Robert W. Ghrist

Robert Ghrist is the Andrea Mitchell PIK Professor of Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. With a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering [Univ. Toledo, 1991] and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics [Cornell, 1994, 1995], Prof. Ghrist does research that spans from pure to applicable to applied.

He is an award-winning researcher in applied algebraic topology, having been awarded a PECASE award from President Bush in 2004, a SciAm "Top50" award for research innovation from Scientific American Magazine in 2007, and an NSSEFF award from the US Department of Defense in 2015. Ghrist has led several large grant projects funded by the AFOSR, ASDR&E, DARPA, the NSF, and the ONR.

Prof. Ghrist is also an award-winning teacher, writer, and speaker. He was awarded the Chauvenet prize by the MAA in 2013 -- the highest award given for mathematical expository writing. He won the Lindback Award in 2015 -- the highest award given at Penn for teaching. His on-line calculus course at Coursera ("Single Variable Calculus") has illustrated the subject to over 100,000 people around the world.

Ghrist lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and four children, who share his love of old books (the wife that is) and video games (the kids).