Richard Bedient's research and teaching interests are low dimensional topology, knot theory, fractal geometry and chaos theory. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.
Debra Boutin's mathematical interests include graph theory, geometric graph theory and group theory. In particular, Boutin works with graphs, their drawings and their symmetry groups. Her recent papers include "Geometric Graph Homomorphisms" with Sally Cockburn in the Journal of Graph Theory, which is forthcoming. They also include "Thickness and Chromatic Number of r-Inflated Graphs" with Michael O. Albertson and Ellen Gethner in Discrete Math, which is forthcoming, and "Determining sets, resolving sets, and the exchange property" in Graphs and Combinatorics 2009. She earned her doctorate in mathematics from Cornell University.
Among Sally Cockburn's teaching interests are set theory and the philosophical foundations of mathematics. She has published on combinatorial optimization ("On the domino-parity inequalities for the STSP") with Sylvia Boyd and Danielle Vella, in Mathematical Programming Series A 2006. She's also published work about geometric graph theory."Geometric Graph Homomorphisms," with Debra Boutin, of Hamilton College, appeared in 2012 in the Journal of Graph Theory. Cockburn, who joined the Hamilton faculty in 1991, earned her doctorate from Yale University with a dissertation in algebraic topology.
Andrew Dykstra's research is in dynamical systems. He is especially interested in symbolic dynamics and ergodic theory. Dykstra earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College. Before joining the Hamilton faculty, he spent two years as the Yates Postdoctoral Fellow at Colorado State University.
Courtney Gibbons received her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she studied homological properties of modules over quadratic algebras. A Connecticut native, Gibbons graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Colorado College in 2006. Her work appears in the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra and will soon appear in the Journal of Commutative Algebra. She also codes for Macaulay 2, an open-source algebra software package. Gibbons plans to include Hamilton students in her research agenda and to design algebra electives that blend classical theory and modern applications.
Robert Kantrowitz ’82 conducts research in analysis, with particular focus on Banach algebras, automatic continuity and operator theory. His teaching interests include analysis, linear algebra and calculus. Kantrowitz's latest article, "Series That Converge Absolutely But Don't Converge," appeared in The College Mathematics Journal. Other recent work has focused on modeling projectile motion and on stochastic matrices. The article "Optimization of Projectile Motion in Three Dimensions" appeared in Canadian Applied Mathematics Quarterly. "A Fixed Point Approach to the Steady State for Stochastic Matrices" is slated to appear in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics. He earned a doctorate from Syracuse University.
Timothy Kelly has received two awards for teaching from Hamilton: The Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching from Hamilton College in 2000 and the Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995. He was a National Science Foundation Scholar at Stanford University from 1972 to 1974. He came to Hamilton in 1985 from the University of New Hampshire, where he earned his doctorate in mathematical education.
Chinthaka Kuruwita's research is focused on new regression models. In the U.S. he was involved in developing a new modeling strategy to assess suicidal risk of adolescents, work that was published in Journal of Adolescent Health (2009). He received a bachelor's degree in statistics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and came to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in 2005. Kuruwita earned a master's degree and doctorate in mathematical sciences with a concentration in statistics from Clemson University.
Michelle LeMasurier recently published “Topological Conjugacy for a Class of Substitution Minimal Sets,” with Ethan Coven, Andrew Dykstra and Mike Keane, in Indigationes Mathematica and “A Simple Proof of a Theorem of Cobham,” with Andrew Dykstra and Ethan Coven, in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics. In 2006, LeMasurier received The Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award, which was established in 1988 to recognize one Hamilton faculty member each year who demonstrates extraordinary commitment to teaching. She received her doctorate from the University of Georgia and joined the Hamilton faculty in 2001.
Among David Perkins' favorite academic inventions are courses that link mathematics to other disciplines, for instance Advanced Logic, cotaught with two different philosophy professors, and Math & Programming, cotaught with a professional programmer. Perkins is the author of Calculus & Its Origins (Mathematical Association of America, Spectrum Series, 2012) and an upcoming book about the four most important mathematical constants. Perkins enjoys doing research with undergraduates, most recently looking into the structure of a game (available on mobile devices) called KAMI, which can be modeled with colored graphs.
