Life After Davis

After graduating with my Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 2020, I started working full-time as a Systems Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. I had previously interned at JPL during my undergraduate and graduate years, making the transition to a permanent position relatively smooth. As a mathematician in the engineering department at JPL, I tackled a variety of modeling tasks related to both project planning and operations.

In the years 1992-94, the University of California offered a golden handshake under the acronym VERIP. In 1994, having twice refused the lure, I signed up for VERIP III, making 2024 my 30th year of retirement.

I retired in 2015 and bear a title of Professor Emeritus for more than 7 years. It is a common belief that after many years of hard work, emeriti enjoy their well deserved rest, not burdened by any formal duties. It may be true in general, but not in my case. I have an impression that never in my life I worked as hard as now. During my retirement I have never stopped teaching.

I started my Lectureship in the Department of Mathematics at UC Davis in 1982 and reluctantly retired in the spring 2021. During that time I also spent 18 years as a member of the UC Davis Men’s Basketball coaching staff, highlighted by a Division II National Championship in 1998, an exciting four-year transition from Division II to Division I, and becoming a member of the Big West Athletic Conference. It was a long, busy, and rewarding journey with many ups and downs.

Craig was my first graduate student. He has had an extremely productive and distinguished career. Over the decades since I first met Craig we have shared many adventures together. It is hard to believe that he is retiring.

I retired on July 1, 2019 and immediately started a long trip: seven countries in seven months. (I had needed to stay in Davis since 2012.) I visited the Simons Center (Stony Brook, NY), the Institute for Theoretical Physics (Sao Paulo, Brazil), IHES (Bures-sur-Yvette, France), Skolkovo (Moscow, Russia), MPIM (Bonn, Germany), a conference in Luxembourg, Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel), Weizmann Institute (Rehovot, Israel), and University of Warwick (UK).