Alumni

1960 - 1989

Stanley MAZOR was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Science at the SF State commencement in 2014, for his pioneering work with Intel colleagues in designing the first commercially available microprocessor, the Intel 4004, in the late 1960s. Mazor got his start as a mathematics major here in the early 1960s, programming our then state-of-the-art computer, the IBM 1620. He worked for Intel for many years, then branched into teaching, both at universities and for technological firms.

James T. SMITH, MA 1964, is editing this news page. He is retired from teaching at SF State. With two Polish coauthors, he published Alfred Tarski: Early Work in Poland—Geometry and Teaching, Springer: 2014.

David WALDEN, BA 1964, was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Science at the SF State commencement in 2014. He also got his start as a computer scientist here, programming our IBM 1620. After graduation, he worked for the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT, then for Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., as one of the team that developed the ARPANET, the first packet-switching network, a precursor of the Internet. Since that time, with his own firm, the Center for Quality of Management, he has become a leader in management science.

Aliakbar Montazer HAGHIGHI, BA 1966, MA 1971, earned the PhD in 1976 from Case Western Reserve University under supervision of Lajos Takács with a dissertation on multiserver queueing systems. Haghighi held several positions in Iran, joined the faculty of Benedict College in South Carolina in 1985, and in 2002 moved to Prairie View A&M University, near Houston, where he is now Head of the Department of Mathematics. He credits our late Prof. S. F. Neustadter with inspiring him to pursue a career in mathematics research and teaching.

David B. JAFFE, BA 1981, has left his position as Director of Computational R&D, Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, to become a Fellow of the 10X Genomics company in Pleasanton, CA.

Wendy (Marion) BRUNZIE Alexander, MA 1989, Professor of Mathematics at Houston Community College, obtained a grant to visit the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in summer 2015 to research the mathematical interests of Thomas Jefferson and David Rittenhouse. Her eldest child, David, will be on tour in China then, playing horn with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States.

1990 - 1999

Seth BRAVER, BA 1999, teaches mathematics at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. His 2011 book Lobachevsky Illuminated on non-Euclidean geometry won the 2015 Beckenbach Award of the Mathematical Association of America for distinction and innovation in mathematical writing.

2000 - 2009

Yukie GOTO, MA 2004, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2011 from Indiana University with a dissertation entitled Study of Some Degenerate Equations Related to Dryland Vegetation and to Chemotaxis.

Ramal LAMAR, BS 2004, earned an MS degree in 2012 from California State University, East Bay, with a thesis on the foundations of mathematics, the first at that campus on a mathematical subject. Currently he is the director of the mathematics laboratory at Berkeley Technology Academy in Berkeley, CA.

Michael McASSEY, MA 2004, earned the PhD in statistics in 2011 from the University of California, Davis, with a dissertation entitled Topics on Associations among Random Processes. He is now a lecturer at the Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands.

Alex MILOWSKI, MA 2004, earned the PhD in informatics in 2014 from the University of Edinburgh with a dissertation entitled Enabling Scientific Data on the Web. He is now a professional faculty member in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jemma LORENAT, BA 2007, earned the PhD in the history of mathematics in 2015 jointly from the University of Paris and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, with a dissertation entitled Die Freude an der Gestalt: Methods, Figures and Practices in Early Nineteenth-Century Geometry. She is now an assistant professor of mathematics at Pitzer College in Pomona, CA.

Kim SEASHORE, MA 2007, earned the PhD in mathematics education in 2015 from the University of California, Berkeley. She is now an assistant professor of mathematics in our own Department at SF State!

Maree AFAGA Jaramillo, MA 2008, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2014 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a dissertation entitled Fundamental Groups of Spaces with Bakry-Emery Ricci Tensor Bounded Below. She is a now a visiting assistant professor at the University of Connecticut.

Aaron DALL, MA 2008, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2015 from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona with a dissertation entitled Matroids: h-Vectors, Zonotopes and Lawrence Polytopes.

Drew JARAMILLO, MA 2008, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2015 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a dissertation entitled Unipotent Radicals of the Standard Borel and Parabolic Subgroups in Quantum Special Linear Groups. He is now a visiting assistant professor at the University of Connecticut.

Mitchell OSTER, BA 2008, attended the Campaign Management Institute at American University in 2013 and is now working with the Eveleth Consulting Group in San Carlos, CA.

Fang-I CHU, MA 2006 (Economics), MA 2009, earned an MA degree in applied statistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2011 and is now a PhD student there.

Jameson CAHILL, MA 2009, is now an assistant professor of mathematics at New Mexico State University.

Brendan COLLORAN, MA 2009, earned an M.Phil. degree in economics from the Cambridge University in 2010, and since 2012 has been a senior applied statistician at Mozilla in Mountain View, CA—their “math dude”. He reports that his work involves “a mix of statistical and quantitative thinking, ability to work with computers and program in several languages, perhaps to do data visualization and to communicate quantitative findings to non-quantitative people.” That combination of skills “is very much in demand and is likely a good goal for many people coming out of the SF State MA program.”

Daniel DEWOSKIN, MA 2009, earned the PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2015 with a dissertation entitled Multiscale Modeling of Coupled Oscillators with Applications to the Mammalian Circadian Clock. He is now a research assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

Elizabeth GROSS, MA 2009, is now an assistant professor of mathematics at San Jose State University.

Lothar NARINS, BS 2009, has earned the PhD in mathematics from the Berlin Mathematical School, with a dissertation entitled Extremal Hypergraphs for Ryser’s Conjecture.

Christopher O’NEILL, BS 2009, earned the PhD in Mathematics from Duke University in 2014 with a dissertation entitled Monoid Congruences, Binomial Ideals and Their Decompositions. He is now a visiting assistant professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University.

Amanda RUIZ, MA 2009, is now an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of San Diego.

2010 - 2015

Laura ESCOBAR Vega, MA 2010, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2015 from Cornell University with a dissertation entitled Brick Varieties and Toric Matrix Schubert Varieties. She is now a research assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Benjamin IRIARTE Giraldo, MA 2010, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2015 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a dissertation entitled Combinatorics of Acyclic Orientations of Graphs: Algebra, Geometry and Probability.

Bita NOSRATIEH, MA 2010, is now a part time lecturer at SF State and at Foothill College in Los Altos.

Tim WERTZ, MA 2010, earned the PhD in mathematics in 2015 from the University of California, Davis. He is now a postdoctoral teaching fellow in mathematics at the Yale-NUS College in Singapore.

Aleksandr PANKOV, BA 2011, is now a PhD student in bioinformatics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Daniel LEMKE, BA 2014, received an internship for Summer 2015 at the Aalto Science Institute in Helsinki.

Dido SALAZAR-TORRES, MA 2011, a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Iowa, was selected to be the Distinguished Graduate Speaker at the 2011 Underrepresented Students in Topology and Algebra Reseach Symposium held there.

Tatsiana MASKALEVICH, MA 2011, is teaching mathematics at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA.

Tu PHAM, MA 2011, is working as a software engineer at J&N Engineering in Santa Clara, CA.

Ashley SHIMABUKU, MA 2011, is now teaching mathematics at Solano Community College in Vallejo, CA.

Catalina BETANCOURT, MA 2012, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Iowa.

Raymond CAVALCANTE, MA 2012, is now a PhD student in bioinformatics at the University of Michigan.

Michael GARCIA, MA 2012, is teaching mathematics at High Tech High and at DeVry University in San Diego.

Tyler BORRMAN, BS 2013, was honored at his commencement as the distinguished graduate of the College of Science and Engineering. He is now a PhD student at the Medical School of the University of Massachusetts, in Worcester, MA.

Maria COCA, MA 2013, is now a PhD student in statistics at Purdue University

Jack LOVE, MA 2013, a PhD student in mathematics at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, exhibited an example of his mathematical sculpture at the 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore. That summer, he studied architecture and design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Miriam SCHUSSLER, MA 2013, is now a PhD student in symbolic computation at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria.

Brian CRUZ, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Brian DAVIS, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Kentucky.

Dennis SCHLIEF, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in operations research at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Matthew SIMMS, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in applied mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Joseph SQUILLACE, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the University of California, Irvine.

Robert STOLZ, BA 2014, is now a PhD student in integrative genetics at the University of California, Davis.

Hannah WINKLER, MA 2014, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Oregon.

Juan AULI, MA 2015, is now a PhD student in mathematics at Dartmouth College.

Crystal MORENO, MA 2015, is now a PhD student in mathematics at Florida State University.

1960 - 1989

James T. SMITH, MA 1964, is editing this news page. He is retired from teaching at SF State. His 2010 paper, “Definitions and nondefinability in geometry,” won a Lester R. Ford award for exposition in mathematics, from the Mathematical Association of America.

Steven NERNEY, BA 1966, earned an MS in Physics from SF State in 1968 and a PhD in astro-geophysics from the University of Colorado in 1974. He pursued a scientific career at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View and at Ohio University, Lancaster. Now retired in Boulder, Colorado, Nerney is a performing musician. He has dedicated his recent folk-music CD to Lawrence CHANG, BA 1968, known in those years as Larry TRUONG. Larry died in 1983 after a distinguished but too brief career, including service as assistant professor in our Department; he is a member of the SF State Alumni Wall of Fame.

Dennis MORITZ, BA 1971, visited the Department recently. He earned an MS in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley and has pursued a career in analysis and software development for financial services. In 2004 he founded his own company, the San Francisco firm Advantage for Analysts.

Christina (Tina) JOHNSON WAGNER, BA 1974, is Director of Information Systems at the California School Employees Association (CSEA), headquartered in San Jose. Previously she enjoyed a long career with Chevron.

Jeffrey VARNER, BA 1974, died on 22 March 2012. A longtime resident of Pacifica, Varner had a career as a systems engineer and research manager in the computer industry. A life-long enthusiast for all things nautical, Varner was a frequent sailor in the Bay Area and the Caribbean.

Jonathan LAW, BA 1978, is currently a software developer for ETrade Financial in the Sacramento area. He did graduate work in computer science at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Tong-Nan GINN, BA 1979, MA 1986, is now working in the Bay Area as a trainer for Kaiser Permanente.

Mahyar AMOUZEGAR, BS 1987, is Dean of the College of Engineering at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He earned doctorates in electrical engineering and operations research at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1991 and 1994. Before coming to Pomona in 2011, he worked for the RAND Corporation and served on engineering faculties in California and New Zealand.

1990 - 1999

Ruth RADETSKY, BA 1991, teaches mathematics at Balboa High School in San Francisco.

Andrew ELLETT, MA 1995, teaches mathematics at Balboa High School in San Francisco.

Stefano IANNONE, BS 1995, has been teaching high-school mathematics since 1997 at an international school in Rome, Italy. He also teaches part-time at the John Cabot University in Rome. Iannone earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Rome in 2007.

Seth BRAVER, BA 1999, teaches mathematics at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. Braver earned the PhD in history of mathematics at the University of Montana in 2007. The Mathematical Association of America has recently published his book Lobachevsky Illustrated, on non-Euclidean geometry.

2000 - 2009

Shuichiro TAKEDA, MA 2001, is now Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, specializing in number theory.

Katherine Marie (Kaytee) BOCK, BS 2002, is now a senior manager of business development at the Nevro Corporation in Menlo Park. The company is introducing technology to improve the role of spinal cord stimulation in the treatment of chronic pain.

Seth SULLIVANT, MA 2002, is now Associate Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, specializing in algebraic combinatorics. He has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Ian SAMMIS, MA 2003, is now Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Holy Names University in Oakland.

Alexander MILOWSKI, MA 2004, is an innovative software developer in San Francisco. He wants to make it easier for our students to do what he did at SF State, and to use his academic and industrial background to enable more students to meet the requirements of entrepreneurship. To that end, he has endowed a scholarship that each year will cover one semester of tuition for a promising graduate student. Thank you, Alex! 

Gabriel LUCAS, MA 2005, is now Director of Technology at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California.

Vanson NGUYEN, MA 2005, teaches mathematics and coordinates the first-year experience at Skyline College, in San Bruno, California.

Viveka ERLANDSSON, MA 2006, is currently a research fellow at the Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. She earned the PhD in 2013 from City University of New York, with a dissertation entitled The Margulis Region in Hyperbolic 4-Space.

Jemma LORENAT, BA 2007, is studying for a PhD in history of mathematics in a joint program of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and l’Institut Henri Poincaré in France. Presently, though, she’s teaching part-time at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Candice PRICE, MA 2007, is now Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the United States Military Academy. She earned the PhD degree from the University of Iowa in 2012, with a dissertation entitled A Biological Application for the Oriented Skein Relation. She is organizing a session on Women Math Warriors at the January 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, Maryland.

Andrew VAN HERICK, MA 2007, is employed as a software developer by Archimedes, a San Francisco health-care modeling firm.

Kim SEASHORE, MA 2007, has published the results of her master’s thesis in the SIAM Journal of Discrete Mathematics in joint paper with four coauthors, including our Profs. Federico Ardila, Matthias Beck and Serkan Hosten: “Root polytopes and growth series of root lattices.” Seashore is currently a PhD student in mathematics education at the University of California in Berkeley.

Aaron DALL, MA 2008, published the results of his master’s thesis, “Bounds on the coefficients of tension and flow polynomials,” in the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics, jointly with Felix Breuer, a postdoctoral researcher in our Department. Dall is now a PhD student in applied mathematics at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.

Mitchell OSTER, BA 2008, is now teaching with the Peninsula Bridge secondary-school organization in Menlo Park, California.

Brooke Tiefenthal ARROYO, BA 2009, is teaching mathematics at James Denman Middle School in San Francisco. She is a partner teacher in the Department’s NSF-sponsored (CM)² program for enriching the mathematical experiences of our students in collaboration with teachers and students from San Francisco public schools.

Jameson CAHILL, MA 2009, earned a PhD from the University of Missouri in 2013 with a dissertation on Frames and Projections. He has been appointed to a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University. 

Daniel DEWOSKIN, MA 2009, is now a graduate student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Kirsten FREEMAN, MA 2009, is now teaching at West Valley College in Saratoga, California.

Elizabeth GROSS, MA 2009, earned the PhD in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the area of algebraic combinatorics. She has been appointed Assistant Professor of Mathematics at San Jose State University, but is on leave this year to undertake NSF-sponsored postdoctoral study under supervision of Seth Sullivant, MA 2002. (See an item about him above this.)

Emily McCULLOUGH, BA 2009, taught mathematics at Mission High School in San Francisco, serving as a partner teacher in the Department’s NSF-sponsored (CM)² program for enriching the mathematical experiences of our students in collaboration with teachers and students from San Francisco public schools. Now she has returned to the Department as a graduate student and is continuing to work with students and teachers in that program.

Amanda RUIZ, MA 2009, has completed a PhD program in combinatorial mathematics at Binghamton University in New York, with a dissertation on Realizations of complex matroids. She now has a postdoctoral research position at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

Walter SOLÓRZANO, BA 2009, is teaching mathematics at the Escuela Comunitaria Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 in San Francisco.

Aaron Ya-Luhn WONG, BA 2009, is teaching mathematics at Balboa High School in San Francisco.

2010 - 2013

Anastasia CHAVEZ, BS 2006, MA 2010, is a PhD student at the University of California in Berkeley, specializing in enumerative combinatorics. In Summer 2013 she assisted with a mathematics research program for undergraduates at the University of Hawaii in Hilo.

Andrew HERMANN, MA 2010, is an actuarial assistant at Farmers Insurance in the Los Angeles area.

Nguyen LE, MA 2010, has publishedthe results of her master’s thesis in a joint paper with our Prof. Matthias Beck and one other coauthor: “Mahonian Partition Identities Via Polyhedral Geometry”. She is currently a PhD student in mathematics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Kelley WALKER, BA 2010, MA 2013, is a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Houston, Texas.

Mela HARDIN, MA 2011, won an award for the best graduate presentation in mathematics at the 2011 National Conference of SACNAS, a society of scientists dedicated to fostering the success of Hispanic/Chicano and Native American scientists. She spent a year studying biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has now entered the mathematics PhD program at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Stacey HUBBARD, MA 2011, is teaching mathematics to the upper grades at the San Francisco Waldorf Grade School.

Yuchen LU, BS 2011, completed a Master of Engineering degree in applied operations research at Cornell University in May, 2012.

Alyssa PALFREYMAN, MA 2013, is now a PhD student in mahtematics at Northeastern University in Boston.

Tu PHAM, MA 2011, has published the results of his master’s thesis in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics in a joint paper with our Prof. Mathias Beck and one other coauthor: “Enumeration of Golomb rulers and acyclic orientations of mixed graphs.” Pham is currently a PhD student at the University of California, Riverside.

Dido SALAZAR-TORRES, MA 2011, is a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Iowa.

Jonathan TER HORST, MA 2011, is a PhD student in statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael GARCIA, MA 2012, is studying for the doctorate in mathematics education at the University of California, San Diego.

Logan GODKIN, MA 2012, is a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Tia BAKER, MA 2013, is now a mathematician with the United States Navy.

Zachary BOWEN, MA 2013, is now a PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany.

Steven COLLAZOS, MA 2013, is a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He has won an NSF graduate research fellowship.

Michael HENLEY, MA 2013, is now teaching mathematics at San Francisco University High School.

Jack LOVE, MA 2013, is a PhD student in mathematics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Rika YATCHAK, MA 2013, is now a PhD student in mathematics at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria.

Javier ARSUAGA, Associate Professor, accepted in 2014 a professorship in mathematics at the University of California, Davis.

William FINZER is Senior Scientist at KCP Technologies in Emeryville, California, where he leads the Fathom Dynamic Data development team.  Fathom is a software system for teaching statistics. Finzer was a lecturer in our Department for several years around 1980, closely associated with Prof. Diane Resek.

Newman H. FISHER, Professor Emeritus, was honored at the May 2013 commencement services of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. The University was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its PhD degree program. Newman was one of its first three graduates.

Grazina Ula FURMAN served the Department as assistant office manager around 2010. She left to accept a position as Faculty Recruitment Administrator at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she has already won its Heart Award for exceptional service.

Annette KIEWIET De JONGE served the Department as assistant office manager around 1997, while she was a graduate student here in biology. Annette is now Criminalist Supervisor for the California Department of Justice.

David B. MEREDITH (1942 - 2012) died on 11 December from complications during heart surgery in San Francisco. He had just completed the SF State early retirement program. A native of San Carlos, California, David studied mathematics and philosophy at Stanford, then earned a PhD from Brandeis University in 1969 in algebraic geometry, supervised by Paul Monsky. He came to our Department in 1972, after postdoctoral positions at Harvard and MIT. David created the mathematical software package X(PLORE), which has been widely used worldwide. He spurred the development of our graduate program and served as our Chair, 2002 - 2006. Always heavily involved in academic affairs, he served as Chair of the SF State Academic Senate, 2006 - 2007. David married Idell Weydemeyer in 1973 and spent many summers working her family farm in Montana. He participated in many activities related to his sons’ schools. In recent years he took up sailing and helped the disabled participate in that sport. Our University is establishing a scholarship fund in his honor.

Susan NARUCKI was appointed Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, in 2008. She is currently its Associate Chair. Susan was our Department’s assistant office manager around 1982, while she was a music student here, concentrating on vocal performance. Our old-timers may recall her operatic rendition of Happy Birthday, in Western Onion garb and embellished by material from Handel, at an informal party for lecturer William FINZER. The Grammy-Award-winning soprano has earned international acclaim as a singer of luminous tone, superb musicianship and distinctive artistry. She has presented over one hundred world premieres in opera, concert and recording, enjoying close collaborations with many of the world's leading composers. She is one of the leading interpreters of contemporary music of her generation.

Siegfried F. NEUSTADTER (1924 - 2012) (Fred) was born in Neumarkt, in central Germany. During his school years there he saw the figure of Christ in the schoolrooms replaced by that of Hitler. Because of his Jewish ancestry, Fred was forced to sit apart from his classmates and often beaten up as he walked home from school. In 1938 his family came to San Francisco, where he attended Lowell High School. An outstanding student, he received a scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley. During his three years as an undergraduate he completed majors in mathematics, physics and chemistry, often taking thirty units per semester. He chose to pursue mathematics as a graduate student and completed the PhD in 1948 with a dissertation on certain Riemann surfaces, supervised by Griffith C. Evans. Fred was honored by a three-year appointment as Benjamin Pierce Fellow at Harvard University, then took positions as applied mathematician at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and consultant for the Sylvania Corporation. Fred joined our Department in 1958 and retired in 1993. He was a codeveloper of our applied-mathematics program and a frequent consultant to colleagues throughout the College of Science and Engineering. His last published research was on the solution of the wave equation with a moving boundary. —Contributed by Newman Fisher, Professor Emeritus. For photographs, contributed by Robert J. Douglas, Professor Emeritus, Siegfried F. Neustadter (PDF).

Albert POLLATCHEK (1944 - 2012) joined our faculty as a lecturer in 1976 and served here until his retirement in 2005. His family had emigrated to the United States from Vienna shortly before World War II and settled in San Francisco. His father held a doctorate in chemistry. Pollatchek attended Washington High School and the University of California at Berkeley. He earned the PhD in mathematics there in 1975 with a dissertation on combinatorics and semigroups, supervised by John L. Rhodes. Pollatchek was also an expert on late-nineteenth-century American pocket watches.—Contributed by Newman Fisher, Professor Emeritus.

James T. SMITH is editing this news page. He is retired from teaching at SFSU. His 2010 paper, “Definitions and nondefinability in geometry,” won a Lester R. Ford award for exposition in mathematics, from the Mathematical Association of America.

Mariel VAZQUEZ, Associate Professor, accepted in 2014 a professorship in mathematics and in microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of California, Davis.   

Lawrence CHANG (1944 - 1983), BA 1968. Blind from early childhood, Dr. Chang served as research mathematician at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, then on our faculty during the years 1980–1983. He authored Handbook for Spoken Mathematics: Larry's Speakeasy, to help those who read text to blind mathematics students. This still current work is now in use by the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Our Chang scholarship honors his memory.

Hal FORSEY has lived for a decade on Guemes Island in the San Juan Archipelago between Washington State and Vancouver Island. He and his wife Dayle are planning to move soon to the Portland area. He continues to work on financial planning with the Pension Research Institute.

José GUTIERREZ and his wife Gloria have been spending much time at their beach house near Cabo San Lucas. He sent greetings from Peru, where they were on vacation in April 2008.

Leonard HAINES sends greetings from Hawaii, where he is fixing up a townhouse on the leeward side of Oahu.

Arthur J. HALL (19?? - 2007) joined our faculty in 1946. He had been a graduate student at Stanford and had served in the Navy. Because of the extreme need for mathematics teachers, President J. Paul Leonard persuaded him to study for the Ed. D. degree, which he completed at Stanford under the supervision of Lucien B. Kinney. Acting as chair of a group that would become a department only after 1955, Hall hired the core of the faculty that would serve into the 1970s. During the 1950s, Hall convinced Chancellor Glenn Dumke of the importance of statistical data for academic administration, then in 1959 was named CSU Dean of Institutional Research. In 1975 he returned to the Department as Professor until 1977. After retirement, he undertook historical studies of SF State and the CSU system. —Contributed by Franklin Sheehan, Professor Emeritus.

Laura S. K. KODAMA (1935 - 2010) served on our faculty during 1962–1964 and 1975–1978. She completed her Berkeley PhD in approximation theory in 1963 under supervision of Errett Bishop. Laura moved to Hawaii to accompany her husband, a professor. There she became an actuary.—Contributed by Newman Fisher, Professor Emeritus.

Robert J. LEVIT (1916 - 2010) was a native San Francisco and studied at Lowell High School, Stanford, Cal Tech, Occidental. He completed his Berkeley PhD in postulate theory in 1939 under supervision of Benjamin A. Bernstein. Levit contributed to cryptanalysis and communications technology for the Navy during 1942 - 1945, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Afterward, he taught and researched at the University of Georgia, MIT and IBM and joined our faculty in 1957. Levit was the first director of the SF State computer center, maintained continual research activity, and for many years taught our graduate foundations course and served as graduate adviser. He retired in 1972. Levit and his wife Jean were inveterate hikers; after retirement he walked as high as the Mt. Everest base camp!—Contributed in part by Newman Fisher, Professor Emeritus.

Susann NOVALIS is now Dr. Susann Novalis Burton. She recently married Dr. Bruce Burton, a fellow cycling enthusiast. They will live primarily at his location in southwest England, but will continue to maintain her residence in Pacifica. As a consultant, she will continue her database work with the University. Congratulations, Susann! 

Diane RESEK remains extremely active in mathematics education during Spring 2010. She has given talks on models for teacher training and classroom presentation at conferences in Taiwan, San Diego and San Mateo. In November 2009 she visited the Technion in Israel, where she was the Distinguished Israel Pollack Lecturer for that academic year. She cooks one day a week with Food not Bombs and helps serve in People's Park in Berkeley.  Diane Resek Website for Prof. Resek’s website.

James T. SMITH has retired from teaching, but works full time on history of mathematics. His main projects now are the legacy of the Italian mathematician Mario Pieri (1860 - 1913) and the early Warsaw career of the logician Alfred Tarski (1901 - 1983).

Eugene R. TOMER, a former lecturer, died of cancer on 2 July 2007 in San Francisco. Tomer was a consulting applied mathematician, noted for his work modeling the formation and rotation of galaxies. He gave a fascinating colloquium talk here on that subject around 1980.