Q: What do you teach?
A: I am a mathematician, and teach a large variety of courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels: calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, mathematical modelling, and mathematical biology.
Q: Why should people learn about it?
A: Mathematics is intrinsic to human culture - for thousands of years, humans have used numbers for counting and geometry for representing spatial relationships. Mathematics also is extremely powerful - the language and tools of mathematics allow us to reason about the world around us and make sense of it.
"Mathematics is extremely powerful - the language and tools of mathematics allow us to reason about the world around us and make sense of it."
Q: What are some of its "real-world" applications?
A: Mathematics is everywhere! It is crucial for our economy (in banking, oil exploration and production, telecommunications, etc.), it plays a role in the diagnosis and treatment of disease (through biomedical imaging, optimizing radiotherapy, etc.), it contributes to our enjoyment of life (think computer gaming, solving Sudoku puzzles, fractal art), and much more. In fact, it is hard to think of something that does not involve mathematics!
Q: What is the coolest thing about this subject area?
A: In the 1960's, physicist Eugene Wigner wrote of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences". What is really cool is that mathematics, the product of human thought, is incredibly effective in the social and life sciences as well. For example, a mathematical area such as knot theory has found application in molecular biology and partial differential equations are used to predict gang crimes in large cities.
Q: What is your favourite kind of teaching and/or learning space, and why?
A: My favourite courses to teach are those in which there is room to make connections between mathematics and other disciplines, such as engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. I like to use examples and questions from those disciplines to motivate new mathematics, or to show how mathematics is used in the "real world". This in turn motivates the students to learn more about the subject, and they better understand the reason for studying mathematics.
Q: What was your favourite learning experience as an undergrad, and how do you incorporate that experience into teaching your students?
A: In mathematics, there is no better way to learn than by doing, so I am a big believer in assignments. As an undergrad, I lived for assignments, especially the challenging ones, because those resulted in the largest intellectual gains. I got immense satisfaction from solving challenging, non-standard problems. As an instructor, I put a lot of thought into creating valuable, pedagogically rich assignments, and aim to include at least one "brain stretcher" in every assignment.
Q: What is one thing that people would be surprised to know about you?
A: I am passionate about cycling, from bike commuting to riding the trails in Edmonton's spectacular river valley to long-distance bike touring. This summer, I spent three weeks cycling in Alaska and the Yukon.