Bio

Akalu Tefera is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Grand Valley State University. His research interests include computer algebra, automated theorem proving, and combinatorics and their "derivatives" or "equivalence classes".

Dr. Tefera earned his B.Sc. (1989) and M.Sc. (1992) degrees in Mathematics from the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Temple University (2000), where his work in computation and discovery of the Multi-Variate Tefera Integral singled him out as "A Truly 3rd-Millennium Mathematics Ph.D."

As a 2006-07 MLK Visiting Professor at MIT, Dr. Tefera was hosted by the Department of Mathematics. Strongly interested in collaborative research with undergraduates, he was actively involved in undergraduate teaching and participated in dynamic combinatorics group seminars. His research involved working on software that facilitates mathematical expressions in symbolic form, resulting in software packages that have useful applications in mathematics, in particular, to computer-generated proofs of combinatorial and integral identities.

Publications

Proofs of Ruehr’s Identities, (with S.Meehan, M. Weselcouch, and A. Zeleke), INTEGERS: Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory, #A10, 2014.

Curious Relations and Identities Involving the Catalan Generating Function and Numbers, (with A. Nkwanta), Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 16 (2013), Article 13.9.5.

Computerized proof techniques for undergraduates, (with C. J. Smith and A. Zeleke), International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science &Technology, DOI:10.1080/0020739X.2011.644335, 2012.

Combinatorial and Automated Proofs of Certain Identities, (with J. Brereton, A. Farid, M. Karnib, G, Marple, A. Quenon), Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Vol. 18(2), P14, 2011.

A Wilf-Zeilberger Approach to Sums of Choi, Zörnig and Rathie (with S. Dahlberg and T. Ferdinands), Quaestiones Mathematicae, Vol. 33, 2010, 341-346.

W H A T I S a Wilf-Zeilberger Pair?, The NOTICES of the AMS, Vol. 57, No. 4, April, 2010, pp. 508–509.

On Representation of Certain Real Numbers Using Combinatorial Identities (with A. Zeleke, G. Grossman), International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 55, no. 3, 2009, 451-460.

Freshman Rules in Calculus (with A. Zeleke), International Journal of Mathematics Education in Science and Technology, 99999:1, 2009.

On proofs of certain combinatorial identities (with A. Zeleke, G. Grossman), Congressus Numerantium, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fibonacci Numbers and their Applications, Braunschweig, Germany, 194, 2009, 123-128.

The Naï ve Product Rule for Derivatives, (with C. Gay and A. Zeleke), College Math. J, 39(2008) 145-148.

Summation Identities for Representation of Certain Real Numbers, (with G. Grossman and A. Zeleke), International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, Volume 2006, Article ID 78739, 8 pages.

Enhancing Core Mathematics Courses,(with E. Billings, S. Schlicker, and K. Novtony), PRIMUS, XIV:3 (2004), 230-252.

A new triple sum combinatorial identity(with Joseph Sinyor ),International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, 31:12 (2002), 761-763.

MultInt, a Maple Package for Multiple Integration by the WZ Method, Journal of Symbolic Computation, 34:5 (2002), 329-353.

A new combinatorial identity(with Joseph Sinyor and Ted Speevak),Interrnational Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, 25:26(2001) 361-363.

A Multiple Integral Evaluation Inspired by The Multi-WZ Method ,Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, N2, Vol. 6 (1), 1999. [ DVI | PS | Associated Maple Package ]

Sum of a Sequence of Floors and Ceilings (with Mathias Beck and Melkamu Zeleke , Mathematics Magazine, 71, no. 5(1998), 390-391.

At MIT

MLK professor teaches 'excitement' of solving math--and life--problems

Deborah Halber, News Office correspondent
Publication Date:
May 2, 2007