IMACS gave me an incredible foundation for mathematics, building my logical thinking and proof writing skills and feeding my love for problem-solving. As a result I was already well ahead by my first college math class and never looked back.
Robert Ferguson from IMACS to UCF to University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Mathematics!
Robert attended IMACS from 1st through 12th grade. He completed all five levels of Math Enrichment, Computer Enrichment, Hi-Tech Summer Camp, and university-level courses in Mathematical Logic and Computer Science. Robert was named a National Merit Scholar and earned his B.S. in Mathematics at the University of Central Florida.
A mathematician at heart, Robert continued on to graduate school at the University of Florida where he specialized in Graph Theory and Combinatorics with a focus on Letter Graphs. He was awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics after proving two earlier conjectures, one from 2000 by Petkovšec, and another from 2018 by Alecu, Lozin, De Werra, and Zamaraev. Robert’s paper on the former, “On the lettericity of paths,” was published in the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics. His paper with colleagues on the latter established a connection between the seemingly unrelated notions of lettericity from structural graph theory and geometric gridability from the world of permutation patterns. Robert presented this groundbreaking result in a talk on “Letter Graphs and Geometric Grid Classes of Permutations” at the 2019 AMS conference.
When not advancing the field of mathematics, he enjoys programming, Ultimate Frisbee, playing the ukulele, and game nights with friends.
Robert had the IMACS advantage!
He chose University of Florida.
Where will your child go?
