Education

B.A. in Mathematics (with honors; Linn Smith Prize for Excellence in Mathematics), Grinnell College, 2006.
Graduate student, Purdue University, 2006-present.

Teaching

MA 26200 Course Web Page

My MA 26200 Page

Fall office hours: Monday and Wednesday 11:35 - 12:35 in MATH 1041, or by appointment (dbabcock@math.purdue.edu).

• Fall 2012: MA 262 (Linear Algebra and Differential Equations), instructor
• Summer 2012: MA 26200 (Linear Algebra and Differential Equations), course coordinator
• Summer 2012: MA 26200 (Linear Algebra and Differential Equations), instructor
• Spring 2012: MA 23200 (Calculus for the Life Sciences II), lecturer
• Fall 2011: MA 16200 (Plane Analytic Geometry and Calculus 2), instructor
• Spring 2010: MA 23100-23200 (Calculus for the Life Sciences sequence), course coordinator
• Spring 2010: MA 23200 (Calculus for the Life Sciences II), instructor
• Fall 2009: MA 23100 (Calculus for the Life Sciences I), instructor
• Spring 2009: MA 22400 (Introductory Analysis II), instructor
• Fall 2008: MA 13700 (Mathematics for Elementary Teachers 1), instructor
• Summer 2008: MA 162 (Plane Analytic Geometry and Calculus 2), instructor
• Spring 2008: MA 152 (College Algebra), instructor
• Fall 2007: MA 220 (Introduction to Calculus), instructor
• Spring 2007: MA 162 (Plane Analytic Geometry and Calculus 2), recitation instructor
• Fall 2006: MA 165 (Analytic Geometry and Calculus 1), recitation instructor

I have received the following honors and awards for teaching:

• Title of Outstanding Graduate Instructor, January 2009-present.
• Department of Mathematics Excellence in Teaching Award, November 2009.
• Committee for the Education of Teaching Assistants Teaching Award, April 2010.

I welcome emails from former students with updates about their lives. (I am often curious what happens to students after they take my class, but I seldom find out.)

Research

My present research interests include logic, model theory, nonstandard analysis, and applications to commutative algebra and real algebraic geometry. My dissertation will focus on quantifier simplification in polynomial rings over fields.

Talks Given

25 September 2008 at Purdue University: "The Hyperreal Numbers and Applications to Elementary Calculus."
12 March 2009 at Purdue University: A summary of "The Elementary Theory of Restricted Analytic Fields with Exponentiation" by Lou van den Dries, Angus Macintyre, and David Marker.
2 May 2010 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: "Quantifier Elimination and o-minimality in Real Closed Fields."
26 January 2012 at Purdue University: "The Hyperreal Numbers: An Introduction to Nonstandard Analysis."

Mini-biography

I am a seventh-year graduate student. I grew up in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and attended Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa. I enrolled as a mathematics graduate student at Purdue directly after graduating from Grinnell. My field of study is logic, and my primary advisor is Leonard Lipshitz. The other members of my advisory committee are Andrei Gabrielov and Saugata Basu. I expect to earn a Ph.D. in May 2013.

Created July 2006.
Last revised 22 August 2012.