Three former students from the Cal State Fullerton mathematics department have received postdoctoral fellowships at prestigious institutions: Lindsay Lee at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, Kristy Tran at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Leonila Lagunes at UCLA.
They are a new crop of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students, female and from traditionally underrepresented groups. But what they also have in common is drive. “They are very determined,” said Charles Lee, one of their professors in the mathematics department at CSUF.
Lee was a mentor to the women, a sort of a portal to the “applied” part of their applied math degrees. His methods include tempting upper division students with tantalizing research projects that have real-life applications, from detecting cancer to stock market analysis.
Lindsay Lee
Lindsay Lee (no relation to her professor) worked on two research projects at CSUF, unusual for an undergrad. She worked with Dr. Lee on acoustic vector sensors and with Laura Smith Chowdhury, associate professor in the math department, on crime modeling. Lee happened upon Chowdhury’s work when she attended a presentation her professor offered for extra credit. “For her doctorate, she modeled LA gang rivalry,” Dr. Lee said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, this is the coolest thing ever!’ ”
For Lee, the mentoring was invaluable. “They taught me everything I know — how to do research and how to write a paper and get it published,” said Lee, who received her doctorate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “Because of that, I was able to go to conferences and give talks. That really helped me a lot in grad school because I already knew what I was supposed to be doing.”
Now at the Cleveland Clinic, Lee is using her mathematical skills to analyze the genome. She loves the work, but … it’s Cleveland. “I had to buy everything winter-related. I didn’t even own one long-sleeved anything,” she said. “It was a big change for me. I shed a couple tears here and there on the way.”
Lee hasn’t settled on any one path for the future yet. “That is the question,” she said. “My degree is so versatile and can be applied to so many different fields, so I am just trying to explore.”
Kristy Tran
Kristy Tran’s aha moment was taking a computer class as part of her degree in applied math. “I felt like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ It was more than what I thought of math — you could do computer and math together. It wasn’t just theory. It actually had a lot of cool applications.”
She and Dr. Lee worked on a project on the stock market using numerical analysis methods. “People think of math as a very abstract idea, but really, there are applications all over the place,” said Tran, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at CSUF.
After earning her doctorate in applied mathematics at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, she is now happily doing her fellowship at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on software application. For Tran, it’s a childhood dream come true. “This is really the best place I could imagine working when I was little,” said Tran, a first-generation student.
For her future, Tran would be happy staying at NASA. “They have a lot more to explore here,” she said.
Leonila Lagunes
Leonila Lagunes hopes to someday work as a research professor, and she already has the easy way of speaking about complex subjects that great professors have.
For example, instead of just saying she’s doing her fellowship at UCLA’s Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, she explains it. “I work on trying to understand how the proteins in our cells are degraded,” she said, warming to the subject and describing proteasomes, the giant proteins that surround cells, in clear, layman’s terms. “I use math to try to understand: Why was it designed like this? Why is it so good at doing this job? Or when it fails, why does it fail?”
She discovered her first math/biology mash-up at CSUF under Lee’s tutelage. “I chose a project on detecting cancer because it sounded like such a cool project. We were using geometry and calculus and coding, but it was connecting the biology and math that made me really passionate for it.”
Lagunes credits two CSUF programs for first-generation students — McNair Scholars and MARC (Maximizing Access to Research Careers) — for helping her navigate the challenges of being the first in her family to graduate high school. “It’s very difficult for first-gen students to know what the culture in academia is — we didn’t even know what office hours were,” Lagunes said. “McNair and MARC demystified that. They showed us how to write a personal statement. How you read a scientific article. They prepped me for trying to understand science when science is not spoken at home.”
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November 07, 2020 at 01:15AM
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Former Cal State Fullerton math students score prestigious postdoctoral fellowships - OCRegister
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