Professor Craig S. Kaplan has received this year’s Faculty of Mathematics Award for Distinction in Teaching. Up to two awards are conferred each year to teachers who have consistently demonstrated outstanding pedagogical skills and a deep commitment to the education of our students.
Professor Kaplan has been at the University of Waterloo since 2003. He was also an undergraduate student at Waterloo in the 1990s, where he “had the pleasure of taking courses from a couple of the past winners of this award!”
Professor Kaplan is interested in a broad range of interdisciplinary topics, with a particular focus on interactions between mathematics and art. He uses mathematical ideas to create tools and algorithms that generate ornamental patterns and that empower artists and designers. His work incorporates knowledge from computer graphics, classical and computational geometry, human-computer interaction, graph theory, symmetry and tiling theory, and perceptual psychology.
“It makes me a little emotional,” Professor Kaplan says of the award. “For decades I’ve poured a lot of time and energy into every aspect of teaching. It’s good to know that this work as gone into something important. I’m grateful for the recognition, but more importantly I’m happy to know that my efforts have had a positive impact on the lives of the students I’ve taught.”
Read the full article about Professor Kaplan and co-awardee, Professor Henry Shum of the Department of Applied Mathematics, on the Faculty of Mathematics website.