Who We Are

The Graduate Mathematics Consulting Group (GMCG) is a volunteer organization of UCSD graduate students with the common goal of broadening their mathematical experience. Some of us are planning careers in private industry, where a diverse range of technical skills and mathematical knowledge will be crucial. Others are planning academic careers, but want to make cross-disciplinary collaboration part of our research program. Our group seeks to broaden our mathematical education, while at the same time providing a service to the research community.

GMCG has a diverse mathematical skill set, including members who specialize in fields such as Numerical Analysis, Analysis, Combinatorics, Geometry/Topology, Probability, Statistics, and various aspects of computing. We are all keenly interested in applying our mathematical skills to assist in solving problems in other disciplines.

The majority of the members of GMCG will complete a Ph.D. thesis within a few years, and this is our most consuming goal. Members of our group volunteer their spare time as consultants.

Current Members

Asif Shakeel No biography.
Ben Wilson Ben's research interests include algebraic topology and geometry. He received his B.S. in mathematics with a minor in computer science from the University of Nevada, in 2004, and his M.S. in mathematics from the University of Nevada in 2006.
Chris Chang Chris's research interests include statistics. He received his B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 2001.
Michael Ferry Michael's research interests include applied mathematics, especially optimization, and combinatorics. He received B.A.s in mathematics and philosophy with a minor in computer science from the University of San Francisco in 2003 and his M.A. in mathematics from UC San Diego in 2007.
Mike Scullard No biography
Neal Harris Neal's research interests include number theory. He received his B.S. in mathematics Stanford University in 2005.
Rosanna Haut Rosanna's research interests are in functional MRI data and generalized linear mixed models. She graduated from Bakersfield College in 2004 with an AA degree in mathematics and from Cal Poly, SLO in 2006 with a BS degree in mathematics.
Will Garner Will's research interests include statistics. He received his B.A. in applied mathematics from UCSD in 2006, and his M.S. in statistics from UCSD in 2008.


Previous Members

Arthur Berg No biography provided.
Ben Raphael Ben Raphael's research interests include probability theory, operator theory, and computational biology. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego in 2002, and an S.B. in Mathematics from MIT with a minor in molecular/cell biology. He is currently an Alfred P.Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Ben has also been rewarded the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award recently.
Christian Gromoll Christian Gromoll is a cofounder and former administrator of the Graduate Mathematics Consulting Group. He currently holds an NSF postdoc at Stanford University. His research interests are in probability, stochastic processes and their applications. He received his A.B. in mathematics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCSD.
Jeff Ovall Jeff Ovall received a B.S. in 1996 and an M.S. in 1998 in mathematics from Western Washington University. His Master's work was on the computational complexity of algorithms and NP-Completeness. He is in the Scientific Computation Group at UCSD and is doing research in numerical partial differential equations; particularly, finite element methods and error estimation. He graduated from UCSD with a Ph.D. in mathematics in 2004.
Joshua Cooper Joshua Cooper is interested in quasirandomness, discrepancy, combinatorial number theory, extremal graph theory, coding theory, and combinatorial geometry. He is currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Courant Institute of Mathematical Science and New York University. He graduated with a B.S. in mathematics from MIT in 1999 and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCSD in 2003.
Lei Wu Lei Wu's research interests include graph theory, coding theory, combinatorial number theory, theoretical computer science, discrete geometry, and probability. She received her B.S. in mathematics with a minor in economics from Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) University, China, in 2001, and her M.A. from UCSD in 2003.
Michael Donohue Michael Donohue's research interests include regression modeling, mathematical statistics, and probability. Mike received a B.S. in mathematics from Georgetown University in 1999 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from UCSD in 2005.
Robert Ellis Robert Ellis's research interests include combinatorial algorithms, graph theory, and coding theory. Specific interests include modeling of discretized monetary exchange systems (chip-firing games), spectral graph theory, matching and tiling, asymmetric covering codes. He received his BS and MS in mathematics at Virginia Tech with a minor in theoretical computer science, and his Ph.D. from UCSD in mathematics in 2002. He is currently an assistant professor of applied mathematics at Illinois Institute of Technology.
Sam Buss Prof. Buss was the original faculty supervisor for the Graduate Mathematics Consulting Group. His research interests include mathematical logic, theoretical computer science, and classical dynamics. He has consulted since 1994 with San Diego companies on the application of mathematics in virtual reality, in computer games, and in internet applications. In earlier times, his non-academic employment/consulting has included VLSI design, pattern recognition algorithms, and natural text search.
Tim McMurry Tim McMurry's research interests include regression modeling, mathematical statistics, and probability. Tim received a B.A. in mathematics and physics from Carleton College in 1999, and an Ph.D. in mathematics from UCSD in 2004. He is currently an assistant professor at DePaul University, Chicago.
Tom Fleming Tom Fleming's research interests include low dimensional topology and its connections with physics. He received his B.A. in mathematics from Williams College in 2000, and his M.A. from UCSD in 2002.
Tucker McElroy Tucker McElroy is currently a Mathematical Statistician at the US Census Bureau. He is interested in timeseries analysis and subsampling methodology in statistics. He received his BA in mathematics from Columbia and his Ph.D. from UCSD in 2000.