Ikenna Nometa
Aloha!
I am a third-year mathematics Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Mathematics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, advised by Dr. Elizabeth Gross. My research interest lies broadly in Algebraic Statistics. Recently, my research projects have included algebraic approaches to optimization and estimation problems arising in statistics, and phylogenetics (networks and mixture models).
Furthermore, my background includes research experience in mathematical epidemiology, and I have recently developed a keen interest in application of data science to the healthcare sector.
I obtained my undergraduate degree in mathematics from the Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria, and completed my master's degree in mathematics in 2021 at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
I am a big fan of football; the real football, soccer!
Featured Quote
"You know, mathematics is beautifully ordered, and sensible, and logical.
And linear algebra is not too difficult. But still, you can't rush.
You have to sort of see the idea a few times.
First maybe on the board as symbols. But not everybody picks up on symbols.
Then you say, 'What does it mean?' And then finally you say, 'Why is it true?'"
-Gilbert Strang.
Recent events/activities/updates
2024
Dr. Evan Gwalik and I will organize the CodeBusters (Div-B & Div-C) competition for the Hawaii State Science Olympiad, which will place on Saturday, April 6, 2024, at UHManoa.
I am happy to announce that I was awarded the Sylvia T. Bozeman (MGB) Predoctoral Fellowship Grant in March 2024.
We have two new publications on the arXiv. Please check them out:
1. Maximum Likelihood Degrees of Brownian Motion Tree Models: Star Trees and Root Invariance (with Jane Coons, Shelby Cox, and Aida Maraj) https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.10322
2. Degrees of the Wasserstein Distance to Small Toric Models (with Greg DePaul, Serkan Hoşten, and Nilava Metya) https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09626Exciting!! I have been accepted to attend the the Fall 2024 semester program "Theory, Methods, and Applications of Quantitative Phylogenomics," to be held at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) at Brown University.
On Feb. 17, 2024, I will be serving as a judge (Senior Category) for the Honolulu District Science & Engineering Fair (HONSEF) holding at Kaimuki High School, Honolulu Hawaii.
Maize Curiel and I are organizing a graduate seminar in algebraic phylogenetics that holds every Thursday at 4 pm in Keller 402 (from 2.1.2024 to 4.26.2024)
This semester (Spring 2024), I am teaching a recitation section of Math 215 and I am working as a grader for Math 402 (PDE).
2023
We (Joseph Cummings, Benjamin Hollering, Elizabeth Gross, Samuel Martin, and I) have a new phylogenetics paper on the arXiv with title: The Pfaffian Structure of CFN Phylogenetic Networks. Comments are welcome.
On November 30, 2023, I will be giving a "Debrief" talk titled "Polar Degrees of some Toric Models" at the IMSI long program -- Algebraic Statistics and Our Changing World.
I gave a talk at the Fall 2023 Indiana Section MAA Meeting (October 28, 2023), University of Notre Dame, IN.
Shelby Cox and I gave a spotlight talk titled "Maximum Likelihood Degree of Brownian Motion Tree Models" at the IMSI long program -- Algebraic Statistics and Our Changing World.
My Fall 2023 semester will be spent at the Institute of Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) Chicago, attending the program Algebraic Statistics and Our Changing World.
During the Summer of 2023, I will be participating in the Algebra in Statistics and Computation Seminar organized by Dr. Jose I. Rodriguez at UW-Madison.
I worked with Dr. Evan Gwalik to organize the CodeBusters competition for the Hawaii State Science Olympiad, which took place on Saturday, April 1, 2023, at UHManoa.
I served as a Judge (Senior Category) for the Honolulu Science Fair, which was held at Henry J. Kaiser High School, Honolulu on Saturday, February 4, 2023.
This Spring (2023), I am organizing a graduate reading/seminar on Convex Optimization at UHManoa. More information about the seminar can be found here.
My (usually not up-to-date) CV can be accessed here.