Amanda Ruiz was born in Long Beach and raised in Huntington Beach, California. She left Southern California for the Bay Area to attend University of California, Berkeley, where she created her own major focused on social movements. After some experience working in secondary education and a realization that mathematics is a social justice issue, Amanda went back to school to pursue a degree in mathematics. She received a master’s degree in mathematics from San Francisco State University and then her PhD in mathematics from Binghamton University in 2013. After a year as a teaching and research postdoctoral fellow in the Mathematics Department at Harvey Mudd College, Amanda joined the University of San Diego where she is now an associate professor of mathematics.
Amanda’s PhD thesis was on realization spaces of phased matroids. While her prior research is predominantly in combinatorics and matroid theory, her research has more recently expanded to include pedagogical work. She is particularly interested in using mathematics to study issues of social justice and investigating pedagogies that make mathematical spaces more inclusive, where those traditionally underrepresented in mathematics can thrive.
