The EDGE Foundation is delighted to announce the 2025 Class of Ruskai Fund Fellows!

The Mary Beth Ruskai Research Fund was established with a generous bequest from the estate of Mary Beth Ruskai. This fund is a testament of Beth Ruskai’s dedication to increasing gender diversity and empowering women in the mathematics field.

The Research Fund, which consists of two annual grants of $5,000, is designed to empower women mathematical scientists.

Keisha Cook
Assistant Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Clemson University

Dr. Keisha Cook is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at Clemson University. She received a PhD in applied mathematics and computational biology from The University of Alabama in 2019 and then completed a postdoctoral research position at Tulane University. Her research is in applied and computational biology; e.g. stochastic processes and single particle tracking. Dr. Cook collaborates with experimentalists on research topics involving intracellular transport in human and animal cells, simulating processes from data sets captured from microscopic imaging. Her interdisciplinary works extend to the fields of bioengineering, biophysics, and forestry. In addition to research, she teaches courses in probability and stochastic processes.

Outside of teaching and research, she is an organizer, speaker, and lecturer for many conferences, workshops, and committees focusing on mentoring, highlighting, and providing opportunities for underrepresented minorities in mathematics. She strives to support and mentor underrepresented students, postdocs, and researchers throughout her career in academia. She has a keen interest in increasing the number of women and underrepresented students in STEM. She has participated in and served as a mentor, organizer, and lead for several programs supporting under-represented minority students in mathematics. Dr. Keisha Cook is a 2014 EDGE Program participant, a 2017 EDGE Program Mentor, and a 2024 EDGE Program Instructor.

Jingbo Liu
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Texas A&M University – San Antonio

Jingbo Liu has been an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Texas A&M University–San Antonio, a Hispanic-Serving and Military-Embracing institution with a predominantly first-generation student population, since Fall 2021, after serving as a Lecturer at the same institution for three years. Jingbo holds a B.S. in Mathematics with teacher certification from Hebei Normal University and an M.S. in Mathematics from Shandong University, both in China. She earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Wesleyan University in 2016, after which she held a postdoctoral position at the University of Hong Kong from 2016 to 2018.

Jingbo’s primary research interests lie in algebraic number theory, particularly the representation theory of quadratic and Hermitian lattices over number fields and their applications to lattice-based post-quantum cryptography.

Jingbo is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of mathematicians. Her five student mentees have presented their research at the MAA MathFest and/or the AMS–PME Undergraduate Research Sessions at the JMM. In Summer 2023, she served as the sole Director and Principal Investigator of the NSF–MAA-sponsored National Research Experience for Undergraduates Program at Texas A&M–San Antonio.