HMC Expert: Mohamed Omar
Mohamed Omar, PhD, is a leading expert on creativity in mathematics. He has collaborated with national leaders in mathematics education to promote creativity as a critical element of learning. He has served on organizing committees for some of the largest high school mathematics competitions in the U.S. and Canada, including the American Mathematics Competition and the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge, both of which are preliminaries in selecting national teams for the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has also created YouTube videos sharing creative techniques for deconstructing standardized test problems.
Omar’s research employs sophisticated mathematical techniques to study foundational questions about networks, including questions about the structure of social networks, abstract networks, and fundamental questions about networks in neuroscience motivated by Nobel Prize winning work. His research also focuses on discrete mathematics: understanding patterns in finite structures.
Before becoming an assistant professor at Harvey Mudd College, Omar was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis. Prior to that, he received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo.
Media Appearnances
- hmc.edu, 1/4/19 MAA Honors HMC Math Faculty
- Scientific American, 9/11/18 Mohamed Omar’s Favorite Theorem
- hmc.edu, 8/14/18 Omar Wins Math Teaching Award
- Forbes, 4/30/18 Why We Need More Students of Color in Math Enrichment Programs
- Harvey Mudd Magazine, Spring 2015 The Theorem of Everything