Dylan Shepardson

  • Robert L. Rooke Associate Professor of Mathematics
  • on leave 2023-2024
Dylan Shepardson

Dylan Shepardson works on mathematical problems that are motivated by applications in other disciplines, like biology, epidemiology, sociology, or archaeology. He is especially interested in new and unusual applications of optimization theory. In most physical, biological, and economic systems, a property is being optimized (like energy or entropy in physical systems, or reproductive success in evolutionary biology), and optimization techniques offer interesting insights into these systems. Shepardson's recent projects include voting theory and its connections to combinatorial geometry, infectious disease modeling, and the problem of using collections of radiocarbon data to estimate dates of the earliest human settlements of Pacific islands.

Education

  • Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
  • M.A., University of California - Berkeley
  • B.A., Amherst College

HAPPENING AT MOUNT HOLYOKE

Recent Campus News

Cora Fernández Anderson, associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, wrote an article for Ms. magazine about a landmark ruling that could transform the legal landscape of abortion laws in Latin America.

Adam Hilton, associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, writes in an essay for Jacobin that the Democratic Party is at an important crossroads following the 2024 presidential election.

Diamond Abiakalam-Chinagorom ’25 has been selected as Mount Holyoke College’s first Schwarzman Scholar. The program selects future leaders to pursue a one-year, fully funded master’s degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Recent Grants

Margaret Robinson PI with Co-PIs Giuliana Davidoff, Dylan Shepardson and Jessica Sidman (Mathematics) received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for “Collaborative Proposal: Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference 2020-2022” – with Keene and Siena Colleges. The project is for three years.

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