The last time UC Davis saw me was when graduated in the summer of 2018 with a Ph.D. in Mathematics. My dissertation was in low-dimensional topology under Abby Thompson, focusing on Heegaard splittings of knot complements in the 3-sphere (with additional mentorship of Javier Arsuaga in the application of knot theory to molecular biology, particularly the folding of chromosomes in yeast). Only a few months prior to that, I had accepted an offer to join the faculty at University of the Pacific (UOP) in Stockton, CA, as a tenure-track assistant professor of applied mathematics.
Your DNA contains the genetic blueprint necessary to not just build your body but to build the proteins and molecules that ensure your body’s functionality. DNA encodes RNA, RNA encodes proteins and voila, your body functions.
But the biological reality of this process is much more complex. The shapes, twists and entanglements of your DNA and RNA— their topology — influence their functionality and your health. Damage to DNA, like radiation exposure leading to double-strand breaks, can cause mutations that develop into diseases like cancer.
Swati Patel and Axel Saenz Rodriguez are Assistant Professors in the Mathematics Department at Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, OR. Saenz Rodriguez and Patel were both graduate students in the Math and Applied Math Department at UC Davis, where they first met. They are now married and have two beautiful and energetic children. Patel works in math bio, modeling systems arising from evolution, disease dynamics and ecology. Saenz Rodriguez works in probability and math physics, analyzing universal probabilistic objects for one-dimensional interacting particle systems.
