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Applied Combinatorics

Author Biography About Mitchel T. Keller

Mitchel T. Keller is a super-achiever (this description is written by WTT) extraordinaire from North Dakota. As a graduate student at Georgia Tech, he won a lengthy list of honors and awards, including a VIGRE Graduate Fellowship, an IMPACT Scholarship, a John R. Festa Fellowship and the 2009 Price Research Award. Mitch is a natural leader and was elected President (and Vice President) of the Georgia Tech Graduate Student Government Association, roles in which he served with distinction. Indeed, after completing his terms, his student colleagues voted to establish a continuing award for distinguished leadership, to be named the Mitchel T. Keller award, with Mitch as the first recipient. Very few graduate students win awards in the first place, but Mitch is the only one I know who has an award named after them.
Mitch is also a gifted teacher of mathematics, receiving the prestigious Georgia Tech 2008 Outstanding Teacher Award, a campus-wide competition. He is quick to experiment with the latest approaches to teaching mathematics, adopting what works for him while refining and polishing things along the way. He really understands the literature behind active learning and the principles of engaging students in the learning process. Mitch has even taught his more senior (some say ancient) co-author a thing or two and got him to try personal response systems in a large calculus section.
Mitch is off to a fast start in his own research career, and is already an expert in the subject of linear discrepancy. Mitch has also made substantive contributions to a topic known as Stanley depth, which is right at the boundary of combinatorial mathematics and algebraic combinatorics.
After finishing his Ph.D., Mitch received another signal honor, a Marshall Sherfield Postdoctoral Fellowship and spent two years at the London School of Economics. He is presently Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
On the personal side, Mitch is the keeper of the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and he is a great cook. His desserts are to die for.