Ryan Spitler
I graduated in
2011
I majored/minored in
Chemistry and Math double major
I currently live in
Grand Rapids
My current or most recent professional title/role is
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rice University Math Department
My career path and accomplishments since graduating from Alma:
I worked at Auto-Owners in Lansing for a year and then started grad school in Math at Purdue University. I got my PhD in 2019 and then had a postdoctoral position at McMaster University in Ontario for two years. Now I have an NSF Fellowship to work at Rice University for three years, after which I plan to apply for tenure-track jobs.
My Alma experience prepared me for my career, graduate school, and life by
With the intimate environments in Alma’s departments, I was able to work closely with the faculty in both of my majors (including Dr. Turk!). By gaining research experience directly, I was able to decide that I preferred the abstract problem solving of math to the hands-on lab work of chemistry. The research work I did at Alma gave me a taste of the academic work I continue to do today.