Rate My Professor Joel Louwsma

Louwsma's research interests include topology, group theory, combinatorics, and number theory. Trained as a topologist, his thesis and postdoctoral work focused on quasimorphisms and their connections to stable commutator length and bounded cohomology; more recently, he has concentrated on arithmetical structures on graphs and their critical groups. His publications have appeared in journals such as Linear Algebra and its Applications, Discrete Mathematics, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, and Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. Notable works include "Critical groups of arithmetical structures under a generalized star-clique operation" with Alexander Diaz-Lopez (Linear Algebra Appl. 656, 2023), "Arithmetical structures on bidents" with Kassie Archer, Abigail C. Bishop, Alexander Diaz-Lopez, Luis D. García Puente, and Darren Glass (Discrete Math. 343, 2020), and "On arithmetical structures on complete graphs" with undergraduate Zachary Harris (Involve 13, 2020). He has received the Apostol Award for Excellence in Teaching in Mathematics from Caltech in 2010, along with multiple Niagara University grants including Academic Innovation Fund awards (2018-2019), Research Support Grants (2016-2017, 2019-2020), and Undergraduate Student-Faculty Research Collaboration Awards (2022). Louwsma has given invited talks at institutions including Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (2019), University of Pittsburgh (2017), and Yale University (2014). At Niagara University, he has chaired the Mathematics Search Committee (2019-2022), served on the Academic Senate (2018-2022), and mentored students by taking them to conferences such as the MAA Seaway Section Meeting.