Mathcamp 2025 Staff

The summer staff at camp is made up of Faculty, Mentors, JCs, and the Camp Nurse. In addition, we bring several Visiting Speakers each summer who give guest lectures and courses.

Faculty at Mathcamp are professors (and professionals) in mathematics and related fields; Mentors are graduate students in mathematics and computer science. The Faculty and Mentors teach classes at camp, picking the course topics freely from among their favorite kinds of math. They also supervise projects, and serve as academic advisors, helping students choose their classes and work towards their mathematical goals for camp.

JCs, all of them camp alumni, are undergraduates who run the non-academic side of camp. They handle everything from camp setup to events, surveys, and social media. JCs also help out with academics, including TAing for classes and talking with campers about math.

Mentors and JCs live in the dorms with students, and each student is assigned a Mentor or JC as their residential advisor: RAs live on the same hall as their advisees and look out for them on a day-to-day basis.

Like campers, the staff often return year after year to Mathcamp!

The 2025 Directors, Faculty and Academic Coordinators:

  • Aria Vadnere is a grad student at University at Buffalo, studying low dimensional geometric topology. Arya plays a lot of ultimate frisbee, and is pretty good at recruiting others to do so too.
  • Charlotte Trainor is a teacher at Harvard University. She completed her PhD in analysis at the University of British Columbia. She enjoys loud music, being Canadian, cool weather, books about magic, and social strategy games.
  • Eric Stubley works at Google doing things with computers and numbers. He enjoys math that fits into the categories of algebra and number theory. He spends a lot of time outdoors in the pacific northwest, he regularly does several pattern-based hobbies from the British Isles (change ringing and Scottish country dance), he cooks often, and he reads lots of science fiction novels. He has been teaching at Mathcamp since 2019.
  • Kevin Carde started at Mathcamp as a Mentor in 2011. He joined the Mathcamp yearround staff after receiving his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2014. His interests include combinatorics (especially algebraic) and solving and writing puzzles of all sorts.
  • Marisa Debowsky is the Executive Director of Mathcamp. Her mathematical interests include Topological Graph Theory and other combinatorial pursuits; outside of math, she enjoys playing guitar, solving puzzles, and delicious coffee. She has been teaching and singing at Mathcamp since 2006.
  • Mark Krusemeyer has recently retired from his position as a Professor of Mathematics at Carleton College. His mathematical interests include algebra, combinatorics, number theory, and problem solving. His non-mathematical interests include recorder playing, hiking/scrambling, duplicate bridge, and table tennis. He has been a faculty member at Mathcamp since 1997.
  • Maya Saran is a descriptive set theorist by training, and has been the Program Manger at Mathcamp since December 2023. She's excited about being at her second Mathcamp this summer!
  • Misha Lavrov has been teaching combinatorics, problem-solving, and miscellaneous topics that seem fun at Mathcamp since 2014. He can beat his own puzzle game Tactic Tea (https://misha.fish/tactictea/) in 11 moves; can you?
  • Noah ("Steve") Schweber is a faculty at Mathcamp. He is a math teacher at Proof School, and separately enjoys research in Computability Theory and Set Theory. His non-mathematical interests include unicycling, frisbee, terrible puns, and foot juggling. At camp, he prefers the nickname "Steve."
  • Susan Durst has been working for Mathcamp since 2008, and enjoys teaching classes in abstract algebra and mathematical logic. She received her PhD from Rutgers in 2013, and is currently a math faculty member at Proof School in San Francisco. Her nonmathematical interests include west coast swing dancing and choral music.
  • Zach Abel is a lecturer at MIT, teaching discrete math and algorithms. His mathematical interests include geometry and theoretical computer science, and he also enjoys puzzles, designing mathematical sculptures, and chocolate. He has been teaching at Mathcamp on an off since 2013.

Mentors:

  • Audrey Baumheckel is a grad student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. When not puzzling over operators, algebras, or measures, Audrey can often be found baking sweets, dancing poorly, singing loudly, drinking tea out of an oversized mug, or reading sci-fi or fantasy.
  • Della Hendrickson is a grad student at MIT studying computational complexity. She enjoys square dancing, puzzles, and pandas.
  • Glenn Sun is a grad student at the University of Washington, where he broadly studies theoretical computer science and is especially interested in symbolic computation and SAT. He likes dumplings, trains, and NYT games.
  • Kaia Smith is a grad student at UC Davis studying numerical linear algebra and optimization. Outside of math, Kaia enjoys board games, running, and crocheting various tiny creatures.
  • Ahmed Ellithy (Laithy) is a post-doc at Uppsala University, working on general relativity and geometric analysis. He enjoys squash, rock climbing, chess, and all kinds of games.
  • Narmada Varadarajan is a grad student at the University of Tourountou, where she works on fake set theory and fake computer science. She spends her free time dreaming up new recipes, play-fighting with her cat, and watching weird movies.
  • Nikita Gladkov just got his PhD from UCLA. He does probability and combinatorics. His paper on the bunkbed conjecture got featured in youtube videos in English, German and Czech.
  • Riley Shahar is a grad student at Penn interested in homotopy theory and category theory. Outside of math, she spends much of her time reading, writing, cooking, playing board games, dyeing their hair, and just generally having a good time with friends.
  • Riley Waugh is a graduate student at Portland State University, and is training to become a high school math teacher. Mathematically, he is interested in analysis and combinatorics. Non-mathematically, he is interested in philosophy, education, and certain games.
  • Sam Charles is a PhD student at the University of Oxford in the analysis of partial differential equations. He loves to play badminton, climb, cook, hike and binge watch tv shows.

JCs:

  • Allison Tsypin just graduated from McGill University with a B.Sc. in Honours Math, and is excited to start a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Dartmouth College in the fall. She enjoys crochet, jigsaw/word/logic/chess puzzles, and languages.
  • Alyona Nefyodova is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. She is about to start the second year of a PhD in Analytics program at the University of Notre Dame. She likes figure skating, comparing languages, petting dogs and being involved in educational projects.
  • Antonio Kambiré is a rising junior at Stanford University. He likes playing board games, talking about African politics, and listening to music.
  • Athena Wu will be a freshman at MIT, studying math and presumably something else. She enjoys art, vintage and historical clothing, speculative fiction, and live-actioning said speculative fiction.
  • Ellie Feng is a rising sophomore at MIT majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics, but often distracted by other things. These include: singing, dancing, playing video game music with her orchestra, glassblowing, and blogging.
  • Linsey Zhong is a rising sophomore at Princeton University majoring in mathematics with a minor in computer science. She enjoys arts and crafts, reading, and archery.
  • Lucas Jacobs is a third year at the University of Toronto studying math. He enjoys reading, collecting baseball caps, and messing around outdoors.
  • Małgosia Boguszewska is a freshman at the University of Warsaw studying Mathematics. She enjoys baking, sabre fencing and playing board games.
  • Thu Hoang just finished her first year at Amherst College studying math, computer science, and education. She enjoys dancing, sharing her love of Mathcamp on her blog, and asking deep, unanswerable questions about life.

Camp Nurse:

  • Cathy Stanke: This will be my first year at Mathcamp as your resident nurse. I am excited to get to know you and will do my best to keep you healthy! I am from Missoula Montana where i have worked for many years. I enjoy making quilts, traveling and eating locally sourced foods and a good cup of tea