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Kelly Isham

kisham

Kelly Isham

Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Department/Office Information

Mathematics
214 McGregory Hall
  • T  2:45pm - 3:45pm  (214 McGregory Hall)
  • R  10:00am - 11:00am  (214 McGregory Hall)
  • F  1:00pm - 2:00pm  (214 McGregory Hall)

Contact

I am passionate about researching and teaching math. I am interested in using technology both in my research and in the classroom. My work bridges ideas and techniques from number theory and combinatorics. My work often connects to other fields such as finite geometry, arithmetic geometry, or arithmetic statistics. I'm always happy to discuss these areas of math with students.

I am also dedicated to mentorship and diversity initiatives. My work in this area has focused on supporting minorities in STEM.

You can see more information about me at my

Education

BA, Skidmore College
MS, University of California, Irvine
PhD, University of California, Irvine

Research Interests

Number theory, combinatorics, arithmetic geometry, arithmetic statistics, graph theory and network design

Teaching

CORE S148 Making and Breaking Codes

MATH 161 Calculus I

MATH 163 Calculus III

MATH 214 Linear Algebra

MATH 250 Number Theory and Mathematical Reasoning

MATH 310 Combinatorial Problem Solving

MATH 375 Abstract Algebra I

MATH 483 Senior Seminar: Mathematics

Mentorship and Diversity

I am dedicated to supporting and increasing diversity on campus through mentorship and other programming. I am part of a pilot program called Peers as Mentors, which provides a peer mentor to the students in an introductory STEM course.

Publications
  • K. Isham, N. Kaplan, S. Kimport, R. Lawrence, L. Peilen, and M. Weinreich, Configurations of 10 points and their incidence varieties. Accepted to Discrete and Computational Geometry.
  • J. Desjardins, Y. Fu, K, Isham, and R. Winter (2026). . In: Akhtari, S., Liu, YR., Newton, R., Park, J. (eds) Research Directions in Number Theory. WIN 2023. Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 39. Springer, Cham.
  • K. Isham, L. Monroe, K. Lakhotia, A. Dawkins, D. Hwang, and A Kubicek. in Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS ’25).
  • K. Lahotia, L. Monroe, K. Isham, M. Besta, N. Blach, T. Hoefler, and F. Petrini.  in Proceedings of the 36th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA ’24).
  • K. Isham , Communications in Algebra 51 (12) (2023).
  • K. Lakhotia, K. Isham, L. Monroe, M. Besta, T. Hoefler, and F. Petrini. In Proceedings of the 35th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA ’23)
  • K. Lakhotia, M. Besta, L. Monroe, K. Isham, P. Iff, T. Hoefler, F. Petrini. in 2022 SC22: International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (Supercomputing '22).
  • K. Isham , Finite Fields and Their Applications, 80 (2022).
  • K. Isham  , Journal of Number Theory, 234 (2022).
Publications with Students

S. Child ('25), K. Isham, O. Samal ('24), Exploring the degree and diameter of various graph products. Accepted to Involve.

Grants

¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ Picker ISI Grant: April 2024 - August 2026

Los Alamos National Laboratory LDRD Reserve Grant: November 2022 - September 2023