PhD candidate is jazzed about mathematics
When he was five years old, Alex Bloemendal’s favourite toy wasn’t a fire truck or his Optimus Prime action figure. Nor was it the brown upright Bechstein piano he would come to master years later.
Bloemendal’s favourite toy was his mother’s Texas Instruments calculator.
As a child, Bloemendal always demonstrated an affinity for mathematics. But it wasn’t until high school, when he was attending University of Toronto Schools (UTS), that he was really challenged in the subject for the first time. “I had this teacher, Dr. Rice, who took me on and really engaged me,” Bloemendal recounted. “He showed me that math is this beautiful field and he really inspired me to continue in my studies.”
But like so many other child sensations, math wasn’t Bloemendal’s only flair. From a young age, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Alex was a virtuoso on the piano.
There is a common understanding among mathematicians that math is in fact the basis of sound. Time, rhythm, meter, intervals and harmony all have a firm grounding in math. So to those who knew Bloemendal, his uncanny ability to tickle the ivories and reproduce a tune he had heard moments earlier came as no surprise.“It’s one way to really liven things up at a dull party.”
As graduation neared at UTS, Bloemendal faced a difficult decision. He knew he wanted to pursue his studies in math but he was considering several different universities — and one had offered him a scholarship as incentive. While still in high school, Bloemendal connected with Professor Jeremy Quastel in the math department at the University of Toronto. An enthralling conversation about probability was enough to seal the deal. Bloemendal knew he was home.
In 2001, he enrolled in the university’s gruelling math specialist program. By his third year, he was a TA in the notoriously taxing program, an impressive feat by any standards — child prodigy or not.
After taking a few months off to travel across North America, Bloemendal decided to return to academia to pursue his PhD in math at U of T. It was under the guidance of Professor Bálint Virág, one of Bloemendal’s most significant mentors, that he resolved to focus on modern probability for his PhD.
“Modern probability is not about figuring out the likelihood of a single event occurring. It’s about investigating systems or setups where there’s a lot of randomness,” Bloemendal explained. “If we know how members of a population interact, how contagious must a disease be to become epidemic? There’s real-world application here.”
In a couple of months — and for the first time in his academic career — Bloemendal will leave Toronto to pursue post-doctoral work at Harvard University. In Boston he will be studying patterns in huge, highly-structured data sets such as one might find in medical or population genetics.
“There is no question U of T has one of the best undergraduate math programs in North America and I’m really going to miss it here.” Bloemendal said. “By my second year at U of T I already realized how lucky I was to be able to attend this institution and be enrolled in this program. I’m indebted to all of my teachers. There were so many people within the department who had a tremendous impact on my intellectual growth and I’m so grateful to them all.”
Provided by University of Toronto
