Catherine Huafei Yan ( zh, 颜华菲) is a professor of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

interested in algebraic combinatorics.

Education and career

Yan earned a bachelor's degree from

Peking University Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...

in 1993. She was a student of

Gian-Carlo Rota Gian-Carlo Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, proba ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1997 with a dissertation on ''The Theory of Commuting Boolean Algebras''. After working for two years as a Courant Instructor at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

, she joined Texas A&M in 1999, with a three-year hiatus as Chern Professor at the Center of Combinatorics, Nankai University, from 2005 to 2008.

Book

With her advisor and Joseph Kung, she is an author of '' Combinatorics: The Rota Way'' (Cambridge University Press, 2009). The book provides an exposition of the areas of combinatorics of interest to Rota, unified through an algebraic framework, and lists many open research problems in this area.

Recognition

Yan won a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2001. She was elected to the 2018 class of

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

s of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

"for contributions to

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

and

discrete geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geom ...

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yan, Catherine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians Chinese women mathematicians Combinatorialists International Mathematical Olympiad participants High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China alumni Peking University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni New York University faculty Texas A&M University faculty Academic staff of Nankai University Sloan Research Fellows Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Place of birth missing (living people) Nationality missing 21st-century American women mathematicians