Edray Goins

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
With Pomona Since: 2018
  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Edray Herber Goins grew up in South Los Angeles, California.  The product of the Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) public school system, He attended the California Institute of Technology, where he majored in mathematics and physics, and earned his doctorate in mathematics from Stanford University.  

    He has held positions at the world's premiere research institutions, including the National Security Agency in Ft. Meade, Maryland; the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California; the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.  In January 2004 he was featured in Black Issues in Higher Education as one of the "2004 Emerging Scholars of the Year.鈥  From 2004-2018, Dr. Goins was a professor of mathematics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.  

    Prof. Goins spends most of his summers engaging underrepresented students in research in the mathematical sciences.  He has taught mathematics and physics in the Freshman Summer Institute (FSI) at Caltech; and led research seminars in number theory in the Summer Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (SUMSRI) at Miami University as well as the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Undergraduate Program (MSRI-UP) in Berkeley, California.  He currently runs an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) titled ".鈥  Prof. Goins is interested in (1) Selmer groups for elliptic curves using class groups of number fields, (2) Belyi maps and Dessins d鈥橢nfants, (3) origami as branched covers of elliptic curves, and (4) Galois groups, monodromy groups, and etale fundamental groups. He maintains his own blog about .

    He is also the lead for updating the Mathematicians of the African Diaspora database (also known as the MAD Pages), a resource dedicated to promoting and highlighting the contributions of members of the African diaspora to mathematics, especially contributions to current mathematical research.

    Research Interests

    • Selmer groups for elliptic curves using class groups of number fields
    • Belyi maps and Dessins d鈥橢nfants
    • Origami as branched covers of elliptic curves
    • Galois groups, monodromy groups, and etale fundamental groups

    Areas of Expertise

    • Algebraic Geometry
    • Class Field Theory
    • Elliptic Curves
    • Galois Representations
    • Number Theory
    • Representation Theory
  • Work

    Work

    With Pamela E. Harris, Bethany Kubik, and Aba Mbirika,   The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 125, No. 7 (2018), pgs. 593-601.

    "Three Questions: The Journey of One Black Mathematician," Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 65, No. 2 (2018), pgs. 144-147.

    With Asamoah Nkwanta, International Journal of Combinatorics, Vol. 2016 (2016), Article ID 8324150, 9 pgs.

    With Talitha Washington, "On the Generalized Climbing Stairs Problem," Ars Combinatoria, Vol. CXVII (October 2014), pgs. 183-190.

    With Alejandra Alvarado  International Journal of Number Theory. Vol. 9, No. 6 (2013), pgs. 1379-1393.

    With Jing Ma, Susan Margulies, and Illya V. Hicks, Journal of Discrete Optimization. Vol. 10, Issue 2 (May 2013), pgs. 102 - 119.

    With Talitha Washington, PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Vol. 23, Issue 2 (2013), pgs. 121-132.

    With Kevin Mugo, International Journal of Number Theory,  Vol. 8, No. 4 (2012), pgs. 911-922.

      Missouri Journal of Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 22 (2010), no. 2, pgs. 102 - 107.

    With Talitha Washington,   Wolfram Demonstrations Project. (February 4, 2010)

    With Talitha Washington, The Pentagon: The Journal of Kappa Mu Epsilon, Fall 2009, pgs. 11-28.

    INTEGERS: The Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory, Vol. 9 (2009), pgs. 725-734.

    Florian Luca and Alain Togbe, Algorithmic Number Theory Seminar (ANTS-VIII); LCNS 5011 (2008), pgs. 430-442.

    With Alain Togbe,   International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 35 (2007), no. 3, pgs. 363 - 372.

    With Davin Maddox,   Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 36; (2005), no. 5, pgs. 1511 - 1526.

     Math Research Letters 10 (2003), no. 2-3, pgs. 205-217.

      Council for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. IV; Contemp. Math. 284 (2001), pgs. 7-12.

      Council for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. III; Contemp. Math. 275 (2001), pgs. 39 - 51.

    With Mel Currie,Council for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. III; Contemp. Math. 275 (2001), pgs. 13 - 31.

  • Education

    Education

    Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
    L.H.D. (Honorary Degree), 2019

    Stanford University
    Ph.D., Mathematics (1999)

    California Institute of Technology
    B.S., Mathematics and Physics (1994)

  • Awards & Honors

    Awards & Honors

    (2022 - 2024)

    (2021 - 2022)

    (2018 - 2021)

    (2016 -- 2018)

    (2021 - 2022)

    (2020 -- 2023)

    (2022 - 2023)

    , 2019

    , 2019

    , 2011

    , 2004