Faculty

Edward Farnum, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Science, Technology & Mathematics
Education
NJ Center for Science, Technology & Math Education
Townsend Hall 117-F
908-737-3419
efarnum@kean.edu

I am currently in my second year as an assistant professor of Computational Mathematics at Kean University's Department of Science, Technology & Mathematics Education. I teach a variety of courses, which strive to achieve a balance between analytic and computational methods, and place a heavy emphasis on mathematical modeling of a variety of biological, physical and chemical examples, in collaboration with my colleagues in the sciences.

I earned my PhD in 2005 from the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, under the advisement of Nathan Kutz.My current research is in nonlinear waves, especially as applied to nonlinear optics. In particular, right now I am working on building mathematical models to describe mode-locked lasers. The goal is to generate and stabilize localized pulses of light, which can then be used as optical bits in communications technology, all-optical switching, and optical computing. This work involves PDE's, dynamical systems, and lots of scientific computation. A list of my publications is available here.

This summer I will be traveling to Europe to present my work at the Dynamics Days Europe conference at Loughborough University in the UK, and at International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Zurich Switzerland.

Right now I am in the pilot stages of organizing the inter-departmental Applied and Computational Math Research Group (and pizza) , with and a number of undergraduates. This is an informal group that meets weekly to discuss a variety of research projects in computational tools in math education, parallel computing, and hopefully soon .... nonlinear waves! We're also looking for a better name.

Here are links to a couple of organizations of interest.

Website: http://njcste.kean.edu:8080/EPortfolios/Members/farnum