Up: Geometry Center Alumni

[Heidi Burgiel]
Heidi Burgiel

Title: Post-Doctoral Fellow
Dates: September 16, 1995 -- June 13, 1997
Currently at:University of Illinois at Chicago
E-mail: burgiel@geom.umn.edu
Personal Homepage: http://math.uic.edu/~burgiel/


Activities at the Geometry Center

Dr. Burgiel's primary interest is in the study of geometric realizations of abstract polyhedra. She has made two short videos about her results in this field, and one longer video on the polyhedral properties of the uniform net (10,3)-a.

She is working with professor Dennis Stanton to find a complete classification of realizations of regular maps of types {3,6}_{b,c} and {6,3}_{b,c}.

Heidi is also collaborating with Jesus De Loera on a project to use Viro's construction to apply combinatorial methods to problems in algebraic geometry, and working with Victor Reiner on other assorted problems in combinatorial algebraic geometry.



The focus of Dr. Burgiel's educational activities is the use of computers to teach mathematics. She teaches and helped write the textbook for the Technology in the Geometry Classroom course, which teaches the use of high school geometry software through advanced mathematics projects. She is currently working on a proposal to offer this course over the internet.

Last year, Heidi was on the instructional team of the University of Minnesota Calculus Initiative which tested the HTML computer labs developed here at the Center.

Another internet project that Heidi is very interested in is using the programming language Java to bring mathematics research to a wider community. In this project, mathematical problems which can be approached by checking many simple cases selected according to human intuition but for which an exhastive search is not feasible are presented to the Web surfing public. Data generated by visitors to the Web page is then reported back to the mathematician owner of the page, who can record and review the results of successful experiments. (For example, see the Tetris research page.)

Background

Heidi graduated from the University of Washington in 1995, where she wrote a thesis on the subject of regular polytopes under Branko Grunbaum. While there, she worked for Jim King and the IAS/Park City Program for High School Teachers (formerly the Park City RGI).

She earned a B.S. in mathematics at MIT with a minor in Writing in 1990. While there she also took courses in computer science and astrophysics.

Education

Ph.D. in Mathematics, August 1995.
University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Thesis title: Realizations of Regular Maps.

B.S. in Mathematics, June 1990.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

Professional Experience

Employment

Publications

Presentations


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Created: Nov 19 1995 --- Last modified: Oct 24 12:15:02 1997