In graduate school
- Anish Chedalavada, Ben Spitz, and I organized AMTRAK, a seminar meant to connect algebraic topologists working in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast region.
- I was an organizer for the Talbot workshop, an annual mathematical retreat for early career mathematicians — primarily graduate students — to become acquainted with current research in algebraic topology and related fields. For Talbot-related things, please email talbotworkshop AT gmail DOT com.
- I organized GeMTRAK (Gender Minorities in Topology and Related Areas Konference) in April 2024 with Marielle Ong and Hunter Stufflebeam, as part of the W+AM ambassador program.
- I organized the Directed Reading Program (DRP) with Léo Ferreira Guilhoto. I’ve also mentored the following projects:
- Fall 2024 and Spring 2025: Shotaro Hiranuma, Category Theory
- Fall 2023: Talia Becker Calazans, Combinatorial Topology
- Fall 2022 and Spring 2023: Elena Isasi Theus, Computational Algebraic Topology
- Spring 2022: Cianán Conefrey-Shinozaki, 2D Topological Quantum Field Theories
- Fall 2021: Michael Zeng, Simplicial Homotopy Theory
- I organized the graduate geometry/topology seminar in 2022-2023 with Andres Mejia.
- I organized the grad student pizza seminar in 2021-2022 with Krishan Canzius.
- I helped coordinate the GeMs in Math, which is a social group supporting gender minorities in math in the UPenn math department.
- I volunteered with programs that provide incarcerated students access to college-accredited mathematics courses, such as Princeton University’s Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI) and Eastern University’s Prison Education Program (PEP).
- I wrote sometimes on a blog with Thomas Brazelton, Andres Mejia, and Julian Gould.
- I worked with Mona Merling on a couple of summer projects, supported by the Netter Center’s Graduate Community-Engaged Research fellowship:
- Summer 2022: Together with Yumeng Ou and Marielle Ong, Mona and I thought about how to build infrastructure for math circles in West Philadelphia. You can read my reflection on this project. Starting in Fall 2023, math circles have become a reality at West Philadelphia High School (learn more in this OMNIA article).
- Summer 2021: Mona and I developed resources for her Academically-Based Community Service (ABCS) course Math 123, which you can read more about in this article in Penn Today. You can read my reflection on this project.
As a Mass Media Fellow
I was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow in Summer 2023. This program partners students in science with a news outlet to help bring science stories to the public. During my fellowship with The Conversation U.S., I was mostly editing articles that were written by other academics, to help them write about their areas of expertise in a way that the public could understand.
As an editor, I worked on a variety of articles about science, technology and, of course, math. Whether explaining the math behind why hurricanes spin or exploring the mysterious origins of X in algebra, I happily snuck as much math as I could into The Conversation’s summer lineup. I also authored two articles:
- A brief illustrated guide to ‘scissors congruence’ − an ancient geometric idea that’s still fueling cutting-edge mathematical research (with Mona Merling).
- Proving Fermat’s last theorem: 2mathematicians explain how building bridges within the discipline helped solve a centuries-old mystery (with David Bressoud).
See here for the full list of articles I worked on. I also wrote about the fellowship for an article in AMS Notices and I wrote a feature story in News from the AMS. My work was mentioned in an OMNIA article about science communication at Penn.
In undergraduate
I organized STEMGeMs (Reed’s student group for gender minorities in STEM fields) and helped run the aerial acrobatics troupe. Other places I worked in college included:
- Special Collections and Archives, cataloguing materials and repairing books. I had this job both at the Reed Library and the Portland Art Museum.
- The costume shop in the Theater Department at Reed, sewing costumes for various productions.
- Echo Theater Company, teaching aerial silks to kids.
- Camp Stevens, helping coordinate the Farm and Garden program for summer camp.
I adopted a polyhedron, called the Xinegon, which you can see here. The Xinegon has 631 siblings, with f-vector (9, 17, 10). I like that she has some triangular faces, some quadrilateral faces, and some pentagonal faces.