Emily Hoopes-Boyd graduated from YSU with a Bachelor of Science in Education May 2017 and a Master of Science in Mathematics in May 2018. In May 2021, Emily graduated from her PhD program in Mathematics at Kent State University and successfully defended her dissertation in October 2021. Currently, Emily serves as a full-time faculty member at Kent State University.  Emily’s dissertation focused on properties of elements of rings. She studied whether nilpotent matrices over certain kinds of rings could be written as a commutator of matrices. She also studied the images of generalized polynomials when evaluated over matrices whose entries came from a division ring.

Emily’s first year in her PhD program was dedicated towards taking classes in a wide variety of math areas including abstract algebra, real analysis, and complex analysis in order to get ready for the qualifying exams. In order to stay in the program, students must obtain a certain score on the exams taken the summer after the first academic year. Upon passing these exams, Emily took one more year of classes, and then seriously began working on research under Dr. Mikhail Chebotar. She completed the oral candidacy exam, where she presented the preliminary results and laid out her plans for continuing the research. During Summer 2020, Emily worked with students participating in Kent’s REU program in mathematics, which resulted in a paper and a portion of her dissertation. In her third year, Emily focused fully on her dissertation and graduated due to receiving the full-time opportunity she currently works in now! In the future, Emily hopes to continue studying matrices and ring theory. She plans to apply for tenured track positions at predominantly undergraduate universities to teach and be an advisor to driven undergraduate students.

During her time at YSU, Emily participated in several math projects and competitions. In particular, COMAP’s Mathematical Contest in Modeling was a transformative experience for her. She gained presentation experience by attending mathematical conferences. Additionally, she took high level math courses during undergrad that helped her during her first-year of her PhD program. During her master’s program, her thesis helped her to understand how to tackle a large research project.

Emily encourages undergraduate students to find something they love that they’re willing to spend years on. For mathematics students in particular, she tells them not to feel pressured to go to graduate school, as there are many other options for solving problems using mathematics. For those that are considering graduate school, Emily says to be sure to pursue research opportunities such as a project with an advisor, participating in an REU program or math competition. She describes everyone’s journey as unique and PhD programs as a marathon and not a race.