing math, I enjoy rock climbing, board games, exploring new and interesting music, participating in religious activities, queer theology, crosswords, and laughing at my own jokes. Also dogs. I enjoy dogs even when I am doing math.

My research is in an area of mathematics known as "model theory." While I don't spend my days at photoshoots, I *do* get to think about how mathematical logic can give us (mathematicians) tools to better understand and analyze the mathematical world. One of these tools is known as stability theory!

Contrary to what a lot of people think Gödel proved, there's a rich study of what are called "complete axiomatic systems." Basically, these are logical statements and rules such that, if you give it a logical statement, these rules could figure out whether or not your statement is actually true. Not all axiomatic systems share such niceness!

The so-called "stable" theories are complete theories that, to avoid getting into technicalities, are somehow "not too complicated." We logicians tend to like un-complicated things to study and classify (who doesn't?!) We have a bit of hope of analyzing stable theories and getting our hands on some of the "models" of these theories.

On a completely different note, the beginning of graduate school was a time of lots of changes for me. I moved halfway across the country to a place with no friends or relatives, began my first "real" job (without financial support from my well-to-do parents), and had to rethink a lot of my foundational religious beliefs. While the English definition of the word is pretty removed from the mathematical definition, I like the idea of adding some stability back into my life.