David Swinarski is a Private Tutor and an assistant professor of mathematics at Fordham University, where he teaches Calculus I and II, Probability and Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Mathematics of Finance along with Finite Mathematics and Numerical Methods. A Minnesota native, he has loved math and science all his life, and he has also always sought to balance his technical pursuits with the arts; he enjoys making complex and basic mathematical concepts accessible for his students, as well as exploring the connections between math, science, and every other subject.
As an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, he majored in math and English, mixing proofs and calculations with a love of literature and reading great books. At Notre Dame he received the Science Dean’s Award and the Aumann and GE Prizes for his work in science and math, and graduated summa cum laude. David received a Marshall Scholarship in 2000 to study at the University of Oxford in England, and completed his master’s degree in math at Oxford in 2003. He returned to the U.S. and received his Ph.D in math from Columbia University in 2008, where he was an instructor and a Teaching Assistant for many courses in the math department, and the evening hours coordinator at the Barnard College Math Help Room.
David held a postdoctoral research position at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia from 2008-2011 and returned to the Big Apple to join the Fordham faculty in August 2011. His main research area is algebraic geometry, the study of polynomial equations. He balances his abstract theoretical work with computer programming and applied projects; he is experienced in C++, Visual Basic, and specialized computer algebra packages such as Macaulay 2, MAGMA, and Sage. David’s most recent work addresses solving polynomials that arise in probability, statistics, and mathematical finance.
In his spare time, David is fortunate enough to love both cooking and running (he ran the NYC marathon twice) and happily perpetuates the stereotypical connections between math and music in playing the piano and cello.