News

2026¶

• I am co-organizing the AI-assisted coding for Mathematical Exploration Hot Topics workshop at ICERM, December 11-13, 2026, with Laura Taalman, Aaron Abrams, David Bachman, and Martin Skrodzki.

• In April 2026, my undergraduate research group presented the poster "Unfolding Koebe Polyhedra" at the CISE Research Showcase at JMU. You can try the coin unfolding explorer.

• In April 2026, I chaired the site-visit team for the Academic Program Review of JMU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
• This year I represent CISE on JMU's General Education Oversight Committee.

2025¶

• From January 29 to May 2, 2025, I was a co-organizer of the semester program Geometry of Materials, Packings and Rigid Frameworks at ICERM, with Alexander Bobenko, Philip Bowers, Robert Connelly, Steven Gortler, Miranda Holmes-Cerfon, Sabetta Matsumoto, Anthony Nixon, and Meera Sitharam. I was in residence at ICERM for the semester and gave a seminar there.
• In February 2025, I co-organized the ICERM workshop Circle Packings, Minimal Surfaces, and Discrete Differential Geometry (February 10-14).
• In Summer 2025, I led the CS Rigidity Theory in the UK study abroad program. For it I built a new browser-based front end for KoebePy.

2024¶

• My paper with Dakota Lawson, "Escher: An Engine for Exploring Hierarchical Combinatorial Tilings," appeared in the proceedings of Bridges 2024 in Richmond, VA.
• With Anthony Nixon and Meera Sitharam, I am guest editor of the special issue of Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications for the Fields Institute Thematic Program on Geometric Constraint Systems. Its eleven papers appeared between 2024 and 2026.

2023¶

• In August 2023, I gave a talk titled “Koebe-Andre’ev-Thurston via Flip-and-Flow” at the Workshop on Constraint Systems at the Fields Institute in Toronto.
• In Summer 2023, I led the CS Rigidity Theory in the UK study abroad program.
• In May 2023, I gave the faculty address at the CISE Commencement as the CISE Distinguished Teacher for 2022–23.
• In March 2023, U.S. Patent 11,602,898, "Systems and methods for generating a graded lattice structure and their application to additive manufacturing," was granted. I am a named inventor, with collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.

2022¶

• In May 2022, I gave an invited talk at the Workshop on Discrete Shapes at Harvard University.
• In 2022, I gave an invited talk in an AMS special session at the Joint Mathematics Meetings.

2021¶

• In August 2021, I was promoted to associate professor with tenure.
• In April 2021, I co-organized the Fields Institute's Workshop on the Geometry of Circle Packings (April 12-16, online), which had more than 130 registered participants.

2020¶

• In 2020–21, I gave invited talks at Cornell University's Oliver Club and the Topology Seminar at Florida State Mathematics.
• I am an organizer for the Circle Packings and Geometric Rigidity topical workshop that will be held at Brown University's Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) July 6-10.

2019¶

• In November 2019, I gave a talk titled "Rigidity Results for c-Polyhedra" to the Discrete Geometry and Combinatorics Seminar at Cornell University as well as a guest lecture in Bob Connelly's Discrete Geometry, Rigidity, and Circle Packings course.
• In October 2019, I was an invited participant in the Rigidity and Flexibility of Microstructures workshop at the American Institute of Mathematics.
• In September 2019, I was a funded participant in the Illustrating Geometry and Topology Workshop at ICERM
• In August 2019, I am co-organizing the Summer Circle Packing Symposium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
• In June 2019, I gave a talk at the Geometric Constraint Systems 2019 Workshop in Lancaster, UK titled "Inversive Distance Circles Packings and Minkowski Spacetime."
• In May and June 2019, I lead the CS Rigidity Theory in the UK study abroad program for upper-level JMU computer science students.
• In April 2019, I gave a talk to the GRAND Seminar at George Mason University, "Polyhedra and Inversive Distance Circle Packings."
• In March 2019, my paper with Philip Bowers and Kevin Pratt, "Almost all circle polyhedra are rigid," was published in Geometriae Dedicata.

2018¶

• On October 22 I gave a talk titled "What Do Circles on the Sphere, Polyhedra, and Space-Time Have to Do with One Another?" at the JMU Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium.
• In October I was co-author to the paper "Graded Infill Structure of Wind Turbine Blade Accounting for Internal Stress in Big Area Additive Manufacturing" presented at the The Composites and Advanced Materials EXPO (CAMX) 2018.
• In Summer 2018 I was part of a small team of researchers working on problems related to Circle Packing and Rigidity Theory as part of a Collaborate@ICERM Program.
• In summer 2018, I am co-organizing the Summer Circle Packing Symposium at James Madison University.

2017¶

• In December 2017 my paper with Philip Bowers and Kevin Pratt, "Rigidity of circle polyhedra in the 2-sphere and of hyperideal polyhedra in hyperbolic 3-space" was accepted to appear in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.
• In November 2017 I gave a talk title "Cauchy's theorem and rigidity of circle polyhedra in the 2-sphere" at the Undergraduate Mathematics Colloquium at Washington and Lee University.
• In September 2017 my paper with Philip Bowers, "Ma-Schlenker c-Octahedra in the 2-Sphere" appeared in the Journal of Discrete and Computational Geometry.
• In September 2017 I co-organized the Virginia Soft Matter Workshop at JMU.
• In August 2017 my paper with Philip Bowers, "Menger Redux: Embedding Metric Spaces Isometrically in Euclidean Space", appeared in the journal American Mathematical Monthly.
• In June 2017, I organized a workshop on Circle Packing, which is hosted here at James Madison University (June 6-9).
• In summer 2017 I worked with a student as part of our Research Experience for Undergraduate's (REU) program in computer science. The student blog for the REU program can be found here.
• In March 2017 I am co-organizing a special session of the AMS southeastern sectional meeting in Charleston, SC. The title of the session is "Rigidity Theory and Circle Packing".
• In January 2017 I gave a talk on Cauchy Rigidity of Convex c-Polyhedra at the Joint Math Meeting in Atlanta. This is part of my ongoing on Circle Patterns work with Philip L. Bowers, who also gave a talk on part of our work at the meeting.

2016¶

• In September 2016 I gave a talk at the Unusual Configuration Spaces workshop at the Institute for Computational Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University. Click here to stream the video online.
• In late June I gave a talk at the Automated Deduction in Geometry workshop. The informal proceedings from this workshop have been posted online here.
• In early June I gave a talk at the Geometric rigidity theory and applications workshop at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Edinburgh, UK. I talked about recent results with Philip Bowers on the rigidity properties of circle patterns on the sphere.
• In March my paper with Ileana Streinu, "Geodesic Universal Molecules", appeared in the journal Mathematics in Computer Science.
• In January I gave a talk titled "Geodesic Universal Molecules" at the AMS Special Session on Origami Methods and Applications at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle (JMM'16). (abstract | slides)