PhD Graduates

Danielle Burton

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Applications with discrete and continuous models: Harvesting and contact tracing
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Univ of Wisconsin
  

Joe Daws

• Advisor: Clayton Webster
  
• Dissertation Title: Theory and applications of nonlinear approximation at the intersection of mathematics and machine learning
  
• 1st Placement: Machine Learning Engineer, Lirio (TN)
  

Khoa Dinh

• Advisor: Tim Schulze
  
• Dissertation Title: Effects of changing step edge energy on step flow instability for crystals growth in molecular beam epitaxy
  
• 1st Placement: Asst. Prof, Manhattan College (NY)
  

Gabriel Dusing

• Advisor: Dustin Cartwright
  
• Dissertation Title: A methods for determining the realizability of tropical curves in R^3
  
• 1st Placement: Freelance Data Scientist
  

Steve Galloway

• Advisor: Steve Wise
  
• Dissertation Title: Graphene formation using the PFC model with a vapor phase
  
• 1st Placement: Asst. Prof., St. Andrews Univ (NC)
  

Jonathan Hicks

• Advisor: Tim Schulze
  
• Dissertation Title: Imposig early termination on a rejection scheme for off lattice kinetic Monte Carlo
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, East Tenn State Univ
  

Delong Li

• Advisor: Luis Finotti
  
• Dissertation Title: Denominators of the Weierstrass coefficients of the canonical lifting
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Un of Tennessee
  

Cassie Micucci

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Persistence diagram frameworks for machine learning
  
• 1st Placement: Machine Learning Engineer, Eastman Chemical (TN)
  

Vy Nguyen

• Advisor: Jan Rosinski
  
• Dissertation Title: From isomorphism identities to Levy measures of non-negative infinitely divisible processes
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Un of Tennessee
  

Christopher Oballe

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Bayesian topological machine learning
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Notre Dame Univ
  

Tricia Phillips

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart/Christopher Strickland
  
• Dissertation Title: Data-driven modeling of the heroin and fentanyl epidemic and the harvesting of trees in west Africa
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Birmingham Southern Univ
  

James Scott

• Advisor: Tadele Mengesha
  
• Dissertation Title: Analysis of peridynamics
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Univ of Pittsburgh
  

Adam Spannaus

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Advanced statistical methods for atomic-level quantification of multi-component alloys
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Oak Ridge National Lab
  

Margaret Wieczorek

• Advisor: Marie Jameson
  
• Dissertation Title: Modular forms partitions, and Q-series
  
• 1st Placement: Asst. Prof, US Military Academy, West Point
  

Michael Morgan Wise

• Advisor: Ohannes Karakashian
  
• Dissertation Title: Finite element mothods for systems of nonlinear, dispersive equations
  
• 1st Placement: Scientist I, Dynetics Inc (AL)
  

Le Yin

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Topological data analysis in sub-cellular motion reconstruction and filament networks classification
  

Ibrahim Aslan

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Leptospirosis models: Vaccination of cattle and early detection in humans
  

Kileen Berry

• Advisor: Tadele Mengesha/Steve Wise
  
• Dissertation Title: An energy-based blending of classical elasticity and peridynamics
  
• 1st Placement: Asst. Prof, Dalton State Univ (GA)
  

Mahir Demir

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Applications of optimal control for ecosystem-based fishery management
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Michigan State Univ
  

Lindsey Fox

• Advisor: Judy Day
  
• Dissertation Title: Two applications of mathematical modeling: Control mechanisms of heart rate variability and contribution of environmental pathways in disease transmission
  
• 1st Placement: Asst. Prof, Eckerd College (FL)
  

Bo Gao

• Advisor: Xia Chen
  
• Dissertation Title: Asymptotics for Brownian motion in Poisson potential with Riesz kernel and in time-independent Gaussian rough noise
  
• 1st Placement: Statistical Quantitative Analyst, Suntrust Bank (GA)
  

Pawel Grzegrzolka

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: Coarse proximity, proximity at infiity, and coarse structures
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Stanford Univ
  

Vincent Heningburg

• Advisor: Cory Hauck/Xiaobing Feng
  Year of Entry: 2012
• Dissertation Title: Numerical methods for radiative transport equations
  

Logan Perry

• Advisor: Sergey Gavrilets
  
• Dissertation Title: Modeling the effects of cognition on cooperation
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Un of Louisiana, Lafayette
  

Hamza Ruzayqat

• Advisor: Tim Schulze
  
• Dissertation Title: rejection enhanced off-lattice Kinetic Monte Carlo
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, King Abdullah Univ, Saudi Arabia
  

Montgomery Taylor

• Advisor: Mike Frazier/Grozdena Todorova
  
• Dissertation Title: The diffusion phenomenon for dissipative wave equations in metric measure spaces with time-dependent operators
  

Thomas Weighill

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: On some coarse geometric notions inspired by topology and category theory
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Tufts Univ
  

Mark Bly

• Advisor: S. B. Mulay
  
• Dissertation Title: Classifications of real conic and cubic curves
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Coast Carolina Univ
  

John Cummings

• Advisor: Steve Wise
  
• Dissertation Title: Mathematical modeling of mixtures and numerical solution with applications to polymer physics
  
• 1st Placement: Visiting Asst Prof, Berry College (GA)
  

Nicholas Dexter

• Advisor: Clayton Webster
  
• Dissertation Title: Sparse reconstruction techniques for solutios of high-dimensional parametric PDEs
  
• 1st Placement: PIMS Post-doc, Simon Fraser Univ (Canada)
  

Mustafa Elmas

• Advisor:Vasilios Alexiades
  
• Dissertation Title: Mathematical models of bacterial chemotaxis
  
• 1st Placement: Analyst, Assurian (TN)
  

Logan Higginbotham

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: Coarse constructions
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Campbell Univ (NC)
  

David Horton

• Advisor: Joan Lind
  
• Dissertation Title: Analysis of Weierstrass’ function and its effect on Loewner hulls
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Un of Tennessee
  

Xiaoyang Pan

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Asymptotics for dynamical systems driven by jump noise
  
• 1st Placement: Quantitative Analyst, BB&T Bank (NC)
  

Kevin Sonnanburg

• Advisor: Alex Freire
  
• Dissertation Title: Blow-ups of two-convex, Type-I mean curvature flow
  

Andrew Starnes

• Advisor: Joan Lind
  
• Dissertation Title: Investigating hulls from the Loewner equation
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Univ of Hartford (CT)
  

Brittany Stephenson

• Advisor: Judy Day
  
• Dissertation Title: Comparing the impact of control strategies on mathematical models of Clostridium Difficile transmission
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Lewis Univ (IL)
  

Elise Weir

• Advisor: Morwen Thistlethwaite
  
• Dissertation Title: The dimension of the restricted Hitchin component for triangle groups
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Un of California, Santa Barbara
  

Wenqiang Feng

• Advisor: Steve Wise
  
• Dissertation Title: Linearly preconditioned nonlinear solvers for phase field equations involving P-Laplacian terms
  
• 1st Placement: Data Scientist, DST Systems Inc (MO)
  

Elizabeth Heines

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Assessing the economic tradeoffs between prevention and suppression of forest fires
  
• 1st Placement: Department of Justice
  

Peter Jantsch

• Advisor: Clayton Webster
  
• Dissertation Title: Efficient methods for multidimensional global polynomial approimation with applications to random PDEs
  
• 1st Placement: NSF Post-doc, Texas A&M
  

Ryan Jensen

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: Localization of large scaale structures
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Stephen F. Austin State Univ
  

Tim Krumwiede

• Advisor: Tim Schulze
  
• Dissertation Title: Surface energy in bond-counting models on Bravais and Non-Bravais lattices
  
• 1st Placement: Visiting Asst Professor, Brigham Young Univ
  

Andrew Marchese

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Statistical and topological techniques for classification and clustering
  
• 1st Placement: Data Scientist, Plated (NY)
  

Grace McClurkin

• Advisor: David Anderson
  
• Dissertation Title: Generalizations and variations of zero-divisor graphs
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Saginaw Valley St Univ
  

Joshua Mike

• Advisor: Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Understaanding data through computational topology and geometry
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Michigan State Univ
  

Kelly Rooker

• Advisor: Sergey Gavrilets
  
• Dissertation Title: Modeling the evolution of visual sexual signaling, receptivity, and sexual signal reliability among female primates
  
• 1st Placement: Data Scientist, Johns Hopkins Univ Applied Physics Lab
  

Stefan Schnake

• Advisor: Xiaobing Feng
  
• Dissertation Title: Nmerical methods for non-divergence form second order linear elliptic partial differential equations and discontinuous Ritz methods for problems from the calculus of variations
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Un of Oklahoma
  

Kevin Sinclair

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: Generalizations of coarse properties in large scale spaces
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Shenandoah Univ (VA)
  

Eddie Tu

• Advisor: Jan Rosinski
  
• Dissertation Title: Dependence structures in Levy-type Markov processes
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Dickinson College (PA)
  

Darrin Weber

• Advisor: David Anderson
  
• Dissertation Title: Various toics on graphical structures placed on commutative rings
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Univ of Evansville (IN)
  

Chase Worley

• Advisor: Remus Nicoara
  
• Dissertation Title: Construction and classification results for commuting squares of finite dimensional *-algebras
  
• 1st Placement: Visiting Lecturer, Maryville College (TN)
  

Faruk Yilmaz

• Advisor: Stefan Richter
  
• Dissertation Title: Approximation of invariant subspaces
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc Fellow, Univ of Calgary (Canada)
  

Brian Allen

• Advisor: Alex Freire
  
• Dissertation Title: Non-compact solutions of inverse mean curvature flow in hyperbolic space
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, West Point Naval Academy
  

Kokum DeSilva

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Investigating advection control in competitive PDE systems and environmental transmission in Johne’s disease ODe models
  
• 1st Placement: Lecturer, Univ of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka)
  

Kyle Golenbiewski

• Advisor: Tim Schulze
  
• Dissertation Title: Kinetic Monte Carlo models for crystal defects
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Un of North Alabama
  

Michael Holloway

• Advisor: Jerzy Dydak
  
• Dissertation Title: Topology/large scale geometry
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, St. Augustine’s Univ (NC)
  

Kai Kang

• Advisor:Vasileios Maroulas
  
• Dissertation Title: Advanced sequental Monte Carlo methods and their applications to sparse sensor network for detection and estimation
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc Research Fellow, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NC)
  

Ben Levy

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart/Chuck Collins
  
• Dissertation Title: Modeling feral hogs in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Fitchburg State Univ (MA)
  

Ryan Loga

• Advisor: Mike Frazier
  
• Dissertation Title: Extension theorems on matrix weighted Sobolev spaces
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Southwestern Adventist Univ
  

Vajira Manathunga

• Advisor: James Conant
  
• Dissertation Title: The Conway polynomial and aphicheiral knots
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Middle Tennessee State Univ
  

Tyler Massaro

• Advisor: H. Bozdogan
  
• Dissertation Title: Variable selection via penalized regression and the genetic algorithm using information complexity, with applications for big data
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, Duke Univ
  

Buddhi Pantha

• Advisor: Suzanne Lenhart
  
• Dissertation Title: Antrax models involving immunology, epidemiology and controls
  
• 1st Placement: Asst Prof, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
  

Nathan Pollesch

• Advisor: Lou Gross/Katherine Dale (ORNL)
  
• Dissertation Title: Mathematical approaches to sustainability assessment and protocol and development for the sustainability target assessment resource for bioenergy (Bio-STAR)
  
• 1st Placement: Post-doc, EPA
  

James Sunkes

• Advisor: Stefan Richter
  
• Dissertation Title: Hankel operators on the Drury-Arveson space
  
• 1st Placement: Mathematician, Dynetics, Inc. (AL)
  

Liguo Wang

• Advisor: Jan Rosinski
  
• Dissertation Title: Numerical solutions of stochastic differential equations
  
• 1st Placement: Sr. Quantittive Model Developer, Bank of Neew York Mellon Corp