The yearlong fellowship was established to further excellence in mathematics research and to help generate wider and sustained participation by Black mathematicians.
Omar completed both an undergraduate and master's degree in mathematics at the University of Waterloo, where he specialized in combinatorics and optimization and pure math. He went on to complete a PhD at the University of California-Davis and a postdoctoral stint at Caltech, before accepting a position at Harvey Mudd.
Omar's research focuses on discrete mathematics, combinatorics, graph theory and discrete/convex geometry. According to the AMS website, during the 2021-2022 fellowship Omar will pursue two main lines of inquiry. First, he will study applications of the recently developed Slice-Rank Polynomial Method, which harnesses linear algebra to solve problems in extremal combinatorics involving restrictions on more than two sets from a family of sets. Second, he will explore graph propagation through an algebraic lens.
In 2019, Omar came back to Waterloo to do a talk at the Math Faculty Teaching Seminar. He talked about the innovative speech-to-LaTeX program he developed and how he involves students in writing live lecture notes in the classroom. He also has a YouTube channel and a TikTok where he posts videos about math topics.
Read more on the AMS website.