Olivia Prosper Feldman

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Olivia F. Prosper Feldman (published as Olivia Prosper) is a French-born American mathematical biologist, applied mathematician, and epidemiologist, whose research involves mathematically modeling the spread and dynamic behavior of infectious diseases. She is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee. [1]

Contents

Education and career

Feldman was a student of mathematics at the University of Florida, where she received a bachelor's degree in 2006, a master's degree in 2008, and her Ph.D. in 2012. [2] Her dissertation, Modeling heterogeneities in malaria, was advised by Maia Martcheva and co-advised by David L. Smith. [3] [4]

She worked as an instructor at Dartmouth College from 2012 to 2015, and as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky from 2015 to 2019, before moving to her present position at the University of Tennessee in 2019. [2] [5] She was promoted to associate professor in 2022. [5]

Recognition

Feldman received a 2021 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, [2] and the 2021 Excellence in Research Prize of the Intercollegiate Biomathematics Alliance. [6] She was chosen by the Association for Women in Mathematics and Mathematical Association of America as the 2025 AWM/MAA Falconer Lecturer. [7]

Personal life

Feldman is of mixed Dominican and French descent: her father, Harrison Prosper, a native of Dominica, moved to England as a child, and "through a series of unlikely events" met and married her mother, Marie-France Prosper-Chartier, from the French village of Plesder in Brittany. Feldman herself was born in Échirolles in southeastern France. Both her parents earned doctorates, and the family emigrated to the United States in 1986, [8] when she was two. [9] She grew up near Fermilab in Illinois, where her father worked before moving to Florida State University in 1993. [8] [9] Her mother also became a professor at Florida State, in the Department of Modern Languages. [10]

She is married to Matthew Feldman, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; [11] they have two sons. [8]

References

  1. "Olivia Feldman", People, University of Tennessee Department of Mathematics, retrieved 2025-11-27
  2. 1 2 3 Curriculum vitae, June 2021, retrieved 2025-11-27, as linked from Feldman's Portfolio page
  3. Olivia Prosper Feldman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Prosper, Olivia F. (2012), Modeling heterogeneities in malaria (Ph.D. thesis), University of Florida, ProQuest   3585230
  5. 1 2 "Olivia Prosper Feldman", ORCiD, retrieved 2025-11-27
  6. IBA Awards, Intercollegiate Biomathematics Alliance, retrieved 2025-11-27
  7. AWM-MAA Etta Falconer Lecture 2025, Association for Women in Mathematics, retrieved 2025-11-27
  8. 1 2 3 "Olivia Prosper", Black History Month 2021 Honoree, Mathematically Gifted and Black, 2021, retrieved 2025-11-27
  9. 1 2 Anderson, Taylor; Fulk, Hannah (June 24, 2021), Faculty Spotlight: Harrison Prosper, Florida State University, retrieved 2025-11-27
  10. "Harrison Prosper", I'm a scientist, retrieved 2025-11-27
  11. "Vanderbilt graduate research assistant receives national defense fellowship", Research News, Vanderbilt University, September 22, 2017, retrieved 2025-11-27