UCLA mathematics PhD student Michelle Feng has been selected for the prestigious James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) 2019 Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. The fellowship is part of the Understanding Dynamic and Multi-Scale Systems program, which supports scholarship and research directed toward the discovery and refinement of theoretical and mathematical tools contributing to the continued development of the study of complex, adaptive, nonlinear systems. Students completing their doctoral training can benefit from postdoctoral training where such opportunities to broaden research experience and acquire new knowledge and skills.
Michelle’s research focuses on applications of algebraic topology to social, political, and spatial networks, including elections, city formation, and segregation. Some of her thesis research is described in this paper titled, “Persistent Homology of Geospatial Data: A Case Study with Voting.”
