Hi John, do you want to introduce yourself to the audience real quick?
Sure, I'm John Urschel. I'm an assistant professor here at MIT in math, and yeah, it's nice to chat with you.
Yeah, awesome. So I met John this summer and I had a great time. So, um, can you tell a little bit about your background and how you ended up here, like a little bit of your math journey?
Yeah, my math journey is interesting. So when I was a kid, I really liked puzzles. I really liked playing games, like quantitative, mathematical games. Really liked reading math books. But I, you know, I didn't really know sort of like what to do with that, like what you do with that. And so I, when I got to college, I started majoring in engineering because my mom told me to. She thought like, oh, you're good at math, you're good at physics, you should be a rocket scientist. So I majored in aerospace engineering. And then I don't know, I just found my college math classes were my favorite, my math and physics classes were my favorite. And I ended up just starting to take some more advanced math classes in college. And after that, I realized that I really did enjoy my math classes the most. And so then I switched to math. I took a class on like advanced calculus, you could call it, like calculus with proofs. I took a class like that in my second year of my undergrad, and the professor saw some potential in me, offered to do a research project with me. And then once I started doing research, I really like took to it, and I sort of knew I wanted to get a PhD in math and like I wanted to do research.
That's awesome. So I know that you had a little bit of a background in football as well. What made you decide to make like that full switch?
Yeah, so I was, yeah, so I played sports most of my life. You know, I played football for like a good portion of my life, and I was sort of like doing both at the same time. I played sports in college, which helped like to pay for college. I also played after college a bit, and I would say like I enjoyed doing both, but eventually like I realized that like one became more of a priority for me than the other, and like, you know, also being able to devote more time to that and also like time to my family.
That's awesome. How does it feel like teaching and in combination with your research, and especially like leading Mathroots and those types of programs?
Yeah, so it's, I mean, it's very different. Like, you know, research, you're really trying to do cutting-edge things, like solving problems that no one has been able to solve yet. And the teaching aspect is, you know, it's different, like, but it's also very enjoyable. On the way, when I say teaching, I'll talk first about, let's say, teaching MIT undergrads or MIT PhD students. You're sort of training people, you know, the next generation of like great young thinkers, you know, how to do math, like how to use mathematical tools, how to think through a problem, and just more generally making them well equipped to like go out in the world and solve whatever the sort of types of problems they're going to encounter in their specific discipline, and which in many cases is not exactly, you know, like mathematics or research mathematics. Mathroots is a very different like animal just because, okay, it's high school students, also it's only two weeks, it's like a very different vibe, but it's also just something I, you know, I really enjoy. And I like sort of like, you know, you bring in a bunch of high school students and you show them a lot of new math and you just like throw the kitchen sink at them and see what sticks. And I find it's much more chaotic than, you know, like a class, but it's also like very fun in a different way.
That's really fun. Yeah, and I feel like the bonds made there are very nice as well. So you talked about your research a little bit. What is the research that you're doing right now?
