Campersand values our community. They are the ones who teach, model, and mentor our campers to play, ponder, and reflect on their potential. Our community supports the campers, challenging them to reach and stretch, while still reminding them to be playful.
We’re excited to have a full roster of faculty who will guide, inspire, and play with the campers. Our faculty cohort are familiar with teaching and interacting with enthusiastic and curious kids – they were once kids too.
Campersand Staff
Anita Chou – Executive Director
Anita has a background in electrical engineering and has worked in Big Tech for most of her career. She is passionate about math and science education, particularly dedicated to supporting radically accelerated children and ensuring their unique needs are met. Anita serves on the board of several local gifted advocacy organizations and is actively involved in their initiatives. She is enthusiastic about building the math community and creating resources both locally and globally. Anita’s favorite aspect of Campersand is fostering a deep understanding and appreciation of the vast breadth and beauty of mathematics. This passion drives her to create engaging and challenging learning experiences that inspire curiosity and a lifelong love for math.
Yo’av Rieck – Academic Director
Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, Yo’av crossed the globe to the University of Texas, Austin for graduate studies in Mathematics — specializing in low dimensional topology — following graduation from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology).
For the past 20 years he has been studying and teaching math at the University of Arkansas. During the school year he teaches at Cookies for Proof, the math club for high schoolers. In the summer he travels to Japan spending time with family and collaborating with math researchers.
Garrett Shields – Admissions/ Counselor Staff Director
Garrett is a PhD student in the Math department at UNM. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest. A bit of a late bloomer, he actually got his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature before discovering his passion for math while teaching algebra and geometry to high school students in Denver. He loves working with students and exposing them to math they might never encounter in high school as well as exploring and discussing mathematical philosophy. His research interests are related to Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Topology.
Outside of math, he loves going on long bike rides and camping and hiking all over New Mexico. There’s a lot of beautiful places in this state!
Kimberly Nugent – Operations Manager & Family Engagement Coordinator
After being a Campersand parent and volunteer since 2019, Kimberly joined us on staff in 2025. When not working with Campersand, Kimberly edits books and volunteers with Albuquerque Youth Symphony and ASK Academy in Albuquerque.
Campersand Faculty
Jason Cantarella
I am a professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia. My research focuses on the shapes of random curves and polygons. I’m particularly interested in questions like How likely is it that a random curve is knotted?, or What can we expect from a random diagram of a random space curve?. My research is in the general area of geometric knot theory.
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Wendy K. Tam
Professor of Political Science, Computer Science, and Law at Vanderbilt University, an affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Professional Researcher in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco
Mathematics is the tie that holds together her eclectic interests. She has loved math all her life, but really discovered its beauty when she started teaching math to her sons, who love math even more than she does! Her kids wanted to do math with other kids, so she began her own math circle and started teaching at math summer camps.
Her mathematical journey has been immensely fulfilling and has taught her that sharing mathematical beauty (especially with children) is the surest and quickest way to multiply its appreciation and joy.
James Degnan
James grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he attended Jefferson Middle School and Albuquerque High School. He went to college and graduate school at the University of New Mexico with majors in philosophy and math with a minor in music, and finished a PhD in statistics in 2005. Afterward, he did postdocs at Harvard in biostatistics and University of Michigan in human genetics. In 2008, he moved to New Zealand to join the faculty at the University of Canterbury.
After five years, including experiencing the earthquakes in Christchurch in 2011, he moved back to his hometown to be a professor at UNM. His research has mostly focused on probabilistic models of evolutionary trees. He has also co-directed the UNM-PNM New Mexico High School Math Contest since 2021.
Vivian Fang
Vivian is a PhD candidate in computer science at UC Berkeley who is broadly interested in security, systems, and applied cryptography. She has taught computer science classes ranging from security to how the Internet works, many of which rely on neat mathematical ideas.
In her free time she likes to bike, sew, and ski poorly.
Daniel Hader
Inspired by the 3D graphics of his favorite childhood video games, Daniel’s interest in math and computers began at a young age and blossomed into a lifelong passion. From logic puzzles and strategy games to music with funny time signatures, you’d be pressed to find an interest of Daniel’s that isn’t totally nerdy. Academically,
Daniel is finishing his PhD in computer science at the University of Arkansas and is particularly fascinated by topics like logic, dynamical systems, and computability theory where complex behaviors naturally arise from simple rules.
Todd B Krause
Todd remains equally inept in numerous disciplines. Forced by his parents to go to college for a year, he skipped out at the end to join a rock band. You’re reading about him on the C&! webpage, so you can guess how his music career ended up. But in that year of college he got hooked on mathematics, physics, and ancient languages, and he hasn’t given them up yet.
Rumor has it he’s a mathematical physicist with research experience in nonlinear dynamics, Hamiltonian systems, and numerical simulations of black hole collisions. But during the day he publishes free resources for ancient languages with the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. You might’ve run across some of his box-office hits, lesson series on the language of the Vikings, Old Norse, as well as on Old Church Slavonic, Gothic, and even Tocharian. Well, somebody’s gotta do it… Tocharian lessons aren’t just gonna write themselves!
Tanay Mehta
Growing up between Mumbai, India and Dallas, Texas, Tanay only stumbled upon the beauty of math in college. He promptly decided to change majors to mathematics and eventually pursued a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science. Having missed a childhood of mathematical play, he enjoys sharing the wonder of math and learning from the C&! community.
In his spare time, Tanay enjoys curating his music collection, and reading literature.
David Metzler
David was born and raised in Albuquerque. He attended Rice University and has a PhD in mathematics from MIT. After a stint at the college level, he returned to his hometown, and has taught math at Albuquerque Academy since 2004.
He enjoys spending his free time in the mountains and deserts of New Mexico and the greater Southwest.
Julien Piet
Julien is a Ph.D. student in the computer science department at UC Berkeley, advised by Professors Vern Paxson and David Wagner. His research focuses on how to safely use AI for securing computer networks.
Yoav Rieck
Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, Yo’av crossed the globe to the University of Texas, Austin for graduate studies in Mathematics — specializing in low dimensional topology — following graduation from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology).
For the past 20 years he has been studying and teaching math at the University of Arkansas. During the school year he teaches at Cookies for Proof, the math club for high schoolers. In the summer he travels to Japan spending time with family and collaborating with math researchers.
Rolfe Schmidt
Rolfe has been playing with math since he was young enough to be a camper, always looking forward to school breaks when he would have uninterrupted time with his books. It wasn’t until he began teaching mathematics to his sons that he realized how differently things could be taught, how early deep ideas could be introduced, and how kids loved to be challenged.
Over the last decade he has started a Seattle-area math circle, taught and served as academic director at Epsilon Camp and Campersand, and coached math competition teams. In his day job he is a Research Engineer at Signal Messenger where he works to turn ideas from the research community into practical, high performance, and provably secure systems.
When not playing with math or writing code, Rolfe is outside running, hiking, or skiing with his family.
Rohit Prasankumar
Rohit is an experimental physicist with a lifelong love for math and science, though his true passion for physics only emerged during college. He earned his undergraduate degree from UT-Austin before pursuing a Ph.D. at MIT, where his research focused on building lasers capable of producing pulses as short as 5 femtoseconds (10⁻¹⁵ seconds—one femtosecond to one second is like one hour compared to the age of the universe!). He then joined the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, leading a team that used femtosecond lasers to probe the fastest measurable timescales in a variety of materials. Today, he is a Director at Intellectual Ventures, spearheading a project tackling one of physics’ grand challenges: achieving room-temperature superconductivity.
Outside the lab, Rohit enjoys playing games, sports, and hiking with his family. Rumor has it that he was once a jazz drummer and could even dunk a basketball—at least until his knees had other plans.
Jeremy Van Horn-Morris
JVHM grew up in Oregon, went to grad school at the University of Texas-Austin, and is now faculty at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on the connections between topology and geometry on 2-,3-,4- and 5-dimensional spaces. Visual shorthands are a plus!
Since being in Fayetteville, JVHM has helped with the math department’s Celebration of Mind, organized the weekly MOEMS group, ran a monthly Saturday Morning Math Club, and now hangs out while Yoav runs the high school math group. He thinks that, at all ages, math is more enjoyable and more powerful when thinking about it with another person. Puns are encouraged.
Hadas Zeilberger
Hadas Zeilberger is a PhD student in the Yale Applied Cryptography Laboratory, advised by Ben Fisch. Her research is focused on building succinct, non-interactive proof systems from error-correcting codes.
Campersand Counselors
Garrett Shields – Admissions/ Counselor Staff Director
Garrett is a PhD student in the Math department at UNM. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest. A bit of a late bloomer, he actually got his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature before discovering his passion for math while teaching algebra and geometry to high school students in Denver. He loves working with students and exposing them to math they might never encounter in high school as well as exploring and discussing mathematical philosophy. His research interests are related to Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Topology.
Outside of math, he loves going on long bike rides and camping and hiking all over New Mexico. There’s a lot of beautiful places in this state!
Nicolaas Koers
I’m Niko. I am an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico pursuing a bachelor’s in pure mathematics, with plans for a doctorate. I like hiking, camping, rock climbing, gardening, and hanging out with my partner. I am passionate about math but don’t quite have a focus. Also I’m learning Norweigen and am interested in languages.
Tommy Denny Martins
Tommy Denny Martins is listed among the Bachelor of Science Mathematics & Statistics majors at UNM within the Department of Mathematics & Statistics. His concentration is specifically in Pure Mathematics, which focuses on theoretical aspects of mathematics such as algebra, geometry, and number theory.
His faculty advisor is Professor Sarah Percival, who guides him academically within the Pure Mathematics program.
Orion Rhoades
Orion Rhoades (he/him/his) is a junior at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Sustainability Studies and Government. In his free time, he likes to play video games, do things with his friends, and look at political maps
Ezra Van Horn
Ezra is currently a student at the University of Arkansas and has been actively involved in math clubs since an early age. Outside of academics, Ezra enjoys a variety of hobbies, including playing games, rock climbing, experimenting with baking recipes, exploring mathematical concepts, and computer programming.
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Rosalind Chang
Rosalind Chang, a recent graduate of Davidson Academy Online, began their journey with C&! as a camper and is set to join the C&! team as a first-year counselor this summer. Rosalind will be attending Olin College of Engineering as a freshman in the fall majoring in electrical and computer engineering.