Shandelle Marie Henson (born 1964) is an American mathematician and mathematical biologist known for her work in

population dynamics Population dynamics is the type of mathematics used to model and study the size and age composition of populations as dynamical systems. History Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has ...

. She is a professor of

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and ecology at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and the editor-in-chief of the journal ''Natural Resource Modeling''.

Education and career

Henson was an undergraduate at Southern College (now Southern Adventist University), and a visiting student at Harvard University, graduating from Southern College in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'', as one of the college's five Southern Scholars for that year. She studied mathematical logic at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, earning a master's degree in 1989, and completed a Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of Tennessee. Her dissertation, ''Individual-based Physiologically Structured Population and Community Models'', was on

partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a Multivariable calculus, multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be sol ...

s in population dynamics, and was supervised by Thomas G. Hallam. After postdoctoral research as Hanno Rund Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, Henson joined the faculty at the College of William & Mary in 1999, and moved to Andrews University in 2001. There, she was promoted to full professor in 2006, chaired the mathematics department from 2011 to 2016, and added a second affiliation as a professor of ecology in the department of biology in 2016.

Books

Henson is the co-author, with J. M. Cushing, R. F. Costantino, Brian Dennis, and Robert Desharnais, of the book ''Chaos in Ecology: Experimental Nonlinear Dynamics'' (Academic Press, 2003). She is also the author of a biography of Sam Campbell, titled ''Sam Campbell: Philosopher of the Forest'' (Three Lakes Historical Society and TEACH Services, 2001).

Recognition

In 2007, Southern Adventist University gave Henson their alumnus of the year award.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Henson, Shandelle 1964 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Theoretical biologists Southern Adventist University alumni Duke University alumni University of Tennessee alumni College of William & Mary faculty Andrews University faculty 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians