Jim Geelen is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the Department of

Combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many appl ...

and

Optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

in the

faculty of mathematics In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although rese ...

at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

, where he holds the

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

Combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combi ...

. He is known for his work on

Matroid theory In combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid axiomatically, the most significant being in ...

and the extension of the Graph Minors Project to representable matroids. In 2003, he won the

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

with his co-authors A. M. H. Gerards, and A. Kapoor for their research on Rota's excluded minors conjecture. In 2006, he won the

Coxeter–James Prize The Coxeter-James Prize is a mathematics award given by the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) to recognize outstanding contributions to mathematics by young mathematicians in Canada. First presented in 1978, the prize is named after two renown ...

presented by the

Canadian Mathematical Society The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) (french: Société mathématique du Canada) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research, outreach, scholarship and education in Canada. It serves the ...

. He received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in 1992 from

Curtin University Curtin University, formerly known as Curtin University of Technology and Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), is an Australian public research university based in Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. It is named after John Curtin, ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and obtained his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1996 at the

under the supervision of William Cunningham. After brief postdoctoral fellowships in the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan, he returned to the University of Waterloo in 1997.

References

Living people University of Waterloo faculty University of Waterloo alumni Combinatorialists Canada Research Chairs Year of birth missing (living people) {{mathematician-stub