Faculty Members
Mathematics and Statistics
Jeff Babb, Associate Professor
Office: 7L08 Phone: 204-786-9361 email
Jeff is an Associate Professor with the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Winnipeg. He joined the Department in September of 2000 and served as its Chair for 2004-2009.
Jeff was Principal Consultant for the Statistical Advisory Service the Department of Statistics at the University of Manitoba for 1998-2000. Previously he served as the Biometrician for the Grain Research Laboratory of the Canadian Grain Commission in Winnipeg for 16 years, and earlier as a Research Officer with Alberta Hospitals and Medical Care in Edmonton. Jeff has extensive statistical consulting experience with industry, government and academia in the planning, design, implementation, analysis and reporting of scientific research projects and in the design and analysis of questionnaires and surveys.
Currently, Jeff’s research interests include multivariate analysis, spatial statistics, simulation, climatology, demography, and history of mathematics. Recently he has collaborated on several research projects with anthropologists and geographers.
Bob Bector, Instructor
Office: 6L21 Phone: 204-786-9227 email
Bob was born and raised in India. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Manitoba, and has taught at the University of Winnipeg since 1985. In recent years, he has been teaching Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Introduction to Statistical Analysis and Introduction to Survey Sampling.
James Currie, Professor, Provost and Vice-President, Academic Research Profile [pdf] Research Interests
Office: 3C17 Phone: 204- 786-9288 email
James Currie's main research focus is on formal language theory. Topics of his past publications have also included such odds and ends as graph colouring, ordered sets, number theory and the Simplex algorithm. James has a fondness for mathematical logic, foundations, and theoretical computer science.
Outside of Mathematics, James' interests include foreign languages, chess, music and sleight of hand.
In 2009, James Currie & Narad Rampersad, then Post-Doctoral Fellow at UW announced proof of Dejean's Conjecture.
S. Ezzat, Instructor
Office: 6L37 Phone: 204-786-9403 email
Originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Shannon Ezzat received his Bachelor degree from Dalhousie University and both a Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning (roughly equivalent to a Canadian BEd) and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before joining the faculty at U of W, he was an Assistant Professor at both Cape Breton University and St. Francis Xavier University.
Shannon’s mathematical research interests are mainly in group theory, specifically representation growth of infinite groups. He is also passionate about both school and university mathematics education, and has made teaching the primary focus of his academic career. He is also interested in the mathematics of (and communicating the mathematics of) lotteries and gaming. He has been interviewed for various newspaper articles and radio programs discussing the mathematics behind the lottery phenomenon of Chase the Ace.
Outside of mathematics, Shannon is interested in such things as music and songwriting, board games, politics, and pub trivia.
Melody Ghahramani, Professor Research Profile [pdf] Research Interests
Office: 6L25 Phone: 204-789-1414 email
Melody grew up in Winnipeg and obtained her Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Manitoba. She obtained her Master's and Ph.D. in statistics from Simon Fraser University and the University of Manitoba, respectively. Her research interests are in time series and biostatistics. She is interested in inference using estimating functions with applications in finance. Her applied research interest is in infectious disease modeling.
Shonda Gosselin, Associate Professor Research Interests
Office: 6L05 Phone: 204-786-9346 email
Shonda Gosselin’s research is in the area of algebraic graph and hypergraph theory. Recently she has studied cyclic partitions of complete uniform hypergraphs, and the problem of finding the metric dimension of Cayley hypergraphs.
Shakhawat Hossain, Associate Professor Research Interests
Office: 6L22 Phone: 204-786-9492 email
Dr. Md Shakhawat Hossain received his Masters in Statistics from the University of Alberta in 2002 and Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Windsor in 2008. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Alabama A & M University. Before then he completed Post-Doctoral Fellow (2008-2010) in the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Alberta. Recently he joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Dr. Hossain has extensive experience in analyzing Canadian health administrative databases. His research interests include the following areas: 1). Statistical shrinkage models and variable selection via the James-Stein type shrinkage, LASSO, Adaptive LASSO, and SCAD methods, 2) Longitudinal studies, 3) Application of statistics in Health services Research.
Hatem A. Howlader, Professor Research Interests
Office: 6L03 Phone: 204-786-9347 email
Hatem Howlader has been with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics since 1981. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Manitoba, a Diploma in Statistics from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth as well as a B.Sc. (Hons) and an M.Sc., both in Statistics from the University of Dacca, Bangladesh. His research interest is Bayesian Statistical Inference including reliability and lifetesting. He is also interested in application of statistical methods to other disciplines, especially in Biology. He served ten years (1989-99) as Chair of the department. He has been an active member in a number of societies. In particular he has served the Statistical Association of Manitoba as president, vice-president and Newsletter editor. He spent his sabbatical in 1987-88 at the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, University of Umea, Sweden and in the Division of Mathematics and Statistics of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta. He spent his second leave (1994) at the New Mexico Tech, Socorro doing research and teaching a seminar course on Reliability and Quality Control. His recent leave (Jan-June, 2000) was spent as Visiting Scholar in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Informatics, Science & Technology, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Sohail Khan, Instructor
Office: 6L23 Phone: 204-786-9388 email
Sohail Khan joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2009. He got his masters degree in Statistics from University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan and a masters degree in Statistics from University of Regina, Saskatchewan. Before joining University of Winnipeg, he has taught at University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia and University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.
Václav Linek, Professor Research Interests
Office: 6L32 Phone: 204-786-9308 email
Vaclav Linek has done research in the areas of Design Theory (Steiner systems, Langford sequences and their variations, polyhedral designs), Graph Theory, Combinatorics on Words, and Antimagic Squares. He was the editor-in-chief of the problem solving journal CRUX Mathematicorum with Mathematical Mayhem for 3 years, a publication of the Canadian Mathematical Society.
Zeinab Mashreghi, Assistant Professor
Office: 6L40 Phone: 204-786-9366 email
Zeinab received her M.Sc. in Pure Mathematics from Laval University. Because of her interests in the field of Statistics, she started a second M.Sc. in this field at the University of Montreal. She graduated with her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Montreal in 2014. Her main research interest includes sampling theory, especially in the fields of non-response and resampling methods.
Mostafa Nasri, Instructor
Office: 6L07 Phone: 204-789-4215 email
Ortrud R. Oellermann, Professor Research Profile [pdf] Research Interests
Office: 6L04 Phone: 204-786-9367 email
Ortrud Oellermann’s research interests are in graph theory. Recent research interests have been structural properties of graphs determined by local conditions with emphasis on connectivity, cycle structure, convexity and distance.
N. Rampersad, Associate Professor Research Interests
Office: 7L06 Phone: 204-786-9882 email
Narad Rampersad was born in Ottawa, Ontario. He obtained a B.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa. He did his graduate studies at the University of Waterloo, obtaining a MMath in Computer Science and subsequently a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He then did postdoctoral work at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Liege (Belgium). His research interests include combinatorics on words, automata theory, and numeration systems.
October 2017 - Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship:
Rampersad is a knowledgeable and gifted researcher with an exceptional publication record who has garnered international recognition for the quality of his work. He is considered to be one of the best of his generation. His expertise spans a variety of areas in discrete mathematics, including formal languages, automata theory, descriptional complexity, pattern avoidance, and number theory — but is internationally renowned for his research in combinatorics on words (the study of patterns in sequences over a finite set of symbols).
The Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship was established by Erica and Arnold Rogers, friends of The University of Winnipeg. Rogers was a medical doctor who, together with his wife Erica, valued the contribution by faculty members to research and scholarship. All members of the University faculty, many of whom have received national and international recognition for excellence in the research community, are eligible.
Anna Stokke, Professor and Chair Research Profile [pdf] Research Interests
Office: 6L26 Phone: 204-786-9059 email
Anna grew up in Manitoba and received a B.Sc. in mathematics from Brandon University and an M.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Manitoba. She completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Alberta in 2002. Anna's research area is in algebra, specifically combinatorial representation theory. She is interested in the representation theory of groups such as the general linear group.
In her spare time, Anna enjoys reading, hiking, and playing with her daughters.
2015 YMCA-YWCA Women of Distinction AWARD: Dr. Anna Stokke loves math and was the recipient of the Community Activism and Social Enterprise award in recognition of her dedication to improving mathematics education in Manitoba schools. Stokke played a lead role in Manitoba Education’s introduction of significant changes to the K-8 math curriculum in 2013. Excerpted from Winnipeg Free Press article.
2015 Clarence Atchison Award for Excellence in Community Service: An associate professor of mathematics, researcher and education activist, Dr. Anna Stokke has had a profound impact on math education policy and curriculum in Canada. Upon discovering that every Canadian province (except Quebec) had a significant decline in math scores on international assessment tests over a ten-year period, Stokke recognized a crisis was underway. She passionately engaged parents and all levels of government in improving math education, and her advocacy led to revisions to the Manitoba math curriculum in 2013. Stokke has spent countless volunteer hours working with children on math skills, and co-founded and leads two organizations that improve mathematical literacy: WISE Math (Western Initiative for Strengthening Education in Math) and Archimedes Math Schools (AMS). She and her husband Ross Stokke have also organized summer math readiness workshops for inner-city children in UWinnipeg’s Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre since 2013.
Ross Stokke, Professor Research Profile [pdf] Research Interests
Office: 6L06 Phone: 204-786-9375 email
Ross grew up in Winnipeg, and obtained his degrees from the University of Manitoba and the University of Alberta. Ross's research is in the areas of abstract harmonic analysis and functional analysis. More specifically, he studies locally compact groups, their unitary representations, and a variety of associated Banach algebras. The nature of this branch of mathematics is both algebraic and analytic.
Terry Visentin, Professor Research Interests
Office: 6L24 Phone: 204-786-9374 email
Born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Terry Visentin went to the University of Waterloo for his post secondary education. There he majored in Statistics with Computer Science as an undergraduate and obtained an MMath degree in Combinatorics. He received his PhD in 1989 and has been at the University of Winnipeg since that time.
His main research interests lie in algebraic combinatorics with a specific interest in enumerative problems. In his work he uses algebraic techniques to solve difficult counting problems, but at the same time is also able to prove significant theorems in algebra by analyzing the structure of certain well-defined mathematical objects.
He also has a love of mathematical problem solving in general and coaches students representing this University in the Putnam mathematics competition.
Outside of mathematics, his interests include music and bridge.