Faculty

Cornelia Van Cott is a geometric topologist, studying knots, surfaces, and the interplay between three and four-dimensional topology.

Cody Carroll is an assistant professor with joint appointments in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Master's in Data Science program (MSDS). He holds a PhD and MS in Statistics from the University of California, Davis and a BS in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. His methodological research interests focus on functional and longitudinal data, particularly in the context of human growth and aging, and his interdisciplinary work has spanned a wide range of...

Jennifer Chubb's general research area is logic and computability theory, in particular computable structure theory. She is also studying quantum computing & quantum logic.

Stephen Devlin is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Master’s in Data Science program (MSDS). He has also served as department chair and director of the undergraduate data science program. Stephen has a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College in New York, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland. He was a C.L.E. Moore Instructor at MIT before moving to the University of San Francisco. His research interests include both pure and applied...

Renee Brunelle Hubert has been fascinated by mathematics since a very young age. After graduating magna cum laude from USF with a BS in mathematics in 1994, she attended UC San Diego on a Cota Robles Fellowship, earning an MA in mathematics in 1997 with emphases in complex analysis and abstract algebra. She currently specializes in making mathematics accessible and exciting to non-majors, and investigating ways to integrate technology into the learning experience.

Daniel Jerison studies probability theory. He is interested in the properties of random objects, such as random planar maps and abelian sand piles, and in the convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms.

Emille D. Lawrence is a low-dimensional topologist. Her mathematical interests include braid groups, geometric group theory, and spatial graphs. She is also an advocate for broadening participation in the mathematical sciences through outreach and mentoring. She serves as the Senior Director of the Black Achievement, Success and Engagement Initiative at the University of San Francisco.

Daniel is the director of the Bachelors of Science in Data Science program. Daniel's research interests are in large-scale optimization modeling and algorithms. His postdoctoral research in the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology focused on applications of optimization in radiation therapy, medical imaging, and machine learning.

Sam Roven is an arithmetic Geometer. His mathematical interests include the connections between number theory and geometry, in particular, finding rational solutions to systems of multi-variable polynomial equations.

Sam grew up in the Bay Area and graduated with a BS in mathematics from USF in 2016. He then went on to receive his PhD in mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle. He is especially passionate about math education and hopes to create more opportunities to expose...

Steve Trettel is a geometric topologist, interested in 3-manifolds, interdisciplinary applications of modern geometry, and mathematical illustration.  Steve was born and raised in Minnesota, and received his BS in Mathematics at the University of Minnesota before moving to UC Santa Barbara for his PhD.  Before joining the University of San Francisco, Steve was a Szego Assistant Professor at Stanford University, and a Postdoc at Brown University's Institute for Computational and Experimental...

James is an Associate Professor of Statistics and Co-Director of the BS in Data Science program at the University of San Francisco. He has joint appointments in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the MS in Data Science program, where he has developed and taught courses in Bayesian statistics, machine learning, data science, and network analysis.

In research, James develops new statistical and computational techniques to model, analyze, and explore high-dimensional and relational...

For Professor Damon, teaching math is a second career; before teaching she worked in the finance industry as a bond fund manager. In her spare time she likes working math problems, jogging, hiking, reading, and baking sourdough bread.

Mary attended UC Berkeley as an engineering major right after high school, but due to circumstances both in and beyond her control dropped out.  She went on to do many other things: office administrator, office manager, construction manager and for over 30 years an on again, off again bartender. She felt school was no longer important, but when the opportunity presented itself, returned in her late 30s to complete something she had started.

Mary got her BA and MA in Mathematics from SFSU...

Ken attended SF’s Lowell high school and began his career in the golf business working at Harding Park GC. After taking a few upper division math classes from Dr Paul Zeitz in 1993 he decided to change course and pursue a degree in mathematics. To date he has taught over 400 units of mathematics at USF via 9 different mathematics courses. He enjoys teaching mathematics and empowering young people, and still plays golf quite regularly carrying a 4 handicap. Ken is a lifelong learner with his...

John Hutchens grew up near the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.  He earned his PhD at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Growing up, he always enjoyed mathematics, but fell in love with math during his undergraduate Abstract Algebra course.  He began his research career studying algebraic groups, before working on topological symmetry groups, and now focuses mostly on inverse eigenvalue problems related to graphs.

Dmitriy Ivanov has graduated with High Honors in Math from UC Berkeley and he got a PhD in Math from Stanford University. He is currently working as a math instructor at City College of San Francisco, at Skyline College, as a lecturer in the Math Department at San Francisco State University, and as an adjunct Math professor at USF.

Fumika Matsushita earned a Master of Public Health Degree in Community Health Education and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Health Education from San Francisco State University. She started her career as a research associate at the Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease (NURTURE) in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at UCSF. Several years later, she became a research data analyst for CDC Chronic Kidney Disease surveillance system in the Division of General Internal...

Van Tran has been a dedicated instructor at USF for more than 10 years.

Millianne Lehmann (1939 – 2023) was a professor of mathematics at the University of San Francisco for 39 years. After earning her undergraduate (1961) and master’s (1963) degrees in mathematics from San Francisco State University, Millie began her career at USF in 1965. Pioneering the presence of women on the USF campus, Millie had a distinguished career. Generations of students gave Millie’s teaching top marks. She served for 14 years as department chair. She was project director for the USF...

Tristan Needham (son of the distinguished social anthropologist Rodney Needham) grew up in Oxford, England, where he attended the Dragon School (with Stephen Wolfram and Hugh Laurie).

He studied physics at Merton College, Oxford, before moving to the Mathematical Institute, where he enjoyed the great privilege of studying black holes under the supervision of Sir Roger Penrose.

Tristan received his DPhil in 1987, and joined the faculty of the University of San Francisco in 1989. His current...

Professor Pacheco's main research interest is parallel computing. He's been involved in the development of the MPI Standard for message-passing. His book Parallel Programming with MPI is an elementary introduction to programming parallel systems that use the MPI 1 library of extensions to C and Fortran. His book An Introduction to Parallel Programming is designed to teach inexperienced programmers how to program both shared- and distributed-memory parallel systems.

John Stillwell was born in Melbourne, Australia, and taught at Monash University from 1970 until 2001, before moving to USF in 2002.

He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994, and his mathematical writing has been honored with the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America in 2005 and the book award of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in 2009.

Among his best-known books are Mathematics and Its History (3rd edition...

Originally trained as an ergodic theorist (PhD University of California, Berkeley, 1992), today Paul Zeitz's overriding interest is mathematical problem solving and the promulgation of an Eastern European-inspired problem-solving culture to American audiences.

Towards this end, he wrote The Art and Craft of Problem Solving in 1998, co-founded the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad in 1999, and co-founded the San Francisco Math Circle in 2005. In 2009 he produced a series of video lectures for...