Noteworthy: Loh received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The Faculty Early Career Development Program offers the foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education.
Occupation: Assistant professor of mathematical sciences
Age: 32
Residence: Squirrel Hill
Family: Wife, Debbie Lee, and three children, Vivian Loh, 8; Vincent Loh, 6; and Diana Loh, 1
Education: Bachelor's degree in math from the California Institute of Technology in 2004, master's degree in math from the University of Cambridge in 2005; and a doctorate in math from Princeton University in 2010
Background: Raised in Madison, Wis., Loh started competing in math competitions when he was in middle school. He is a national coach of the USA International Math Olympiad team. He is cofounder of an education technology startup, Expii.com, which leverages crowd-sourcing to offer interactive math and science lessons online. As a professor, Loh uses randomness as a component in the construction of discrete mathematical objects and also introduces randomness as a proof technique to solve problems about purely deterministic systems. He is affiliated with CMU's interdisciplinary doctorate program in algorithms, combinatorics and optimization and has developed a problem-solving seminar series for undergraduate students.
Quote: “Math to me is thinking. It's creative thinking. It's a way of analyzing facts very precisely and coming up with defensible arguments.”
