Congratulations to Kathryn Nurse, who has received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for $150,000 to support her PhD program in Computing Science. Nurses' proposed research, Maximum Linear Arrangement of Directed Graphs, aims to devise new algorithms to solve the computationally hard problem of Maximum Directed Linear Arrangement efficiently for specific cases. Wiring problems and statistical physics are two potential applications. 

Computing Science PhD student in the Faculty of Applied Sciences 

I'm a mom and wife. I'm just finishing a MSc in Computing Science at SFU, and I'm about to start a PhD in the same program this September. Before that I got a BSc from the University of Waterloo in Physics, and also my Canadian Forces pilot wings. I like riding my bike and taking transit.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO COME TO SFU?

I wanted to study under Dr. Pavol Hell. I had come across a book he coauthored with Jaroslav Nešetřil "Graphs and Homomorphisms." And I just really liked some of the proofs in the book. I knew I wanted to do math like that.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR RESEARCH AND/OR PROGRAM.

I study graph theory. A graph is a mathematical structure, useful in modelling pairwise relationships or linkages between objects. Studying graphs is important because they are ubiquitous: the internet, disease transmission models, twitter, road maps, cellular telephone networks, and others can be modelled with graphs. I'm interested in graph algorithms, and so I take a computationally hard problem, and try to come up with an efficient solution for that problem on specific classes of graphs.

WHAT ARE YOU PARTICULARLY ENJOYING ABOUT YOUR STUDIES/RESEARCH AT SFU?

The people I work with. The faculty here are not only world class researchers, but they are also kind and wonderful teachers. And my friends and fellow students are so supportive and collaborative. It's a really nice atmosphere.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PROGRAM/POSTDOC POSITION TO SOMEONE STILL SEARCHING FOR A PROGRAM OR POSTDOC POSITION?

My program is very research intensive. I spend most of my time almost proving important theorems.

DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR PROSPECTIVE GRADUATE STUDENTS/POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS?

Trust in your advisors, do what they say.