Aparna Higgins
{{short description|Indian American mathematician}}
Aparna W. Higgins is a mathematician known for her encouragement of undergraduate mathematicians to participate in mathematical research.{{r|section}} Higgins originally specialized in universal algebra, but her more recent research concerns graph theory, including graph pebbling and line graphs.{{r|pcumc}} She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Dayton.{{r|dayton}}
Education and career
Higgins is originally from Mumbai, India, and did her undergraduate studies at the University of Mumbai, graduating in 1978.{{r|pcumc}} She completed her Ph.D. in 1983 at the University of Notre Dame; her dissertation, Heterogeneous Algebras Associated with Non-Indexed Algebras, a Representation Theorem on Weak Automorphisms of Universal Algebras, was supervised by Abraham Goetz.{{r|mgp}}
In 2009 she became director of Project NExT, after the previous director, T. Christine Stevens, stepped down; this project is an initiative of the Mathematical Association of America to provide career guidance to new doctorates in mathematics.{{r|focus}}
Higgins is married to Bill Higgins, a mathematics professor at Wittenberg University, and the two regularly take their sabbaticals together in California.{{r|clu}}
Recognition
Higgins won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America in 1995, for her contributions to undergraduate research.{{r|section}} In 2005 she was one of three winners of the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics of the Mathematical Association of America.{{r|atlanta}}
References
{{reflist|refs=
{{citation|url=https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/mathematics/higgins_aparna.php|title=Aparna Higgins|work=College of Arts and Sciences Directory|publisher=University of Dayton|accessdate=2018-02-17}}
{{citation|url=https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/febmar09pg15.pdf|title=Aparna Higgins to Become Director of Project NExT|journal=MAA Focus|publisher=Mathematical Association of America|date=February–March 2009|page=15}}
}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Higgins, Aparna}}
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:20th-century American mathematicians
Category:20th-century Indian mathematicians
Category:20th-century American women mathematicians
Category:21st-century American mathematicians
Category:21st-century Indian mathematicians
Category:21st-century American women mathematicians
Category:Indian combinatorialists
Category:Indian emigrants to the United States
Category:21st-century Indian women mathematicians
Category:University of Dayton faculty
Category:University of Mumbai alumni
Category:University of Notre Dame alumni