Emma Hansen

Background

About Emma Hansen

I am currently taking a year off from my academics and working as a routesetter and high performance climbing coach at the Richmond Olympic Oval. I completed four years of a PhD at the University of British Columbia in the Institute of Applied Mathematics studying optimisation. I decided to change course, and pursue a passion of mine, pure mathematics (specifically differential geometry), and left my PhD in 2024. I will be rejoining the UBC Math Department as a master's student in September 2025. I completed my Master's of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington in December 2019. My studies focused on control theory, with significant coursework in optimisation. During my degree I completed an internship at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, working under Dr. Yebin Wang on projects relating to autonomous parking systems. In my PhD I studied convex optimisation in matrix spaces, with application to quantum information theory and quantum cryptography. I also climb competitively in the British Columbia competition circuit, and competed in both bouldering and lead at the 2023 Canadian National Championships, and in bouldering in the 2024 Canadian National Championships.