Burak Aksoylu

I am a professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.  I taught courses ranging from calculus and linear algebra to graduate numerical analysis, scientific computing, and numerical linear algebra. I've been teaching and doing research for more than twenty years. At this workshop, I'm looking forward to talking with colleagues about how code can help students make sense of mathematics. That's the question behind my talk, Linear Algebra through the Lens of Code.

I would like to learn more about designing activities for students who arrive with very different levels of coding experience. I am also interested in how we assess what students understand mathematically when they submit working code. I hope to leave Carleton with new ideas for my classes and colleagues to exchange teaching materials and experiences with after the workshop. 

Teaching is a big part of my work. I received our College of Arts and Sciences' teaching excellence award in 2022 and completed ACUE's Certification in Effective College Instruction in 2023. This fall, I'm registered for Promoting Active Learning Online through ACUE at TAMU--Central. I also served as Mathematics Program Coordinator from 2021 to 2025, redesigning three degree plans and chairing curriculum reform and integration committees.

My research is in numerical analysis and scientific computing.  It has taken me into biophysics, computer graphics, fluid mechanics, geosciences, numerical relativity, solid and fracture mechanics.  I've held a senior fellowship at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and made extended research visits to Sandia National Laboratories.  I serve on the editorial boards Journal of Peridynamics and Nonlocal Modeling, Springer and Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations, Wiley.  My work also includes physics-guided machine learning, and my current NSF-funded PRIMES project brings machine learning, numerical methods, and teaching with code together. I would enjoy working with colleagues to turn some of these applications into problems that undergraduates can explore with MATLAB.

I studied mathematics and mathematics teaching at Middle East Technical University, Turkey, then earned my master's at UC Irvine and my PhD at UC San Diego. I held postdoctoral appointments at UC San Diego, Caltech, and UT Austin, and have since advised or co-advised master's and doctoral students and co-mentored a postdoctoral fellow.