Diana Thomas (mathematician)

Last updated

Diana Maria Thomas is an American applied mathematician known for her research on nutrition and body weight. [1] [2] [3] She is a professor of mathematics at the United States Military Academy (West Point). [4]

Contents

Education and career

Thomas is originally from Glendive, Montana, where her father was a physician; she is a graduate of Dawson County High School in Glendive, [5] and majored in mathematics at the University of Montana, graduating in 1991. [6] She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1996 from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her dissertation, Dynamics of Lattice Systems, was supervised by Shui-Nee Chow. [7]

After postdoctoral research at West Point and the Army Research Laboratory, she joined the faculty at New Jersey City University in 1998, and moved to Montclair State University in 2000. [8] In 2017, she returned to West Point as a professor. [4]

Research

Topics in Thomas's research have included a comparison of the effects of dieting and exercise on weight loss, [1] the effects of weight loss on pregnancy, [2] epidemiological approaches to obesity, [3] the use of biometric data to predict military training injuries, [9] and a statistical comparison of the body types of military recruits with Leonardo da Vinci 's Vitruvian Man . [5] [10]

Recognition

In 2012 the New Jersey Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) gave Thomas their Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. The award recognized her "dedication to teaching, her untiring devotion and concern for students, her work with students outside the classroom, her commitment to undergraduate research, and her classroom experimentation based on learning and human motivational literature". It noted in particular the many undergraduate research projects she supervised, two of which led to best poster awards at MAA conferences, as well as her work to double the size of the poster sessions at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. [6] She was awarded the 2023 AMS Dolciani Prize for Excellence in Research "for her outstanding research at the interface of mathematics with nutrition and obesity; her work in number theory, combinatorics, and dynamical systems; and her impressive work with undergraduates." [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atkins diet</span> Low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins

The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins in the 1970s, marketed with claims that carbohydrate restriction is crucial to weight loss and that the diet offered "a high calorie way to stay thin forever".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathematical Association of America</span> American organization that focuses on undergraduate-level mathematics

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists; statisticians; and many others in academia, government, business, and industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Mathematical Society</span> Association of professional mathematicians

The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs.

Sylvia D. Trimble Bozeman is an American mathematician and mathematics educator.

Ellen Elizabeth Kirkman is professor of mathematics at Wake Forest University. Her research interests include noncommutative algebra, representation theory, and homological algebra.

Suzanne Marie Lenhart is an American mathematician who works in partial differential equations, optimal control and mathematical biology. She is a Chancellor's Professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee, an associate director for education and outreach at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, and a part-time researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marguerite Lehr</span> American mathematician

Marguerite Lehr was an American mathematician who studied algebraic geometry, humanism in mathematics, and mathematics education.

Candice Renee Price is an African-American mathematician and is an Associate professor at Smith College. She, along with Erica Graham, Raegan Higgins, and Shelby Wilson created the website Mathematically Gifted and Black which features the contributions of modern-day black mathematicians. She is an advocate for greater representation of females and people of color in the STEM fields. Price's area of mathematical research is DNA topology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alissa Crans</span> American mathematician

Alissa Susan Crans is an American mathematician specializing in higher-dimensional algebra. She is a professor of mathematics at Loyola Marymount University, and the associate director of Project NExT, a program of the Mathematical Association of America to mentor post-doctoral mathematicians, statisticians, and mathematics teachers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shiriki Kumanyika</span>

Shiriki K. Kumanyika is an Emeritus Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and co-chair of the International Association for the Study of Obesity International Obesity Task Force. She has previously served as Associate Dean for Disease Prevention and was founding director of the University of Pennsylvania Master of Public Health. She chairs the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network. She is the former president of the American Public Health Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Bodnar</span> American nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist

Lisa Bodnar is an American nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist. She is the Vice-Chair for Research and a tenured professor at University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the contributions of pregnancy weight gain, dietary patterns, maternal obesity, and maternal vitamin D deficiency to adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes.

Clare Elizabeth Collins is an Australian dietician who is Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle. She serves as Director for Research in the School of Health Sciences and Deputy Director of the Priority Research Centre. She was awarded the 2017 Hunter Medical Research Institute Researcher of the Year and is a Fellow of Dietitians Australia.

Gizem Karaali is a Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.

Pamela Estephania Harris is a Mexican-American mathematician, educator and advocate for immigrants. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was formerly an associate professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and is co-founder of the online platform Lathisms. She is also an editor of the e-mentoring blog of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).

Liza Makowski Hayes is an American nutritional biochemist. As a professor at the University of Tennessee, her research focuses on how metabolic stress and inflammation alters the progression of diseases, specifically obesity and cancer.

Naomi D. Fisher is an American mathematician and mathematics educator and professor emerita of mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Kathleen Maher Rasmussen is an American nutritionist. She is the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Rasmussen studies the relationship between maternal nutrition and short- and long-term health outcomes for women and their children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fatima Cody Stanford</span> Physician scientist

Fatima Cody Stanford is an American obesity medicine physician, internist, and pediatrician and an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She is one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of obesity.

Lisa Mantini is an American mathematician.

Rachel Louise Batterham is a British physician who is a professor of Obesity, Diabetes and Endocrinology at University College London. She established the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Bariatric Centre for Weight Management and Metabolic Surgery. She has extensively studied obesity, and has contributed to clinical management and the understanding of obesity-related diseases.

References

  1. 1 2 Reynolds, Gretchen (August 1, 2012), "Dieting vs. Exercise for Weight Loss", The New York Times
  2. 1 2 Mann, Leslie (February 19, 2015), "Losing weight before pregnancy is healthier for mom, baby", Chicago Tribune
  3. 1 2 Servick, Kelly (February 19, 2017), "Should we treat obesity like a contagious disease?", Science
  4. 1 2 Dr. Diana Thomas, Professor of Mathematics, United States Military Academy, retrieved 2019-09-29
  5. 1 2 Herbaugh, Hunter (June 21, 2020), "Glendive native published in JAMA", Glendive Ranger-Review
  6. 1 2 Citation: Dr. Diana Thomas (PDF), New Jersey Section, Mathematical Association of America, 2012, retrieved 2021-02-06
  7. ↑ Diana Thomas at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  8. ↑ "Getting to know: Diana M. Thomas, Editorial board member, EJCN", European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 66 (9): 977, September 2012, doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2012.38
  9. ↑ World Class Faculty: Dr. Diana Thomas, Department of Mathematics, United States Military Academy, retrieved 2019-09-29
  10. ↑ Mundell, E. J. (June 10, 2020), "Leonardo's 'Vitruvian Man' Ideal Isn't Far Off Modern Measures", U.S. News & World Report
  11. ↑ "News from the AMS". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2023-04-08.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.