Chris Godsil - 2014/2015

Chris Godsil - Combinatorics and Optimization

Chris Godsil, a faculty member in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization since 1987, has served the department very well over the past 27 years, as instructor of a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, as a researcher and student supervisor, and as Associate Chair for Graduate Studies.

Chris is a world researcher in algebraic combinatorics with his specialty being algebraic graph theory.  He has authored two of the standard textbooks on the topic, and more recently, has been a pioneer in using techniques from algebraic combinatorics to tackle some fundamental questions in quantum information theory.

Chris has been the department's most active graduate student supervisor, and has also supervised 16 undergraduate research assistants since 1998. He has extremely high standards and demands the best from his students. At the same time, he is encouraging, supportive, and very conscientious about developing his students into capable and independent research mathematicians.

The nomination file for Chris included testimonial letters from many of his graduate students who comment that "...he is a genius at coming up with problems that are at the right level for a student at a particular stage of their progress through their program", "He guides us along the way, but ultimately lets us retain control of the direction of our research", "Chris is deeply interested in what I am working on", "I mattered to him, my mathematical ideas mattered, and my mathematical development was of real importance to him".