Olivia J. Chu

I am an applied mathematician interested in building models to study social and biological systems. The questions I aim to explore span a wide range of applications in distinct systems, from human populations (e.g., the evolution of cooperation, polarization, activism) to animal populations (e.g., altruism in social animal groups) to ecological settings (e.g., symbiotic plant-fungi associations). Mathematically, in order to answer these questions, I primarily use tools from stochastic processes and differential equations and employ analytical and computational techniques that are often complemented by real-world data. Common to all of this work is that it is necessarily done in collaboration with researchers across a wide array of disciplines, including mathematics, ecology, evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, environmental science, neuroscience, and political science.

My teaching and mentoring philosophy is centered around the question: how can I foster an equitable and supportive environment where students are able to learn what they need to learn, what they want to learn, and get closer to achieving their dreams? I see myself as an instructor of how to think mathematically; math gives us a beautiful language that we can use to understand and interact with the world and solve problems, and the desire to share this with my students underlies all of my teaching. I enjoy teaching courses at all levels, from introductory and core classes to upper-level electives. In my electives, I introduce students to the research that I am excited about and take great joy in guiding them through projects in which they can use the techniques they learned in class to study questions that they are passionate about.