Teaching- what would life be without it?



There needs no Ghost, my lord, come from the Grave to tell us this.

Horatio, Shakespeare's Hamlet (I, verse 125-126)



Table of contents:

Classes I have taught

My graduate and undergraduate students

Summer program for undergraduate students

Photographs of my students

My favorite books, mathematics and otherwise


Classes I have taught:

Fall 2000: Math 175 (Second semester calculus)
Fall 2000: Math 395 Problem solving class for undergraduates

Winter 2001: Math 175, two sections, (Second semester calculus)
Winter 2001: Reading course on harmonic analysis with Jacub Duda
Winter 2001: An informal seminar on undergraduate problem solving

Summer 2001: A reading course on probabilistic methods in analysis, number theory and
cominatorics with William  McClain and Derrick Hart
Fall 2001: Math 480 Combinatorial methods in harmonic analysis (graduate topics class)
Fall 2001: Math 395 Problem solving class for undergraduates

Winter 2002: Math 480 Combinatorial methods in harmonic analysis (graduate topics class)
Winter 2002: Math 350 Topics in geometry and complex analysis (undergraduate class)

Summer 2002: Math 390 Senior research project with Daniel Weidinger. The project resulted in
a joint paper.

Summer 2002: Informal seminar on geometric combinatorics
Summer 2002: Informal seminar on problem solving in analysis and algebra

Fall 2002: Math 80 First semester calculus
Fall 2002: Math Club for undergraduates
Fall 2002: Math 415 Graduate level harmonic analysis
Fall 2002: Informal seminar on number theory
Winter 2003: Math 416 Graduate level harmonic analysis
Winter 2003: Math Club for undergraduates
Fall 2003: Math 480 Topics in Analysis
Fall 2003: Math 395 Problem solving class for undergraduates
Winter 2004: Math Club
Fall 2004: Math 1700 Second Semester Calculus
Fall 2004: Math 4980 Problem Solving Class

Winter 2005: A reading course on distance sets partly based on Julia Garibaldi's UCLA Ph.D. disertation. The victims are Steve Senger, Michael Williams and Nick Wegman.

Winter 2005: Math 4960 (special readings in mathematics) with Laura Ann Heneghan. Laura conducted interviews with several prominent mathematicians from MU and Washington University in St. Louis. She then wrote an essay on backgrounds and motivations of men and women of mathematics.
Summer 2005: Math 4860 (special readings in mathematics) with Ericka Dihel. Ericka will investigate some aspects of mathematics in ancient Rome.
Fall 2005: I taught two sections of Math 4700 (Advanced Calculus), and, of course, Math 4980, the Putnam class. If you potentially interested in taking this class and have some questions, please get in touch with me as soon as possible.
Winter 2006: I taught Math 4350 (Non-Euclidean Geometry), Math 4900 (Advanced Calculus II), and an FRG course on geometric combinatorcs and additive number theory. In addition, I will run a Math Club and will teach a reading course dedicated to curriculum development.
Summer 2006: I am running a summer program on mechanics from Goldstein's book. Michael Gramlich, Lacey Hardcastle, Kevin Roberts and Tyler Jones-Salisbury are participating. Later in the summer I will run a program on Fourier analysis in vector spaces over finite fields for high school students and undergraduates at the University of Missouri.
Fall 2006: Math 4350: Non-Euclidean geometry.
Winter 2007: Math 1500 (Calculus I), two sections.
Winter 2007: Math 4960, special readings in mathematics, 2 students.
Winter 2007: Math 8085, independent study, 2 students.
Fall 2007: Math 8085, independent study, 2 students.
Fall 2007: Math 9090, Ph.D. research, 3 students.
Winter 2008: Math 4960, special reading in mathematics, 1 student.
Winter 2008: Math 9090, Ph.D. research, 4 students.
Winter 2008: Math 8085, advanced problem solving, 1 student.
Fall 2008: Math 4980, the problem solving class for undergraduate students
Fall 2008: Math 8502, a graduate topics class on geometric configurations

My classes at the University of Rochester can be found on the University of Rochester Department of Mathematics webpage. I will occasionally mention reading courses and other non-regular courses that I teach.

My graduate and undergraduate students
I am currently advising Philipp Birklbauer, Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou and Bochen Liu at the University of Rochester. I have previously graduated 11 Ph.D. students, five at the University of Rochester and seven at the University of Missouri. At the University of Rochester I graduated Dylan Ethier, currently looking for a job in industry, Brendan Murphy, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, Michael Bennett, currently a visiting Assistant Professor at RIT, Krystal Taylor, currently an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University and Esen Aksoy, currently at Texas A&M Qatar. At the University of Missouri, I graduated, in reverse chronological order, Steven Senger, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, David Covert, currently a visiting Assistant Professor at the St. Louis University, Jeremey Chapman, currently an Assistant Professor at Lyons College, Doowon Koh, currently an Assistant Professor at Chingbuk University, Derrick Hart, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Kansas State University, and Georgiy Arutunyants, currently the Head of Analytics at Prognos Inc. I have served on Ph.D. committees of the following graduate students: S. Cowell and J. Schlieper, M. Zymonopolou, D. Bilyk, M. Budden, G. Diestel, P. Honzik, S. Mayboroda, P. Portal, and A. Flenner. In 2012 I taught a reading course on control theory, where my students were Steven Barr, Leon Cui, Michelle Wu and Bala Rajan, all students in the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. 

Over the years, I had a pleasure and an honor to teach some outstanding undergraduate students. It would be very difficult to list them all, so I will list a small subset representative of the overall experience. In the case of Missouri students, the criterion for making the list is fulfilling one of the following conditions: i) getting a non-zero score on the Putnam ii) membership on the Mizzou Putnam team or the Missouri State Competition team iii) passing two or more of my courses or an absolutely outstanding performance in one of my courses. If you were a student in one of my classes, please send me an email and tell me how you are doing!

Georgetown University 1998-2000: Josh Beiler, Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, Cardiff Garcia, Kristen Heudorfer, Maria Kramme, Alicia Leeds, Ben Melman, Ann McCamey, Thom Pilkington, Vitaly Ovchinnikov.

University of Missouri 2000-Present: Gina Belarde (2006), Whitney Berard (2005), Michael Deutsch (2004), Ericka Dihel (2005), Stanley  Eshelman (2001), John Fischer (2002), Derrick Hart (2002), Laura Henighan (2005), Greg Jones (2001), Melissa Kimball (2005), James Knapp (2005), Bill McClain (2002), Lorenz Morrow (2006), Kevin Roberts (2006), Heather Rosenblatt (2006), Shannon Reed (2005), Steven Senger (2005), Dwight Thieme (2005), Nicholas Wegman (2004).

From 2004-2008 I worked with Tyler Jones-Salisbury, who was then a second year local high school student and later an undergraduate student at the Washington University in St. Louis.

I am currently working with Allen Liu, who is going to attend MIT starting in the Fall 2016 and Davey Fitzpatrick, currently a junior at Brighton High School.

University of Rochester 2010-Present: Kevin Lin (2012), Matej Penciak (2012), Halley Orshan (aka Darcey Riley) (2012), Benjamin Snyder (2012), Xiaoqing Tang (2012), Emmett Wyman (2013), Yujia Zhai (2013), Alex McDonald (2014), Brian McDonald (2014), Laurel Brown (2013), Lisa Rosenfeld (2013), Ananya Sitaram (2016), Ian MacKinnon (2016) and Adam Scrivener (2016).


My favorite books


Non-mathematics books (in no particular order):

Name of the rose, by Umberto Eco, The Drowned and the saved, by Primo Levi, History of english speaking peeople, by Winston Churchill, Red Cavalry, by Isaac Babel, The Golem, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud, Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit, by Garry Wills, The Albigensian Crusades, by Joseph Strayer, The Exodus, by Leon Uris, Mila 18, by Leon Uris, Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dawn/Night/Day, by Eli Wiesel, Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, The Last Temptation, by Nikos Kazantzakis.


Listed below are my favorite mathematics book in various categories. These are by no means the only good books in the areas listed, just the ones that I happen to prefer over others. Some of these books are old friends of mine, others are of more recent vintage. The list will sure grow and evolve with time!

Calculus/introductory analysis:

Calculus, by M. Spivak

Differential and integral calculus, by E. Landau.

Calculus and advanced calculus with applications:

Introduction to Calculus and Analysis I and II, by Courant and John.

Undergraduate analysis:

Principles of mathematical analysis, by W. Rudin.

Undergraduate Fourier analysis:

Fourier analysis, by Stein and Shakarchi

Undergraduate abstract algebra:

Topics in algebra, by I. Herstein.

Undergraduate number theory:

Elementary number theory, by E. Landau.

Graduate analysis:

Real and complex analysis, by W. Rudin.

Real analysis, by Stein and Shakarchi.

Combinatorial geometry:

Combinatorial geometry, by Agarwal and Pach.

Lectures on discrete geometry, by Matousek.

Graduate Fourier analysis:

Lectures on harmonic analysis, by T. Wolff

Harmonic analysis, by E. Stein

Fourier integrals in classical analysis, by C. Sogge

Graduate abstract algebra:

Algebra, by Serge Lang.