What's this all about, anyway?
So I've gotten a few emails asking, "What the heck are you doing in Finland, anyway?"
So here's the background. I'm currently in my fourth year of a Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Michigan. Basically, I study notions of distance and how they relate to each other and our "natural" notion of distance in space. Because my advisor is really awesome and has made my work very enjoyable, I have already completed ~60% of my dissertation. As a result, I have a little bit of time before the end of my program to spend working on more projects. A top researcher in my field, Pekka Koskela, contacted my advisor asking if I would like to spend a semester working with him in Jyäskylä, Finland. This is not quite as random as it seems. There is a long tradition of mathematicians from the University of Michigan collaborating with Finnish mathematicians, going back to the late 50's/early 60's with Fred Gehring and Jussi Väisälä. In fact, the other member of my dissertation is from very close to Jyväskylä and my advisor spent a year here as a post-doc.
So this semester I will be working with Pekka Koskela doing mathematics research. We met to discuss research yesterday for about 15 minutes. He has a problem for me to work on which sounds very exciting - I'll describe it in more detail on my math blog www.quasifractals.blogspot.com. It deals with that ubiquitous mathematical beast, the Cantor set, which has some very mysterious properties.
Anyway, that's what I'm doing here. It's quite an opportunity. Pekka Koskela is widely respected - one person described him to me as "the most prolific mathematician that I know". He also seems like a very friendly guy, and I'm really lucky to get to work with him.
So here's the background. I'm currently in my fourth year of a Ph.D. program in mathematics at the University of Michigan. Basically, I study notions of distance and how they relate to each other and our "natural" notion of distance in space. Because my advisor is really awesome and has made my work very enjoyable, I have already completed ~60% of my dissertation. As a result, I have a little bit of time before the end of my program to spend working on more projects. A top researcher in my field, Pekka Koskela, contacted my advisor asking if I would like to spend a semester working with him in Jyäskylä, Finland. This is not quite as random as it seems. There is a long tradition of mathematicians from the University of Michigan collaborating with Finnish mathematicians, going back to the late 50's/early 60's with Fred Gehring and Jussi Väisälä. In fact, the other member of my dissertation is from very close to Jyväskylä and my advisor spent a year here as a post-doc.
So this semester I will be working with Pekka Koskela doing mathematics research. We met to discuss research yesterday for about 15 minutes. He has a problem for me to work on which sounds very exciting - I'll describe it in more detail on my math blog www.quasifractals.blogspot.com. It deals with that ubiquitous mathematical beast, the Cantor set, which has some very mysterious properties.
Anyway, that's what I'm doing here. It's quite an opportunity. Pekka Koskela is widely respected - one person described him to me as "the most prolific mathematician that I know". He also seems like a very friendly guy, and I'm really lucky to get to work with him.
posted by Kevin at 2:06 AM
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