LSU Math Graduate Receives Position with Prominent Research Institute
LSU alumna Tara Fife is motivated by a yearning to understand the world around her, describing a scene where she once visited a shop with her father as a child and discovered a device she had not seen before. Curious, she asked the clerk how it worked, only to be instructed on how to work the device. Luckily, her father caught on and was able to clarify the question. However, Fife said that kind of curiosity never left. In fact, it’s helped in her path to success.
Having recently acquired her Ph.D. in mathematics from LSU, Fife is now working as a postdoctoral researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, which is part of one of Germany’s most successful research organizations.
Fife’s research focuses on matroid theory. “In mathematics, we sometimes care about how much redundancy is in a collection of information. If there is no redundancy, then our collection is independent, otherwise it is dependent. A matroid is an abstract object that captures the independence structure of a finite set,” Fife explained.
At the Institute, she will work on a variety of problems and applications in the field of mathematics. Although their discussions have only been preliminary thus far, she said she hopes to explore the intersection of algebraic geometry and matroid theory once things get started.
While studying at LSU, Fife grew as both a mathematician and a professional, citing her participation in LSU’s GEAUX Mathematics program—a two-week event held before classes begin that welcomes incoming graduate students and introduces them to faculty, older graduates, and the university in general—and her frequent conversations with other graduate students as key to her development early in her graduate studies. She also said her mentorship from her professors was another indispensable element in her success as a doctoral student.
“I am not sure how to concisely state all the ways that James influenced me. James puts in a lot of effort, not only to develop his students mathematically and professionally, but also to connect with them and bolster them. I feel grateful for James's influence on my life,” Fife said of one of her mentors, James Oxley, a Boyd Professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Fife was able to avoid disrupting her education due to the school’s closure in her last semester, which was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I had already defended my dissertation and submitted it to the graduate school to check formatting before campus was closed. There were a few issues with figuring out how to get documents printed and scanned, and a few conferences that I was planning on attending were canceled. But otherwise, the major changes just concerned adjusting to doing mathematics at my apartment instead of at Lockett (Hall),” she said.
While Fife has still been able to work with collaborators through virtual meetings, and has even been able to virtually attend seminars that she wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise, she said she misses the usual method of collaboration. Additionally, she is looking forward to the easing of travel restrictions so that her new career in Germany can begin in full swing.
Fife came to LSU’s graduate program from Brigham Young University in Idaho in 2014 and earned a Master’s degree in 2015 before earning her Doctorate in 2020. Fife says she was drawn to LSU’s Mathematics program because of the variety of strong programs in various fields of mathematics, which she said was important to her because she had not selected a field to focus on at the time.
The teaching opportunities, orientation programs for incoming graduate students, and the array of departmental activities impressed her, as well. She said she also enjoyed the climate—specifically, the guarantee that she would be safe from twenty-below-zero weather while attending LSU.
During her time at LSU, Fife was awarded a Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2019-2020, the Pasquale Porcelli Graduate Student Research Excellence Award for the Fall of 2019, as well as a LSU Mathematics Department Certificate of Teaching Excellence in 2016.