Math Circle Faculty

Dr. Alon Amit

Alon Amit is co-founder at Origami Logic and has previous worked at Facebook and Google. He frequently teaches at Math Circles around the Bay Area and is on the board of Proof School, a San Francisco full-curriculum school for kids who love math. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in mathematics and a B.Sc. in Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. 

Dr. Tom Davis

Dr. Tom Davis is one of the Directors of the San Jose Math Circle. As a college student at Caltech, Tom competed in the Putnam math contest. With his PhD in Mathematics from Stanford PhD, Tom was a member of the founding team of Silicon Graphics International (SGI), where he worked for 16 years. All the animated movies you love including Toy Story, The Matrix, Shrek, and Lord of the Rings were made on SGI computers. His main interest is in geometry but unfortunately his main abilities lie in logic, the theory of computation, and in mathematical analysis.

Jennifer Gill

Jennifer Gill has been teaching elementary students at Watsonville Charter School of the Arts for 13 years. She has a BA in visual art, and uses her artistic background to integrate the arts into her teaching practice. Over the past few years, she has been studying how to blend art into mathematics. Math art requires problem solving and creativity. This practice makes connections between the left and right sides of the brain.

Yul Inn

Yul Inn founded the Fun Math Club, a math enrichment program in 2002. Yul was inspired when his own children reached school age and he began thinking about how to share with them his interest in and appreciation of mathematics. Starting with logic and strategy games and puzzles based on mathematics topics he had encountered in his own math education, he generated high levels of enthusiasm in his children and their friends. He continued expanding his work with the children to include many topics that they would not see until much later in their education. The exposition of these topics was based on puzzles, games, and artistic activities that engaged, stimulated, challenged, and entertained the children. Yul has two Master of Science from Ohio State University, one in Mathematics and another in Computer Science. He spent his career as an engineer for several Silicon Valley companies before starting the Fun Math Club.

Dr. Tatiana Shubin

Dr. Tatiana Shubin joined the faculty of San Jose State University in 1985 after earning her Ph.D. in Mathematics from UC Santa Barbara. In 2006, she won the Northern California, Nevada, and Hawaii Section (a.k.a. Golden Section) of the MAA Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. She was born and grew up in the USSR, and as an eighth grader attended a specialized physics and mathematics boarding school in Siberia. These years were instrumental in kindling her passion for mathematics, and convinced her that interaction with working mathematicians can give young students much more than merely a solid training in the subject. This experience prompted her to co-found San Jose Math Circle and the Bay Area Math Adventures in 1998, and to become one of the leaders of the National Math Circles movement. Shubin translated and edited several books published by the AMS in the MSRI Mathematical Circles Library. She is also the chair of the editorial board of this series.

She is a co-director of Navajo Nation Math Circles project which is aimed at launching and supporting math circles for students and teachers on the Navajo Nation, and providing other mathematically rich experiences, such as summer math camps, to Navajo children

Dr. Zvezdelina Stankova

Dr. Zvezdelina Stankova is a teaching professor at UC Berkeley and the Founder and Executive Directory of the Berkeley Math Circle. She was drawn to mathematics when, as a fifth grader, she joined the math circle at her school in Bulgaria and won the Regional Math Olympiad three months later. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and UC Berkeley in 1997-1999, Zvezda co-founded the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad (BAMO) and started the Berkeley Math Circle. Her pioneering work inspired dozens of new circles throughout the US and abroad. She trained the USA national IMO team for six years, including in 2001 when three of the six team members were from her circle, and the USA tied with Russia for a second place overall in the world. Dr. Stankova has a Ph.D. in Math from Harvard University. 

Dr. Kelli Talaska

Dr. Kelli Talaska is an award winning lecturer in the Mathematics Department at UC Berkeley.  She is on the faculty for Epsilon Camp, a 2-week summer math camp for elementary students from around the country. Kelli also teaches at several Bay Area math circles, including the Berkeley Math Circle as well as, the Santa Cruz Math Circle. Kelli received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and I was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley from 2010 to 2013.  Her research was in algebraic combinatorics. Before heading to graduate school, she taught math at Lowell High School in San Francisco.

Zandra Vinegar

She studied Mathematics and Math Education at MIT. She completed her teaching program following MIT’s research in educational reform through implementing innovative technology. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT, and her areas of mathematical focus while in college were  Abstract Algebra, Mathematical Economics, Computational Origami, and Theoretical Computer Science.

Ruby Wong

Ruby Wong is an elementary educator currently teaching Santa Cruz Children’s School. She received her undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University with a B.A. in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Mathematics.

Dr. Paul Zeitz

Dr. Paul Zeitz is the co-founder of Proof School and he currently serves as the Chair of Proof School’s Board of Directors. He is a USA Mathematical Olympiad winner and has dedicated time to training many of the US International Math Olympic teams. He is also the Mathematics Chair at the University of San Francisco and has spread his passion for math by founding the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad (BAMO) and the San Francisco Math Circle.

Joshua Zucker

Joshua Zucker has been leading math circles for 20 years as a freelance math teacher serving on the Mathematical Sciences Advisory Board for Proof School. He is also the founding director of the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, co-founder of the Math Teachers' Circle program, a former problem writer for MathCounts, and an instructor for Art of Problem Solving.