MSP

• Alex Scorpan (ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or)
• Silvio Levy (dir­ect­or of pub­lish­ing)
• Emmy Pierce (dir­ect­or of out­reach)

Heath­er E. Arm­strong joined MSP as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in mid-2022. She was born and raised in Lan­caster County, Pennsylvania. After gradu­at­ing from Millers­ville Uni­versity, she earned an MS in math­em­at­ics from Cor­nell Uni­versity. She cur­rently lives in Miami with her math­em­atician hus­band and two chil­dren. For six years, she ran a STEM lab at an ele­ment­ary school, get­ting kids ex­cited about STEM top­ics. Dur­ing the crazi­ness of Spring 2020, her fam­ily real­ized they really liked be­ing home to­geth­er and de­cided to switch to homeschool­ing.

When she’s not over­see­ing her chil­dren’s homeschool edu­ca­tion or edit­ing math pa­pers, Heath­er likes fix­ing things around the house, mak­ing things with her hands, hunt­ing in­vas­ive plants, and play­ing Mine­craft.

Ian M. Barnett joined MSP as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in sum­mer 2022. He was born in up­state New York, where he was homeschooled un­til he dis­covered how much he en­joyed math and began tak­ing classes at a loc­al com­munity col­lege at the age of 15. He then traveled down­state a little, to Bard col­lege, sur­roun­ded by per­form­ance art and chairs hanging from trees, and got his BA in 2013. He got his MA in math­em­at­ics from the Uni­versity of Ken­tucky in 2016, where he once mor­tally of­fen­ded an un­der­gradu­ate TA by not be­ing able to name a single mem­ber of the bas­ket­ball team. He is cur­rently back in up­state New York, where he spends his time edit­ing and try­ing to help stu­dents not fail cal­cu­lus ex­ams.

Out­side of math Ian en­joys games (from video to tab­letop RPG), jug­gling, and play­ing Balinese gamelan.

John G. Bourke joined MSP in sum­mer 2014. He grew up in Cardiff, the cap­it­al of Wales and re­cent home of Doc­tor Who. He spent most of his un­der­gradu­ate ca­reer at Mer­ton Col­lege, Ox­ford, play­ing pool, then moved to the US to do his PhD in set the­ory at Dart­mouth Col­lege. After short stints in cent­ral Pennsylvania and Kala­ma­zoo, Michigan, he has hap­pily re­turned to New Hamp­shire while his wife stud­ies as­tro­phys­ics, also at Dart­mouth.

When not edit­ing or teach­ing math­em­at­ics, John walks his overly en­er­get­ic dog and en­joys the hik­ing New Eng­land of­fers dur­ing the warm­er months. He’s learned to tol­er­ate the long win­ters, and is proud of his whisky col­lec­tion. His in­door hob­bies in­clude binge-watch­ing TV seri­als, learn­ing to code, cook­ing, and fol­low­ing Welsh rugby and the Red Sox.

Za­ra Chas­tain is MSP’s data man­ager, lead­ing the Re­gistry team. She re­ceived her BA in theatre arts and Ja­pan­ese lan­guage at the Uni­versity of Ari­zona. She grew up in Tuc­son, AZ, but also lived in Ja­pan and New York City be­fore set­tling in the Bay Area, where she con­tin­ues to per­form. In the past, she has held such jobs as book seller, tea ex­pert, lan­guage teach­er, hair styl­ist, and baby charm­er.

Za­ra gets way too ex­cited about get­ting her hair done, choos­ing and mak­ing her yearly Hal­loween cos­tume, try­ing new res­taur­ants, Renais­sance fest­ivals, The Wiggles, Girl Scout cook­ie sea­son, karaoke, and plan­ning her chil­dren’s birth­day parties. She wishes she was bet­ter at get­ting reg­u­lar ex­er­cise, play­ing any in­stru­ment, and driv­ing. When she’s not work­ing, she spends most of her time tak­ing care of her three kids and try­ing to fig­ure out how you make par­ent friends at the park while sim­ul­tan­eously pre­vent­ing one child from run­ning all the way to the end of the field while the oth­er two pour sand on each oth­er’s heads.

Ravi M. Cho grew up in New Jer­sey. He even­tu­ally moved to Cali­for­nia, where he went to school at San José State Uni­versity and re­ceived an MA in math­em­at­ics. Shortly after, in mid-2022, he found him­self work­ing at MSP.

In his spare time he likes to read fantasy books, play video games, watch shows, and go on hikes. His fa­vor­ite game is Celeste, al­though after 150+ hours he still has not fin­ished the last level. He says, some­what un­con­vin­cingly, that one day he will open the crys­tal heart gate and fin­ish the game. He also bakes once in a while.

Born and raised in Van­couver, Ram­say H. Dyer’s edu­ca­tion in phys­ics, math­em­at­ics, and com­puter sci­ence was in­ter­spersed with ex­ten­ded peri­ods of tree-plant­ing, travel, and odd jobs in con­struc­tion. He also de­veloped a great ap­pet­ite for ex­plor­ing the Brit­ish Columbia moun­tains and coast­line by foot, ski and kayak.

Ram­say joined MSP in 2015, and after liv­ing in Europe as a postdoc for al­most five years with his wife and cat and dog, he has now re­turned with them to Brit­ish Columbia to en­joy the moun­tains and sea and a little house with a wood cook­stove on the wet coast of Van­couver Is­land.

In ad­di­tion to edit­ing, he con­tin­ues to do part-time re­search in com­pu­ta­tion­al geo­metry through the Gudhi pro­ject at IN­RIA Sophia An­tipol­is. He has am­bi­tions to even­tu­ally re­gain the abil­ity to write something that doesn’t men­tion Delaunay tri­an­gu­la­tions.

Marc Eth­i­er grew up in Gatineau, Que­bec, across the river from Canada’s cap­it­al Ot­t­awa. After study­ing at the Uni­versity of Ot­t­awa and then ob­tain­ing a PhD in 2013 from the Uni­versity of Sherbrooke, Que­bec, he star­ted mov­ing around a lot, liv­ing for two years in Po­land and then for three years in Man­itoba, be­fore mov­ing back to Que­bec. His ca­reer has seen him teach math­em­at­ics in French in Eng­lish-speak­ing Canada and in Eng­lish in French-speak­ing Canada, and his lan­guage skills are still use­ful to him in his edit­ing work. He now lives in North­west­ern Que­bec, where he teaches fu­ture high-school math­em­at­ics teach­ers.

He first be­came aware of MSP back in 2015, but only ended up join­ing the com­pany as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in 2022. He feels that math­em­at­ic­al edit­ing work helps com­bine two of his in­terests, math­em­at­ics and proofread­ing. (He used to work as a proofread­er for a loc­al news­pa­per while a stu­dent in the early 2000s, and had been oc­ca­sion­ally proofread­ing col­leagues’ work since.)

When not work­ing, Marc en­joys trav­el­ling, hik­ing and bik­ing.

J. Sunny Faw­cett joined the soft­ware team at MSP in 2022. She had de­veloped a love of num­bers when her moth­er taught her how to “cast out nines”, a prac­tice which in­spired her third-grade teach­er to warn her par­ents that she was dab­bling in witch­craft. She re­ceived her MA in math­em­at­ics from the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia at Dav­is in 2003, and even­tu­ally landed in Ann Ar­bor, Michigan, where she found a com­fort­able spot copy edit­ing at Math­em­at­ic­al Re­views. There she dis­covered how much she en­joys try­ing to make com­puters bend to her will and think­ing about how to design pro­grams so that they can be more eas­ily altered and ex­ten­ded. She’s thrilled to be able to de­vote more of her time to these pur­suits at MSP.

Past ad­ven­tures in­clude ra­cing an auto rick­shaw around the In­done­sian Na­tion­al Monu­ment, vis­it­ing in­mates on death row while in­tern­ing for a leg­al aid non­profit in Texas, and con­vin­cing a boun­cer to let her back­stage to meet Cyndi Lauper after a con­cert. She en­joys knit­ting, snug­gling with her mini­ature poodle, fol­low­ing pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis, and think­ing about garden­ing.

Joseph D. Flen­ner has been a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or with MSP since 2015. He hails from Michigan, where he stud­ied math­em­at­ics and lin­guist­ics at the Uni­versity of Michigan. As an un­der­gradu­ate he ac­ci­dent­ally be­came a math­em­atician, set­ting out to learn sci­ence from its found­a­tions be­fore fully grasp­ing how many life­times step one of the mas­ter plan would fill.

The same im­pulse, ap­plied with­in math­em­at­ics, led him to lo­gic, with his re­search in­terests fo­cus­ing on the in­ter­sec­tion of mod­el the­ory and al­gebra. In 2008, he com­pleted his PhD at the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia, Berke­ley. After sev­er­al postdoc­tor­al years in In­di­ana, he landed in Vir­gin­ia, where he is an in­struct­or of math­em­at­ics, with edit­ing work filling sum­mers and after hours.

When not teach­ing, re­search­ing, or edit­ing, Joe likes to seek out max­im­ally im­prac­tic­al hob­bies, such as learn­ing lan­guages that nobody speaks and mu­sic­al in­stru­ments that are too large to fit in his home.

Lo­gan S. Fox joined MSP in 2022. He was born in Ohio, but has spent as much time liv­ing in In­di­ana, Wash­ing­ton, and Ore­gon. Al­though he earned a BS in ma­ter­i­als sci­ence and en­gin­eer­ing at the Uni­versity of Wash­ing­ton in 2014, he has nev­er worked as an en­gin­eer, in­stead spend­ing a few years as an emer­gency med­ic­al tech­ni­cian be­fore de­cid­ing to try gradu­ate school with a fo­cus on math­em­at­ics.

Lo­gan earned his PhD in math­em­at­ic­al sci­ences at Port­land State Uni­versity, and star­ted work with MSP al­most im­me­di­ately after gradu­ation. While he cer­tainly reads plenty of math­em­at­ics these days, he still hopes to write a bit of math as well, and oc­ca­sion­ally ex­changes re­search ideas with his ad­visor.

Derek S. Haber­mas grew up in New Jer­sey, where he tried to pur­sue his dream of open­ing his own cof­fee­house. Due to a lack of fund­ing and in­vestors, and since the mar­ket was sat­ur­ated (thank you, Star­bucks!) he went with his backup plan to earn a PhD in math­em­at­ics from the Uni­versity of Ari­zona. After nine years as fac­ulty at SUNY Pots­dam, he moved to Char­le­ston and star­ted at MSP in 2015.

Be­sides cook­ing and caring for his fam­ily, he runs races from 5Ks to mara­thons, with a goal to run a race in every state. Time per­mit­ting, he en­joys read­ing, bi­cyc­ling, mo­tor­cyc­ling, hik­ing, trav­el­ing, play­ing board games, and brew­ing his own craft beer.

Con­all Hegarty lives in Doneg­al, on the north­w­est coast of Ire­land. He has a BSc in ap­plied math­em­at­ics from the Na­tion­al Uni­versity of Ire­land, Gal­way. He joined MSP in the au­tumn of 2019 as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or.

When not cross­ing Is and dotting Ts, Con­all can be found tend­ing his bee­hives, bat­tling weeds in the garden or wan­der­ing around the sur­round­ing wood­lands, beaches and sand dunes with his tire­less bor­der col­lie. He en­joys read­ing, play­ing chess and vari­ous oth­er board games, bak­ing in­ed­ible food and trav­el­ing.

Mor­gan A. John­son is a mar­ket­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions man­ager at MSP. Between tasks in the of­fice, she con­tem­plates the re­la­tion­ship between art and math­em­at­ics. Be­fore join­ing MSP, Mor­gan did things like sell rocks to rock stars at an art shop in the Mis­sion, shoot and edit ex­per­i­ment­al shorts, and ward­robe for the fea­ture film I be­lieve in uni­corns, which premiered at SX­SW 2014. Now she ed­its au­thor metadata more than video. She lives in her ho­met­own of Berke­ley with her four-year-old son Zeke, and they en­joy camp­ing, cook­ing to­geth­er, and grow­ing ve­get­ables and flowers.

Ma­dis­sen A. Kenny joined MSP’s Trade­hub team in April 2023. Be­fore MSP, Mad­die earned her BS in fish­er­ies and wild­life from the Uni­versity of Geor­gia. Fol­low­ing gradu­ation, she be­came a zoo­keep­er where she cared for dif­fer­ent spe­cies of exot­ic cats in­clud­ing lions, ti­gers, and leo­pards (Oh my!). She also briefly trained dogs, both as pets and those that would even­tu­ally be­come work­ing dogs for the gov­ern­ment. After spend­ing all hours of the day out­side and on her feet — no mat­ter the weath­er — Mad­die has found work­ing for MSP a wel­come change.

When she’s not work­ing, Mad­die loves snug­gling with her two dogs and cat (yes, all at once), spend­ing time out­doors, root­ing for the Geor­gia Bull­dogs and New York Mets, listen­ing to True Crime pod­casts, and hunt­ing for shark teeth — with a life goal to find a me­ga­lodon tooth.

Silvio V. F. Levy is MSP’s dir­ect­or of pub­lish­ing. He was born in 1959 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and re­ceived an MA in math­em­at­ics from the In­sti­tuto Nacion­al de Matemát­ica Pura e Ap­licada (IMPA) in 1979 and a PhD in math­em­at­ics from Prin­ceton Uni­versity un­der Wil­li­am Thur­ston in 1985. In 1988 he be­came the second staff mem­ber for the Geo­metry Su­per­com­puter Pro­ject, which would later be­come the Geo­metry Cen­ter. He joined the staff of the Math­em­at­ic­al Sci­ences Re­search In­sti­tute in 1995 as an ed­it­or and lib­rar­i­an.

Silvio con­siders his chief pro­fes­sion­al goal to be “to fur­ther the com­mu­nic­a­tion of math­em­at­ics, by both tra­di­tion­al and nov­el means.” He is an ex­pert in T_eX and L^aT_eX and speaks sev­er­al lan­guages. He joined MSP in 2004 as the main copy­ed­it­or for the Pa­cific Journ­al of Math­em­at­ics. Today, Silvio man­ages the pro­duc­tion of MSP journ­als, and trains new copy­ed­it­ors to edit and format manuscripts ac­cord­ing to MSP’s spe­cific­a­tions.

Silvio Levy’s work rep­res­ents for me the gold stand­ard of math­em­at­ic­al copy­ed­it­ing.

Dav­id Eis­en­bud  (dir­ect­or of MSRI, 1997–2007 and 2013–2022;  former AMS pres­id­ent)

An­drew J. Liv­ing­ston knows a little bit about pro­gram­ming, which is good be­cause he’s been a soft­ware de­veloper at MSP since 2016. He knows a little bit (em­phas­is on little) about a lot of oth­er things, in­clud­ing mu­sic, an­im­als, quantum phys­ics, his­tory, chem­istry, nine­teenth-cen­tury Rus­si­an lit­er­at­ure, sci­ence fic­tion, valu­ations and ul­tramet­ric spaces, and the Lu­cas­Arts ad­ven­ture-game cata­log. And since hu­man nature ab­hors a nar­rat­ive va­cu­um, he’ll hap­pily tell you how any two of those things fit to­geth­er.

When he’s not work­ing (and some­times when he is) he usu­ally has a cat hanging off of him. He might also be try­ing to un­der­stand Haskell by way of type the­ory, or read­ing a book on Juda­ism or early Chris­tian­ity. There’s a bet­ter than even chance he’s listen­ing to a pod­cast or watch­ing a video lec­ture series. Un­less it’s April, in which case he’s prob­ably play­ing the latest re­lease in the Dark Souls series.

Siki­meti Ma’u joined MSP as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in 2015. Ori­gin­ally from the is­lands of Tonga in the South Pa­cific, she was an un­der­gradu­ate in Auck­land, New Zea­l­and, where by stu­di­ously avoid­ing es­says and ex­per­i­ments she turned in­to a math­em­atician. She moved to New Jer­sey for gradu­ate school at Rut­gers Uni­versity, and re­ceived a PhD in math­em­at­ics in 2008. After spend­ing sev­er­al ex­cit­ing years as a postdoc in the hy­per­act­ive field of sym­plect­ic to­po­logy, based mostly in Berke­ley, she moved to Italy.

She now lives with her fam­ily on an is­land in the Venice la­goon. She teaches math in Venice and Ver­ona, ed­its math wherever she hap­pens to be, and oc­ca­sion­ally works on more con­crete things, like sew­ing or bas­ketry for her own pleas­ure, or mak­ing play­dough for someone else’s. The Dolo­mites are nearby for hik­ing and ski­ing, and she’s quite a fan of the Itali­an way of en­joy­ing the great out­doors — no mat­ter how long or gruel­ing a hike is, it al­ways ends at a moun­tain hut with a fab­ulous res­taur­ant.

Emily L. Monge joined MSP in Decem­ber 2019 as a data-in­teg­rity spe­cial­ist. Known for al­pha­bet­iz­ing her spice rack and or­gan­iz­ing her closet in rain­bow or­der, she’s suited to the de­tailed nature of the work. She no­tices when things are “not right” and will make sure to tell you when your socks don’t match your out­fit. But in a nice way.

She hails from the Mit­ten State (a.k.a. Michigan), which means she will let you know where she lives by point­ing to the cen­ter of her open palm. She re­ceived her de­gree in ap­par­el mer­chand­ising and design, and al­though she isn’t work­ing in that field cur­rently, she uses the prin­ciples she learned to man­age her house­hold and her fam­ily’s ward­robe. In her free time you might find her roam­ing the aisles of Tar­get, or pin­ing for the ever-elu­sive naps that she loved … be­fore she had a fam­ily.

Sheila S. New­bery has been an MSP pro­duc­tion ed­it­or since 2007. She has worked on pre­par­ing manuscripts for pub­lic­a­tion for over 25 years, in dis­cip­lines ran­ging from art his­tory (at the Met­ro­pol­it­an Mu­seum of Art in New York) to as­tro­phys­ics (freel­ance work for the As­tro­nom­ic­al So­ci­ety of the Pa­cific con­fer­ence series).

Sheila is also a pho­to­graph­er, and is cur­rently work­ing on an artist’s book of plat­in­um-pal­la­di­um prints. Her work has been ex­hib­ited in jur­ied shows across the coun­try. Her ed­it­or­i­al por­trait­ure has ap­peared in pub­lic­a­tions such as Der Spiegel, School Lib­rary Journ­al and Clas­sic­al Mu­sic Ma­ga­zine (UK), among oth­ers. She is keenly in­ter­ested in mu­sic, and serves on the board of the San Fran­cisco-based cham­ber group Voices of Mu­sic.

Emmy E. Pierce is MSP’s op­er­a­tions man­ager. She is re­spons­ible for man­aging the of­fice, pro­cessing sub­scrip­tions, re­search­ing dir­ec­tions for MSP’s growth and de­vel­op­ment, and gen­er­ally tak­ing care of busi­ness. She joined our team in 2011, and her out­stand­ing or­gan­iz­a­tion­al skills have con­sid­er­ably in­creased our ad­min­is­trat­ive ef­fi­ciency.

Emmy is a gradu­ate of Am­h­erst Col­lege, Mas­sachu­setts, where she took ex­actly one math-re­lated class (it was ac­tu­ally a theat­er course); gave class present­a­tions on “Poké­mon” fran­chise; and wrote her hon­ors thes­is on the anime films of Mamoru Oshii. She is deeply in­ter­ested in me­dia pro­duc­tion, and has pro­duced sev­er­al au­dio seg­ments for KPFA and the Am­h­erst Col­lege Cen­ter for Com­munity En­gage­ment, as an as­so­ci­ate pro­du­cer and staff writer, re­spect­ively. Cur­rently, she spends most of her free time read­ing, draw­ing, writ­ing, and oc­ca­sion­ally au­di­tion­ing for com­munity theat­er.

Qutub Ud­din Sajib was born and raised in a small vil­lage of Bangladesh. In his high school days, un­like his friends, Qutub de­veloped a “bad” habit of read­ing books from their very first pages in­clud­ing com­mas and spaces. His child­hood fas­cin­a­tion, which he would later mess up with, was in math­em­at­ics, art, elec­tron­ics, ar­chi­tec­ture, and mu­sic.

Dur­ing the years at Uni­versity of Dhaka for gradu­ation, Qutub missed math­em­at­ics and found L^aT_eX to save his brain and mind. Feel­ing lost, he later went to China Uni­versity of Geosciences (Wuhan) for PhD. There, on a col­or­less night, Qutub tried L^aT_eX once again; this time he met Silvio, whose su­per­vi­sion helped Qutub dis­cov­er col­ors in Linux, emacs, and of course, T_eX. Qutub fin­ished his PhD in en­vir­on­ment­al sci­ences and en­gin­eer­ing in 2020 and thought he’d had enough try­ing things that do not in­terest him. He moved back to his coun­try, stopped wan­der­ing against his will, and joined MSP in the same year.

Work­ing as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or at MSP, Qutub em­braces his old school bad habit as a pre­cious one, and feels some sort of (spir­itu­al) con­nec­tion with R. J. Drofn­ats (The T_eXbook, p. 24). When not edit­ing for MSP, Qutub can be found try­ing to fill the voids in Bangla ty­po­graphy with T_eX. In his nonT_eXnic­al mo­ments, Qutub can be seen listen­ing to mu­sic, watch­ing movies, or mess­ing up with new re­cipes in the kit­chen.

Al­ex­an­dru Scorpan is MSP’s ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or. He was born near the shores of the Black Sea, in Ro­mania, and ar­rived in the United States in 1997. In 2003, he re­ceived a PhD in math­em­at­ics from the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia at Berke­ley un­der Rob Kirby, then pur­sued an aca­dem­ic ca­reer. Dur­ing a postdoc at the Uni­versity of Flor­ida, he wrote a well-re­ceived 600-page mono­graph, The Wild World of 4-Man­i­folds, sur­vey­ing to­po­logy in di­men­sion 4. He fi­nally ad­mit­ted, “I’m not a puzzle-solv­er,” and aban­doned the re­search track, but con­tin­ued to teach col­lege math­em­at­ics for sev­er­al years.

Alex be­came in­volved with MSP in 2006, at first do­ing copy­ed­it­ing and design work. He re­turned to Berke­ley and joined MSP full-time in mid-2010. He’s prom­ised that one day he’ll fin­ish writ­ing that nov­el about Nero.

Adam D. Tow­s­ley began as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or for MSP in the spring of 2016. He re­ceived a BA in math­em­at­ics from Cor­nell Uni­versity. Upon gradu­at­ing he fol­lowed a girl (now his wife) to Nashville TN, where he lived and taught math­em­at­ics. In 2007 he dragged his wife back to cold and snowy up­state NY to get a PhD in arith­met­ic dy­nam­ics from the Uni­versity of Rochester.

Since gradu­at­ing, Adam has spent time at sev­er­al col­leges and uni­versit­ies be­fore land­ing at the Rochester In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy, where he teaches math­em­at­ics while not edit­ing for MSP. Out­side of math­em­at­ics he spends most of his time chas­ing his two young sons, cook­ing, trav­el­ing, and try­ing to watch Mets games.

Mat­thew B. Tuck­er-Sim­mons came to Cali­for­nia in 2005 for math­em­at­ics, but stayed for love (of many things, in­clud­ing avo­ca­dos, the nice cli­mate, and es­pe­cially his won­der­ful wife Lisa). He fin­ished his PhD on top­ics of quantum al­gebra and non­com­mut­at­ive geo­metry at Berke­ley in 2013.

Matt joined MSP as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in the spring of 2014, after sev­er­al months of post-PhD aim­less wan­der­ing (spir­itu­al, not phys­ic­al). The job al­lowed him to ex­er­cise his L^aT_eX skills, to keep on tweak­ing his .emacs file, and to keep his eye on de­vel­op­ments in math­em­at­ics from a safe dis­tance, all while giv­ing him time to pur­sue in­terests like bak­ing, mak­ing yogurt, fer­ment­ing things, and feel­ing self-right­eous about his food choices. After two years of su­per­vising the pro­duc­tion of our journ­als Geo­metry & To­po­logy and Al­geb­ra­ic & Geo­met­ric To­po­logy, he has made the leap to the soft­ware team, where he hopes to fix more bugs than he in­tro­duces.

Matt, his labor-or­gan­izer wife, and their (ob­ject­ively) ad­or­able chil­dren re­cently moved to Matt's nat­ive home­land of Canada, the land of po­lar bears, po­lite­ness, and single-pay­er health­care. But they'll al­ways keep Cali­for­nia in their hearts.

Eliza­beth A. Weaver is a nat­ive of Illinois and grew up close to St. Louis, Mis­souri. This has en­dowed her with a love of Car­din­als’ base­ball and toasted ra­vi­oli. She at­ten­ded col­lege in Cape Gir­ardeau, which is now worth men­tion­ing since the movie Gone Girl was filmed there. She fin­ished her PhD on al­geb­ra­ic cod­ing the­ory in 2012 at the Uni­versity of Ken­tucky, where her ad­visor taught her how to be a math­em­atician, and she taught her ad­visor about the rudi­ments of Amer­ic­an cul­ture, such as the joy of fun­fetti cup­cakes and how to pro­nounce “Chica­go”.

Eliza­beth has been an MSP pro­duc­tion ed­it­or since 2014, and cur­rently resides in Louis­ville, Ken­tucky, with her hus­band Den­nis, who is also a math­em­atician. She nev­er planned on spend­ing so many years in Ken­tucky, but has grown to love it there. She en­joys the great food, fant­ast­ic fire­works, and has been in­doc­trin­ated in­to the Big Blue Na­tion — Go Wild­cats!

Erika A. Wil­la­ford joined MSP as a pro­duc­tion ed­it­or in 2016. Erika grew some of the abil­it­ies she uses as a copy­ed­it­or from seeds planted by two strong wo­men. The first of the two, her moth­er, in­tro­duced Erika to the joy of num­bers. The second, a no­tori­ously stern teach­er in Erika's ele­ment­ary school, taught Erika and her class­mates the ele­ments of Eng­lish gram­mar in what was, even dec­ades ago, an old-school style. Un­like many of her peers, Erika loved it.

Erika’s aca­dem­ic and pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer in math­em­at­ics led her from her child­hood home of Pennsylvania through north­east Ohio and north­ern In­di­ana (Go Ir­ish!) fi­nally to the Pa­cific North­w­est, where she has lived since 2007. Erika en­joys hik­ing with her hus­band; as of Oc­to­ber 2016, they are roughly 2,600 miles short of com­plet­ing the Pa­cific Crest Trail. The two make faster pro­gress buy­ing and play­ing euro­games and deck-build­ing games. Erika also en­joys mak­ing ve­get­ari­an meals, homemade jokes and bad puns. Erika also en­joys mak­ing ve­get­ari­an meals, homemade jokes, and bad puns.

MSP bib­li­o­graph­er Chris A. Wil­li­ams (“Wil­lie”) grew up in the hard­scrabble sub­urbs of De­troit. He earned an Eng­lish de­gree from Oak­land Uni­versity in 2002, and some­how de­cided that qual­i­fied him to start a re­cord la­bel. This is why his par­ents’ base­ment con­tains lit­er­ally thou­sands of un­sold CDs of his home re­cord­ings. In 2004, he came to his senses and landed in the copy­ed­it­ing room at Math­em­at­ic­al Re­views, where he learned L^aT_eX and de­veloped a fas­cin­a­tion with the odd per­sever­ance of “no­tori­ous pla­gi­ar­ist” Dănuț Mar­cu. (The re­views of his pub­lic­a­tions on Math­S­ciNet are ser­i­ously de­light­ful.) Chris even­tu­ally moved to Maine to be with a gal he fell in love with on­line, marry her, and ad­opt a series of ad­or­ably goofy an­im­als to­geth­er. When he first star­ted do­ing bib­li­o­graphy work for MSP in 2016, Silvio sug­ges­ted he learn about Unix. Chris im­me­di­ately baffled a loc­al book­store own­er who thought he’d asked, “Do you have any in­struc­tion­al books about eu­nuchs?”

Chris is a chron­ic mu­sic geek, and co-hosts a pod­cast called Dis­cord & Rhyme, on which he and his friends talk through their fa­vor­ite al­bums, song by song. (If you ask Chris a ques­tion about prac­tic­al know­ledge like home main­ten­ance or nu­tri­tion, a gi­ant car­toon ques­tion mark will ap­pear over his head and he'll feel a little scared. However, if you men­tion, say, the in­die-rock band Yo La Tengo, I hope you've packed a lunch, be­cause he will not stop yam­mer­ing for hours.)