Vaughn Climenhaga

About Me

I am beginning my fourth year in the Ph.D. program in mathematics at Penn State, working under the supervision of Yakov Pesin in the Center for Dynamics and Geometry.  I received my bachelor's degree (in mathematics, shockingly enough!) in June 2005 from the University of Waterloo. For those of you unfamiliar with that fine and august institution, Waterloo is in Ontario, an hour southwest of Toronto on the 401, and just under two hours across the border from Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

I spent nearly all of my time at Waterloo living at Conrad Grebel College, a small Mennonite college on the campus of the university itself. Waterloo taught me everything I know about math; Grebel taught me everything I know about playing frisbee, playing board games, cooking with excessive quantities of bacon, garlic, and onions, going sledding on cafeteria trays, surfboards, and mattresses, and what to do when you wake up with a chicken in your bathtub. And about playing hockey.

So yes, I am, in fact, Canadian. But, since nothing in life is simple, I'm also American. I was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and spent four years there, three years in Wilmore, Kentucky, a year in Ndola, Zambia, three years in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and four years in Garrett, Indiana before we moved to Canada, and I spent three years in Steinbach, Manitoba, which is currently home, before going off to Waterloo for university. So if you ever ask me where I'm from, there's the answer. And that's the abbreviated, incomplete, and slightly inaccurate form.

In case you care to read more of my ramblings, I occasionally post various thoughts, insights, erroneous extrapolations, and assorted amusing or enlightening links on my blog.