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About Mathematics

College of Natural Science and Mathematics

URSA

Meet Yu-Ju Kuo

I was born in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, on March 8, 1973. Until graduation from college, I attended school while living with my parents and my younger brother. Shortly after graduation from college I went to Taichung, a city in the middle of Taiwan, for my masters degree. In August 1998, I came to Arizona, the hottest state in US, for my Ph.D. Finally, I finished my degree in May 2002.

My name is Yu-Ju Kuo. My life before entering college was similar to most kids in Taiwan, trying to pass the entrance exams to attend university. After I decided to choose applied mathematics as my major, I started to realize my passion and ability in mathematics. I won several book-coupon awards (the first 3 in the class) in college. I decided to go to graduate school after a terrible internship experience. After being accepted by National Chung-Hsiu University, I received a teaching and research assistantship throughout my
study there. I chose to go to Arizona State University because the department has a strong group of computational and applied mathematicians. At ASU, I have received a teaching assistantship since spring 1999 and a research assistantship for two summers. I was also selected to participate in a one-year Preparing Future Mathematics Faculty program. Subsequently, I won travel grants a few times to attend various conferences. My next step in life is to move to Indiana, Pennsylvania, for my first faculty position in the department of mathematics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

My primary field of study is computational mathematics, with specialization in the area of continuous optimization and partial differential equations. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I studied a class of optimization methods called primal-dual interior point methods. In preparation for my master's thesis, I studied bifurcation scenarios of the von Karman equation with a Robin boundary condition. In the future, I believe that I can provide suitable and exciting topics to students because of the breadth of my research background and interests.