Curriculum Vitae
Ramón Manuel Figueroa-Centeno, Ph.D.

Mathematics Department
University of Hawai`i at Hilo
200 W. Kawili St.
Hilo, HI 96720-4091
(808) 974-7387 (office)
(808) 974-7693 (fax)
ramonf@hawaii.edu

(click here to go to my main page)

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Place of Birth: Caracas, Venezuela
Date of Birth: April 1, 1967

EDUCATION

EXPERIENCE

  1. CAVEIN (Venezuelan Company of Studies and Investments) - Computer Systems Analyst
    1985-1990
  2. Universidad Metropolitana - Teaching Assistant
    Three semesters
    1986-1987
  3. WMU - Teaching Assistant/Doctoral Associate
    1992-1998
  4. ATYP (Academically Talented Youth Program) - Instructor (held in conjunction with Kalamazoo College)
    1996-1998
  5. Kalamazoo College - Instructor
    Spring 1997
  6. WMU - Assistant Director
    Summer 1996
    The Eighth International Conference in Graph Theory and Combinatorics
  7. WMU - Mathematical Computing Consultant
    Summer 1995
    National Science Foundation Summer Program computer consultant for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Western Michigan University. Primary responsibilities included assisting students (high school teachers) and professors with their computer needs for the summer.
  8. Kalamazoo Area math and Science Center - Mentor
    1993
    Served as a mentor to a Latino high school student in this prestigious program. The student, Wayne Alejandro Wolbert-Pérez, produced a thesis on the history of Mayan mathematics.
  9. WMU - From 1992 to 1998 I spent several hours a week working one on one with Francesc Antoni Muntaner-Batle, since he was a freshman taking Calculus to the completion of his master's in Pure Mathematics. During these meetings I mentored and tutored him in all his Mathematics classes. He decided then to become a Graph Theorist and in November 2001 earned his doctorate Summa cum Laude at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) with a dissertation born out of the research we have conducted with Rikio Ichishima on Magic Labelings of Graphs since 1998.
  10. Pittsburg State University (PSU) - Assistant Professor
    1998 - 2002
  11. University of Hawai`i at Hilo (UHH) - Assistant Professor
    2002 - Present
  12. UHH - During most of the 2002-2003 academic year I mentored a high school student, Miss Kristen Bautista, in her mathematics project for the state science fair, which she won in the mathematics category. Her paper was titled If Chickens were Kings. In it she studied the so-called King Chicken Theorem and other properties of tournaments. In particular, she postulated and proved what she called the Duke Chicken Theorem. She also used the Monte Carlo method to give validity to a conjecture that she made. She learned during this project not only mathematics, but also how is it that mathematicians present their results.
  13. UHH – From 2002 to the present, I have been working with various students at UHH in undergraduate research. The papers (and perhaps a book) that result from these efforts will be submitted for publication during the Spring 2007 semester.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND PAPERS

Participant in the following seminars and congresses:

  1. Seminar on Mathematical Logic - Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, 1988.
  2. Speaker in the International Congress on New Technologies for Software and Supercomputer Development, Caracas, 1989 (sponsored by the French Embassy and the Paris-Sud University, Orsay, France and the Central University of Venezuela, Caracas).
  3. Speaker at the Congress of Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Ratón, Florida, 1990.
  4. Speaker at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Baltimore, where I presented my research on Efficient Imbeddings of Finite Projective Planes, 1998.
  5. Seminars of Graph Theory and History of Mathematics at WMU whilst pursuing doctoral studies there.
  6. Given Colloquium talks on Graph Theory and History of mathematics whilst at PSU.
  7. Given a Colloquium talk on Graph Theory whilst at UHH.

Co-author of the following publications:

  1. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno and R. E. Giudici, An Improved Algorithm for the Chromatic Polynomial, presented at the International Congress on New Technologies for Software and Supercomputer Development, Caracas, 1989.
  2. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno and R. E. Giudici, Frucht's Algorithm for the Chromatic Polynomial, published in the proceedings of the 1991 Caribbean Conference on Graph Theory.
  3. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno and A. T. White, Topological models for classical configurations. Special issue in honor of Professor Ralph Stanton. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 86 (2000), no. 2, 421-434. MR 2001d:05028
  4. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F. A. Muntaner-Batle, Bertrand's postulate and magical product labelings, Bull. Inst. Combin. Appl., 30 (2000) 53-65. MR 2001d:05163
  5. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F. A. Muntaner-Batle, The place of super edge-magic labelings among other classes of labelings, 17th British Combinatorial Conference (Canterbury, 1999). Discrete Math., 231 no. 1-3 (2001) 153-168. MR 2002b:05118
  6. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F. A. Muntaner-Batle, On super edge-magic graphs, Ars Combin., 64, (2002) 81-95. MR 1 914 199
  7. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F. A. Muntaner-Batle, On the super edge-magic deficiency of graphs, to appear in Discrete Math.
  8. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F. A. Muntaner-Batle, Magical coronations of graphs., Austral. J. Combin., 26 (2002) 199-208. MR 1 918 154
  9. R. M. Figueroa-Centeno and R. E. Giudici, An Improved Algorithm for the Chromatic Polynomial, presented at the International Congress on New Technologies for Software and Supercomputer Development, Caracas, 1989.
  10. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, Labeling the vertex amalgamation of graphs, Discussiones Mathematicae. Graph Theory, 23 (1) (2003) 129–139.
  11. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno and R. Ichishima, The n-dimensional cube is felicitous, Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, 41 (2004) 47–50.
  12. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, On edge-magic labelings of certain disjoint unions of graphs, The Australasian Journal of Combinatorics, 32 (2005) 225–242.
  13. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, Some new results on the super edge-magic deficiency of graphs, Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, 55 (2005) 17–31.
  14. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, On the super edge-magic deficiency of graphs, Ars Combinatoria, 78 (2006) 33–45.
  15. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, Gracefully cultivating trees on a cycle, preprint.
  16. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, Enlarging the classes of edge-magic 2-regular graphs, preprint.
  17. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, Construction methods to generate super edge-magic trees, preprint.
  18. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, On edge-magic labelings of 2-regular graphs, preprint.
  19. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima and F.A. Muntaner-Batle, On certain valuations of cycles and stars, preprint.
  20. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, R. Ichishima, F. A. Muntaner-Batle and M. Rius-Font, Labeling Generating Matrices, preprint.
  21. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, L.K. Lee-Loy and C.N. Rice, Uniquely Super Edge-Magic Graphs, preprint.
  22. R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, L.K. Lee-Loy and C.N. Rice, How Magical are the Hawaiian Lei Graphs?, preprint.
  23. W. Bierman and R.M. Figueroa-Centeno, Catalog of Small Order Super Edge-Magic Graphs, preprint.

RESEARCH

  1. Graph Theory and Combinatorial Algorithms with Prof. Reinaldo E. Giudici, Universidad Simón Bolívar, 1987.
  2. Primality Testing and Factorization Algorithms with Prof. Reinaldo E. Giudici, Universidad Simón Bolívar, 1989.
  3. Efficient Imbeddings of Finite Projective Planes, under the guidance of Prof. Arthur T. White, WMU, 1996 to 1998.
  4. Graph Labelings with Mr. Rikio Ichishima and Dr. Francesc Antoni Muntaner-Batle, since 1998.
  5. Supervised and worked with Mr. George Kaemmerling on his Master's problem. The resulting monograph presents a systematic search of all the possibilities in regards to realizing (or not) the 1-skelletons of the platonic solids as Cayley Color graphs.
  6. Research with undergraduate students at UHH: Mr. William Bierman, Ms. Leilani Lee Loy, Ms. Chelsea N. Rice, Mr. Justin DiPaola-Allen and Mr. Tien Chih.
  7. Research at UHH with Dr. Philippe Binder (Physics) and Dr. Sevki Erdogan (Computer Science).

HONORS, AWARDS AND ORGANIZATIONS

  1. Winner of the Colegio Humboldt Scientific Fair "Expo-Ciencia" in 1982 (Biology: The Family of Ovoviviparous Fishes Poecilidae), 1984 (Physics: The Laser), 1985 (Physics: The Telephone).
  2. Honorary mention during the first Apple Macintosh Applications Contest, Caracas, 1986 (Polar Coordinates Grapher: Polares #4).
  3. Member of the "Graph Group" of the Universidad Simón Bolívar and the Universidad Metropolitana, Dr. Reinaldo E. Giudici, Ph.D. Chair.
  4. Member of the honorary student organization L.I.C.U.M. (Laboratory of Investigations in Computing Universidad Metropolitana), Spring 1989 and Director of Research fall 1989.
  5. Member of the Pi Mu Epsilon chapter at WMU.
  6. Member of the American Mathematical Society.
  7. Member of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, since December 1996, Associate Fellow since 2000.
  8. Member of the Caribbean Latin American Club of WMU since 1991. Secretary 1992-1993.
  9. Member of the Hispanic Student Organization of WMU 1991-1998. Representative to the Hispanic Leadership Conference, Chicago (1991) and the National Council of La Raza Conference (1993).
  10. Advisor to H.O.T. (Hispanics of Today) of PSU, 1998-1999. I was nominated for advisor of the year 1998 for my involvement with this student group.
  11. Advisor to CCCP-MIR Club (Students from the former Soviet Union) of PSU, 2001 to present.
  12. Faculty member of the Kappa Mu Epsilon Chapter at PSU.
  13. Nominated by the students of PSU's Mathematics department for Distinguished Faculty Award in 2000 and 2001.
  14. Selected by the PSU faculty to be a senator at large of the university's faculty senate during the Fall 2000.
  15. Co-advisor to the UHH Math Club, since Fall 2003.

SPECIALTY SKILLS AND EXPERIENCES

Computer Programming

Specialty Computer Skills

I used some of the above computer skills to produce the many illustrations in the book Graphs of Groups on Surfaces by Arthur T. White (North-Holland 2001), as well as all the illustrations on the Graph Theory dissertations of Dr. Dawn Jones, Dr. Francesc Antoni Muntaner-Batle as well as my own. I have also used these skills in preparing slides for lectures and seminars.

Languages

Spoken: Spanish, English
Reading: French, German, Italian and Portuguese

Page updated: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 3:32 PM HST