Heather Blake
Associate Chair & Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
Education
- Ph.D. University of South Carolina
- M.S. Virginia Commonwealth University
- B.A. Houghton College
Areas of Expertise
- Combinatorics
- Graph Theory
- Discrete Mathematical Biology
Background
I joined the Mathematics and Computer Science department in 2018 after completing my PhD in Mathematics at the University of South Carolina and an a postdoctoral fellowship at The Georgia Institute of Technology. My undergraduate degree is from Houghton College in NY where I double-majored in Mathematics and Education.
My research is in discrete mathematics. I am particularly intrigued by problems that have application to or are motivated by biological structures, such as genome rearrangement. The combinatorics of partially ordered sets is another theme in my research, including dimension and saturation. I supervise student research in these and other areas of discrete mathematics.
In my spare time, my husband and I enjoy playing board games, helping at our church, playing fetch with our labrador retrievers, and visiting national parks.