Faculty & Staff

Emily Evans is an Associate Professor in the BYU mathematics department.  Dr. Evans received a B.S. in economics from the University of Utah. After receiving her degree she spent 7 years in industry as a software engineer working at a start-up (Lavastorm) a midsize company (EMC) and finally at a large company (HP).  She then returned to school to receive a PhD in mathematical sciences. She joined the mathematics department at BYU in 2011. Her research interests include finite elements for domains with fractal boundaries, biological modeling, computational mechanics and the mathematics of computer animation.

Lennard Bakker received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Queen’s University in 1997. After having taught at BYU as a visiting professor for two years, he later became an assistant professor in 2002, an associate professor in 2010, and a full professor in 2015. Dr. Bakker was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award for the Department of Mathematics in 2013, the Savage Teaching Award in 2015, and the Distinguished Citizenship Award for the Department of Mathematics in 2020. His research area is dynamical systems, in particular celestial mechanics, hyperbolic toral automorphisms, and centralizers of diffeomorphisms.

Blake Barker is an associate professor at BYU. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Indiana University in 2014 and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University from 2014 to 2016. He was the recipient of the Richard C. DiPrima Prize in 2016. His research interests include applied math, wildfire research, tipping point problems, and stability of traveling waves.

Zachary Boyd received his PhD from UCLA in Mathematics in 2018, where he was an NDSEG fellow, researching graph-based machine learning techniques. At the same time, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory on compressible flow problems. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2018-2021 on a range of network science problems. He has been in the Mathematics Department at BYU since 2021. Zachary works on problems in data science, network theory, and mathematical modeling, involving a wide range of disciplines, such at psychology, materials science, genealogy, and supply chain management.

Chris Grant is an associate professor at BYU. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Utah in 1991. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award for the Department of Mathematics in 2009 and the Excellence in Teaching (10+ years) for the BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 2008. From 2000 to 2006, Dr. Grant served as the Associate Chair of the BYU Department of Mathematics. His main research interests are probability and abstract analysis.

Paul Jenkins is the chair of the BYU Department of Mathematics. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006, did postdoctoral work at UCLA, and joined the BYU Department of Mathematics in January 2009. His research focuses on number theory and modular forms, and he has supervised more than 25 undergraduate and 10 graduate students in mentored research projects at BYU. He received BYU's Class of 1949 Young Faculty Award in 2018.

Mark Kempton is an assistant professor at BYU. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego in 2015 and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University from 2015 to 2018. His research interests include linear algebra, combinatorics, graph theory, matrix theory, and quantum information.

Robbie Snellman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at BYU. Robbie received BS and MS degrees in mathematics from the University of Utah, and a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego. For his doctoral work, Robbie worked in two areas, (1) special values of L-functions, and (2) p-adic Hodge theory. Upon coming to BYU, Robbie pivoted from algebraic number theory and p-adic representation theory to work with students in the ACME program and network science. He currently works with two of his colleagues on problems related to Family Search and genealogical research. He is currently serving as the chair of the calculus committee in the department.

Benjamin Webb received his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech Institute of Technology in 2011, where he was the recipient of the 2011 Top Graduate Student Award for the School of Mathematics. After his time as a visiting assistant professor at BYU and a Postdoctoral Associate at Rockefeller University, Dr. Webb became an assistant professor at BYU. His general research interests are in the theory of dynamical systems specifically as it applies to the dynamics of real and theoretical networks.

Jared Whitehead received his PhD from the University of Michigan in Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics in 2012. He then worked as a postdoctoral research scholar in the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2012-2013 before joining the Mathematics Department at BYU as an Assistant Professor. After being promoted to Associate Professor, Jared has been working as the graduate coordinator for the Mathematics Department. Jared has worked with scientists from a variety of disciplines including physics, meteorology, oceanography, geology, climate sciences, and mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering. His research has focused on the analysis and computation of partial differential equations (PDE) as well as the merging of classical mathematical modeling techniques with modern data analysis and collection. His research truly spans the breadth of the ACME program, from classical mathematical physics to modern methods applied to data science.