After Olin

Starting this fall, I'll be at Columbia University, pursuing a PhD in the Applied Physics & Applied Math department. I'm in the applied math - atmospheric science track, and I'm really excited about this.

I've known for a long time that I was interested in fluid mechanics and thermal-fluid systems, and my mechanical engineering courses confirmed that these really were my areas of interest. I also found through my courses and projects that Olin that I loved math modeling, and so I started looking into any programs where I could do fluid modeling. For a while, that meant I was looking into lots of different departments, including math, applied math, mechE, chemE, and oceanic and atmospheric science. Through reading geophysical fluid dynamics papers and looking at NYU's Atmosphere-Ocean Science and Math program, I decided that the research I was most interested in was in the atmosphere/ocean space, but my top choices of programs were NYU and Columbia, the two where I would be in an applied math department. After visits to all the programs where I was accepted, I was most excited about and comfortable at Columbia.



In my first year, I'll take lots of math and atmospheric science courses, and then after that I'll move more into research. On the math side, I'll get to do more PDEs, analysis, and nonlinear dynamics, and I'm really excited about learning more geophysical fluid dynamics.

I'll be living in university housing, sharing an apartment with Nathalie, a friend I've known since elementary school. We became penpals in 3rd grade, and then we went to French immersion summer camp together in 2005 and 2006 and Mathcamp in 2010. She'll be in the computer science department at Columbia.

This summer I've been at home. Until the last week of school my plans for the summer were to grade and assist for AoPS, teach at a couple of middle school math workshops, go to church Annual Conference, and go to MathFest. But after my SCOPE team's final presentation at Boston Scientific on Monday, our liaisons emailed us and asked us if we'd be interested in continuing the project. So, I've been working remotely for Boston Scientific this summer to try to improve some of our models.

The other plans still happened. I've read an enormous amount, and I've been assisting several AoPS classes and subbing for others when I can. I taught combinatorics at one middle school math workshop, looking at some interesting problems using combinations. On the other day of workshops, I did a lesson on dihedral groups, looking at the symmetry groups of triangles, squares, and hexagons. I helped in the science room at Vacation Bible School at home. In June, I flew up to Toronto to see the ballet Le Petit Prince, which was lovely, and then I spent the next week in New England. I stayed at Olin for a couple of days and went into work at Boston Scientific, and then I was at Annual Conference for the rest of the week. (Annual Conference this year was an adventure, to say the least.)

I just got back from MathFest, and I enjoyed it. I hadn't been since 2011, when I mostly stuck to undergrad sessions and invited addresses. This year I spent most of my time in sessions that focused on math ed as opposed to research. Lots of inquiry based or active learning, formative assessment, and mastery-based or standards-based grading. I also went up to Ohio a bit early and spent a couple of days in Sandusky at Cedar Point. Millennium Force is still magnificent and my favorite, and GateKeeper is incredibly smooth and definitely makes my top five steel coasters.