Edwin O'Shea

Brief Academic Bio

I am an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at James Madison University, being originally appointed as an assistant professor in 2011. Before coming to Virginia I held visiting positions in Ireland, Mexico City, and Kentucky. My graduate studies at University of Washington culminated in 2006 with a Ph.D. under the supervision of Rekha Thomas, specializing in combinatorics and computational commutative algebra. I maintain in interest in these areas but these days I spend a lot of time thinking about axiomatics in classical geometry and related topics.

Prior to seeking my fortune in The States I studied mathematics and statistics at University College Cork and before that I mostly succeeded in keeping my head low at the North Mon. In my younger days I didn't know that one could make a decent living as a mathematician and that it was a ticket to see the world and so I worked in an assortment of jobs, including fast food and retail, and I played as much snooker and pool as I could and these were seeing the world in its own way too.

Links and diversions for idle minds:

• Resources: MathSciNet; Comb; CommAlg.
  High Society: AMS; MAA.
  Other Society: The continuously evolving Sherwood Coop.
• A picture of a homemade model of the Gale transform of the hexagon. The hexagon is in the background with its transform in the foreground. It's also colour coded.
• Places close to my heart, with something and someone around very corner: Cork; Mexico City; Staunton
• Oh, hail these modern times:
  the ugly duckling retold; both classical and thoroughly futuristic; portrait of the artist as a hawker of goods; portrait of a northsider as a sufferer of fools; 2666; Euclid.