Welcome to my web page!

I am a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, of the University of Wisconsin---Stout, Wisconsin's Polytechnic University.

Our department offers nine (!) undergraduate concentrations, as well as a Master's degree program:

My areas of research interest are:

• Writing textbooks (more about that below)
• Cryptology, Cryptanalysis, and particularly Algebraic Cryptanalysis
• Computer Algebra (e.g. Solving Polynomial Systems of Equations, and applications of the same)
• Linear Algebra over Finite Fields, with applications in Error Correcting/Detecting Codes
• Operations Research, Optimization, Game Theory, and other applications of Math to Economics or Finance
• Security Protocols, Proofs of Security, and Practical Security Implementations
• Solving NP-Complete problems in practice via logical satisfiability solvers

Both in my teaching and in my research, I am very interested in computer algebra. I use SageMath (usually called "Sage"), which is the open-source competitor to Maple, Mathematica, Maple, and MATLAB. Sage is free and I've written a book about it, Sage for Undergraduates which is also free. (Click here to go to the page of books that I have written, to download a copy.) I use Sage in a wide range of classes, from a below-calculus course for business majors, up to a graduate level course in Scientific Computation, and many courses in between.

Prior to all of that work, my dissertation topic was solving polynomial systems of equations, particularly to break codes, a process called Algebraic Cryptanalysis. I am also the author of a book with that title, published by Springer. The book also has its own web page. Other applications of polynomial systems of equations that I have worked on include Game Theory, Molecular Chemistry, Combinatorics and Geometry. I have continued my research in cryptography, cryptanalysis, and other aspects of cybersecurity. For copies of my publications, works in progress, or my patents, click here.

For the last few years, I've been working on a book for the Math-270: Discrete Mathematics course at UW Stout. (Some campuses call the course Discrete Structures instead.) That project is going very well. The electronic textbook-in-progress has its own webpage on the website www.Discrete-Math-Hub.com which I also run.

For a copy of my curriculum vitae, I offer a short form (8 pages) as well as a long form (19 pages). I also have a document that tracks my citation counts, according to Google Scholar, last updated on August 31st, 2017.

If you like, you may contact me at this address, which a human will have no trouble understanding:

Last updated August 10th, 2018.