Elise Cawley, PhD

Elise Cawley is a mathematician and former academic.

Her current interests include the philosophy of math and its impact on math and science education, as well as the history of innovation in schools at all levels. For the past eight years, Elise has served as a founding member of the community advisory board for Stanford Online High School, as well as been an informal advisor for several school innovators and start-up initiatives. Elise has also been a Mathcounts team coach for two, three-year periods.

Elise studied math and physics at MIT and University of Maryland and completed her PhD in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley she was supported by a Hertz Foundation Fellowship, which enabled her research at the intersection of dynamical systems and geometry.After graduating, she was supported by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, and spent time at CUNY Graduate Center, IHES (France), Stony Brook University, UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, doing research in Gibbs theory and the Teichmüller theory of dynamical systems. While at the University of Chicago, Elise worked with then math department chairman, Robert Zimmer, on the draft plan for a new initiative, developing an independent masters program in Financial Mathematics at the University of Chicago, one of the first of its kind.