Heather Zinn Brooks
Heather Zinn Brooks, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, specializes in nonlinear dynamics and mathematical modeling of complex systems. Brooks earned both her Bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Utah. Before joining the faculty at Harvey Mudd, she held a CAM postdoctoral position in the Mathematics department at UCLA. In her work, she pairs tools from dynamical systems, differential equations, bifurcation theory, and network theory with numerical simulation and data-driven computational techniques to study emergent phenomena in social and biological applications. She is especially enthusiastic about problems that involve the interplay of dynamics and structure. An example from her recent work is the theoretical study of mechanisms of consensus and polarization in models of opinion dynamics through her NSF grant “Advances in bounded-confidence models on networks.”
She strives to create and communicate mathematics in a way that is intellectually deep, socially impactful, and actively inclusive. Due to her love of both theory and application she teaches across the curriculum, with a focus on analysis, dynamical systems, and partial differential equations. At Harvey Mudd College, Brooks helped lead the creation of the Data Science Emphasis and is a co-founder of the Innovation Accelerator Laboratory for Data Science and Social Impact. She has also organized and led many initiatives in the broader math community, including an AMS short course on Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems, an AWM Research Network in Complex and Nonlinear Systems, an ICERM long program on Data Science and Social Justice, an AMS Math Research Community, and the SIAM Southern California Applied Mathematics Symposium.