Erica Hunt is a poet, essayist, and author. Her poetry practice incorporates the personal, the political, and the avant-garde. ... Hunt graduated with a B.A. in English from San Francisco State University in 1980 and she received an M.F.A. from Bennington College in 2013. She is on the Board of the Proteus Fund.

... a difficult kid who resented being told what to do. I was a little spoiled, probably ... and I was not a terrifically outgoing person.

I started slightly below normal in reading and ended up reading a grade or two above by the end of the year.

This often meant that some of the smaller-minded ones tended not to pay very much attention to you. You didn't get very much encouragement at all.

My initial intellectual interest was not in mathematics but in science. My mother (for some reason) decided to give me a Gilbert chemistry set for Christmas when I was 9. Fired up, I began performing chemistry experiments and learning about the science behind them.

I began to get more of an aesthetic sense of mathematics when I started doing algebra. I think I did so well because it was a body of knowledge where things fit together. There was some structure, and that fit with my sense and appreciation of structures. It wasn't arbitrary pieces of facts, higgledy-piggledy, but some kind of inherent relationships between facts. That began to change my attitude toward mathematics. But I still didn't see myself as a mathematician because the people around me who were good at maths were boys - and white.

... a significant and pathfinding example of a special program devoted to the development of the student gifted in science and mathematics.

She disliked her overall experience, which was caused by an unbalanced socioeconomic demographic and gender ratio. She also did not have a social life during her high school years. Hunt's interest in academics was her priority. She became discontent with chemistry and chose to develop her interest in mathematics and began independently reading books on the subject.

There were things that were very positive about the college. There were a lot of very smart people; I learned a great deal from the other students. I learned about anthropology, psychology, things that normally I wouldn't have learned about at all had I gone to a large university. ... Going to a large university would have been like my high school experience; I would have continued in a certain groove. But as it was, in the setting of a small college, I encountered people who had very different interests and who were coming from a different social class and background. So that was very positive. I did a great deal of reading when I was in college - general reading. I wasn't that good a student.

He had confidence in me. And he was a strong and good enough person to say so. He didn't say it often, but he said it. It's what I probably needed to hear. I came to him with a lot of skills. I think I was twenty-seven years old when I started working with him, so I was a little older with a lot of maths under my belt, so I wasn't green in that sense. Even so, he somehow seemed to be able to pace me. He knew how much to give me and how much I could do, but he did not baby me. He didn't give me any breaks when it comes right down to it. He gave me a chance, and he expected me to perform, and he said I was capable of doing it and capable of pursuing a career in mathematics. He treated me like a professional, a fellow professional.

The trip was a reward to myself for having passed the oral preliminary examination the previous year.

The spatial and temporal dynamics of a one-locus, two-allele genetic trait are studied for a population having a limited carrying capacity. First, the trait is studied in a population at one site when selection is slowly acting. The dynamics are described in this case by an approximate solution that is constructed by the method of matched asymptotic expansions. Next, the effects on this system of population dispersal are studied, and conditions are determined for dispersive instability and patch formation in this genetic system. Finally, a discrete time, discrete space Markov Chain model is formulated for the dispersal-selection system. This model is studied for stable genetic clines (static states). This entails construction of a stationary (invariant) distribution by a perturbation scheme that is based on the method of Newton polygons.

I am happy to acknowledge the generous help and encouragement of my thesis advisor Frank Hoppensteadt. I would also like to thank J Mac Hyman for his help with the numerical work and the use of his Method of Lines package.

Friends and fellow students have been a warm and sustaining influence throughout my career, especially during the time this thesis was prepared. I am very grateful for this. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to my mother and sister, and to the memory of my father Thomas E Hunt.

The author considers a mathematical model of a non-constant population with a genetic trait determined by one locus and two alleles.

A deterministic dispersion-growth model is considered for a large genetically structured population (red algae) living on a fixed linear patch. There are three subpopulations corresponding to the genotypes determined by two alleles of a gene at a single locus. Mendelian mating is assumed and the effect of slow selection is studied, i.e. birth, death and dispersion rates are almost identical over genotypes. By the method of matched asymptotic expansions a solution is obtained and it is shown that the patch size plays a critical role in determining the ultimate gene frequencies.

Our purpose is to describe a new class of methods for computing the "capacity dimension" and related quantities for point-sets. The techniques presented here build on existing work which has been described in the literature. The novelty of our methods lies first in the approach taken to the definition of computation of dimension (namely, via Monte Carlo calculation of the volume of an ε-cover of the point-set), and second in the use of data structures which result in extremely efficient codes for vector computers such as the Cyber 205 (the computation is reduced to the sorting and searching of one-dimensional arrays so that a calculation employing one million points requires less than 2 minutes).

As a mathematician at NIST, my primary responsibility is to conduct mathematical and computational research in areas that support the development of measurement-based science for information technology, material sciences, and biotechnology. I have frequently done this by collaborating directly with other NIST scientists. For example, I have worked with physicists and engineers on a project involving the measurement of the reflectance properties of coated surfaces especially when subjected to the effects of weathering and fading. As an agency in the Department of Commerce the purpose of research done at NIST is to support the needs of U.S. industry.

... for outstanding applications of mathematics to science and technology, exceptional service to the US government, and for outreach and mentoring.

... her exceptional commitment to outreach and mentoring; for her sustained efforts to make the Association for Women in Mathematics organisation more inclusive; for her service to higher education and government; and for inspiring those underrepresented in mathematics with her work in ergodic theory, probability, and computation

Hunt was recognised for a sustained record of fundamental contributions to probability and stochastic modelling, mathematical biology, computational geometry, nonlinear dynamics, computer graphics, and parallel computing. Hunt was also cited for the impact of her work in her extensive close collaborations with scientists and engineers seeking to apply these developments to diverse problems of scientific and technological interest. Examples include flow in complex geometries, modelling of micromagnetic devices, study of optical reflection, image rendering in computer graphics, and visualisation of genetic sequences. Hunt's was also cited for her outstanding dedication to the mathematics profession. She has been a mentor and leading proponent of careers in mathematics for students at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels, especially for women and minorities.