Adding It Up

Assistant professor and mathematician Ha Tran shares all the reasons she’s grateful for the community at Augustana Campus

Matthew Stepanic - 22 January 2025

Ha Tran
Ha Tran (Photo: supplied)

Despite her vast work in computational theory, assistant professor Ha Tran follows the adage “family-first” and appreciates the support she gets from her academic community in balancing her work and life. She is studying computational number theory and its applications in coding theory and cryptography. The latter studies involve constructing and analyzing ways to secure digital communications between computers and other electronics. In her work, she observes patterns in open (or unsolved) problems to test and try and prove the patterns.

 

When and how did you know you wanted to study number theory?

When I took a course in number theory with my PhD supervisor, I decided that number theory would be my research direction, and it has many applications in other fields as well.

 

What’s a discovery you’ve made in your research that would surprise people?

One time, when I was a postdoc at Aalto University in Finland, I worked with other members in a team on well-rounded ideal lattices of quadratic fields. In the paper we studied, the authors said that there does not exist principal well-rounded ideals from quadratic fields Q(\sqrt{d}) where d=3 mod 4. However, we constructed infinitely many such fields and ideals, and that really surprised the authors of that paper.

 

What’s one big problem you want to address or a goal you want to achieve in your work?

I really love the time when I was a postdoc in Finland where I was happily and efficiently working in a big group of faculty members, students and other postdocs, and everyone was free to choose topics and collaborate with others, but also got a lot of support for their own work. Therefore, I always dream of having such a team at Augustana in the future.

 

What brought you to work at Augustana?

I like the project-based core at Augustana. The students there and all the colleagues make me feel like I’m a part of a warm and close community.

 

How do you see the Augustana community playing a role in your work?

In terms of teaching, I get a lot of support from colleagues and staff. Even though I am new here and very busy preparing for courses, I still feel happy with my work. Also, I enjoy working in small classes and getting close with students. I think I will have more opportunities to get students involved in doing research with me in number theory.

 

Where did you grow up and what’s distinct to you about your hometown?

I grew up in Daklak, a highland area in Vietnam. It is very famous for producing coffee and durians. In Daklak, there are a mix of people from all over the country. Hence our voice is quite special. We understand a lot of local languages from other provinces, and foods there are very diverse.

 

What accomplishment in your life or work are you most proud of?

I think I am proud of being consistent and patient to always speak with my child in Vietnamese even though my partner only speaks English. (I translate for him later.) So now my toddler can speak and understand both Vietnamese and English. It is so sweet to hear her calling to me in Vietnamese: “Mẹ ơi, ăn cơm!” (“Mommy, eat rice!”)

 

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

When I moved to Augustana, I just got back to work from a year of parental leave, so I was struggling with balancing my work and family life. I always felt like I did not have enough time for my work as before with a small child. When I stayed late at work, I felt guilty that I did not spend enough time with my child. One of my colleagues, Anne McIntosh, said to me, “Family first.” That made me feel much better, and even though I am still trying to have a work-life balance, I do not feel guilty for spending time with my family on the weekend or holidays anymore.

 

What’s the last TV show or podcast series you binged?

I love Sherlock Holmes and all detective shows, such as Murdoch.

 

What’s a book or film you would tell someone to read or watch to get to know you better?

I could not think of any such book or film but I am quite a dreamer and I would tell them to watch Harry Potter, Inside Out, or similar movies. I think it is important for adults to still have imagination and dreams. I am waiting for my toddler to grow up a bit, so I can watch those films and read Harry Potter to her.

 

Who’s someone living or dead that you wish you could take for a coffee? And what would you talk to them about?

I wish I could go for a coffee with Évariste Galois, a French mathematician famous for constructing Galois theory. In his teens, he solved a 350-year-old open mathematic problem of determining a condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals. Unfortunately, Galois fought in a duel and died when he was just 20. I am very curious about what else he would have discovered and contributed to mathematics if he had lived longer.

 

If you had to eat the same meal every day for a week, what would it be?

I am quite picky about food, so I don’t think that I can eat the same meal every day for a week. :) 
 


Learn more about Ha

Ha Tran is an assistant professor working at the University of Alberta in the Augustana faculty. Her research interests are in computational number theory and its applications in cryptography and coding theory. Currently, with collaborators and students, Ha is working on projects related to constructing well-rounded ideal lattices for applications in coding theory, computing the unit groups of number fields and the geometry structure of these groups, and geometry of endomorphism rings of supersingular elliptic curves over a finite field and their application in isogeny-based cryptography.