2025-2026 Mathematics New Faculty Hires

Orsola Capovilla-Searle

Orsola Capovilla-Searle earned her PhD at Duke University in 2021 under the supervision of Lenny Ng. She was an NSF graduate fellow. From Fall 2021 to Spring 2025 she was both an NSF Postdoc at UC Davis working with Roger Casals and a Krenner Visiting Assistant Professor.

Her research interests are in the fields of symplectic and contact topology, two twin fields that arose from the study of Hamiltonian dynamics and that have many applications to low dimensional topology, geometry, and mathematical physics. Capovilla-Searle's research focuses on Legendrian knots which arise in the natural world as caustics of light. She has a joint appointment in the college of engineering and has begun exploring the geometry behind robotics.

Capovilla-Searle was born and raised in Mexico prior to studying at Bryn Mawr college in the US. During her spare time, she enjoys reading, painting, and hiking.

Elizabeth Carlson

Prof. Elizabeth Carlson earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics at Carroll College in Helena, MT, her hometown. She proceeded to go to graduate school at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, where she received her Master of Arts and PhD (both in Mathematics) under the advisement of Prof. Adam Larios. She spent only 3 years in Nebraska, as the last two years (due to the beginning of COVID) were spent either working at or remotely for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Finishing her schooling in 2021, she continued in academia as a PIMS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria under the advisement of Prof. David Goluskin, and then in 2023 was awarded the prestigious Von Kármán Instructorship at Caltech under the advisement of Prof. Andrew Stuart. Her research interests include partial differential equations and fluid dynamics, with practical emphases in data assimilation, optimization, high performance computing, and numerical analysis.

“My goals currently are to continue to work at the intersection of pure and applied mathematics, using the tools of each to further the understanding of both in ways that could not be done by studying the individual fields alone. I think this approach also lends itself to good teaching practices; in particular, you can work to connect real-world problems to the techniques in class directly to make the work more interesting, consequently allowing to students to have better recall of the material.”

When she’s not working, Elizabeth loves to hike, read (voraciously), and play piano.

Brian Moore

Brian Moore earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom in 2003. He held a postdoctoral research position at McGill University in Quebec, followed by a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Iowa. He joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of Central Florida in 2007 and earned tenure there in 2013. His research interests have been focused on numerical analysis and differential equations with emphasis on structure-preserving algorithms and systems on lattices. His work has contributed to several scientific applications in neuroscience, material science, wave mechanics, and computer vision. Earlier this year, Brian resigned from his post as an Associate Professor and moved to Oregon in search of a position that would grant more time focused on undergraduate student success. He says that his new role as an Instructor/Advisor at OSU is a perfect fit. Apart from mathematics and education, some of his favorite things to do include snowboarding, woodworking, and poetry-reading.