Math Department announces three new faculty members
It’s not really a case of déjà vu, but three new faculty members in the math department are experiencing a bit of nostalgia. For Laura DeMarco, Ph.D. ’02, and Mihnea Popa, Harvard is where they first met 20 years ago when DeMarco was a Ph.D. student in her final year, and Popa had just started as a postdoctoral research fellow. Now married, the pair are returning to the Department of Mathematics as tenured professors. “We feel really familiar with the place so it’s exciting,” said Popa, who like DeMarco was at Northwestern University. “It’s like coming home somehow.” Joining the department, also as an incoming professor of mathematics, offers Melanie Matchett Wood the chance to reunite with one her earliest supporters. Wood was 16 when she became the first female to make the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad Team, an opportunity that helped make math her biggest passion. At a training program the team...