Po-Shen Loh (born June 18, 1982) is an American professor of mathematics at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and the national coach of the United States'

International Math Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except ...

team. Under his coaching, the team won the competition in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019—their first victories since 1994. He had previously won a silver medal for the US as a participant in 1999. Loh runs a popular course to train students for the

William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual list of mathematics competitions, mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in th ...

known as Putnam Seminar and is the founder of the educational website Expii. He also teaches courses on

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

and extremal

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 ...

at Carnegie Mellon. He graduated with honors from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

with a B.S. in mathematics in 2004. He graduated with a 4.3 GPA and was ranked first in his graduating class at Caltech. After graduating from Caltech, Loh went on to study at Cambridge University on a

Churchill Scholarship The Churchill Scholarship is awarded by the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States to graduates of the more than one hundred colleges and universities invited to participate in the Churchill Scholarship Program, for the pursuit of rese ...

and received a MASt in mathematics with distinction in the year 2005. He then pursued graduate studies with the support of a Hertz Fellowship and a

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) is a prestigious grant awarded annually by the National Science Foundation to approximately 2,000 students pursuing research-based Master's and doctoral degrees in the ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

and received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 2010 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Results in extremal and probabilistic combinatorics", under the supervision of

Benny Sudakov Benny Sudakov (born October 1969) is an Israeli mathematician, who works mainly on Hungarian-style combinatorics. He was born in Tbilissi, Georgia, and completed his undergraduate studies at Tbilisi State University in 1990. After emigrating to ...

. In 2019, Loh developed an alternative to the usual derivation, algorithm and exposition of the solution of

quadratic equation In algebra, a quadratic equation () is any equation that can be rearranged in standard form as ax^2 + bx + c = 0\,, where represents an unknown (mathematics), unknown value, and , , and represent known numbers, where . (If and then the equati ...

s, which he believes is "practical for integration into all mainstream curricula". Loh is the lead developer of a pandemic-response app named NOVID which utilizes a new way to mitigate the spread of contagious disease. Unlike contact-tracing apps, the user is notified before exposure rather than after. The user is told how many relationships away the disease is, where a relationship is defined by two people who spend time together in person.

References

External links

* * 1982 births Living people Carnegie Mellon University faculty California Institute of Technology alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge Princeton University alumni 21st-century American mathematicians International Mathematical Olympiad participants American people of Singaporean descent {{Mathematician-stub