Welcome to my homepage!

Selma Yildirim

Assistant Instructional Professor

5734 S University Ave

The University of Chicago

Chicago, IL 60637

Email: selma@uchicago.edu


Teaching

Teaching in Winter 2024:

MATH 183 - Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences I

Past Quarters:

I taught courses in-person, remotely, and hybrid or blended synchronous teaching format. In what follows, if teaching modality in not given, that means I taught those courses in-person.

MATH 211 - Basic Numerical Analysis

MATH 201 - Mathematical Methods for Physical Sciences II (Autumn 2020(Remote), Winter 2021(Remote), Spring 2021(Remote), Spring 2022)

MATH 185 - Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences III (Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Autumn 2023)

MATH 184 - Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences II (Spring 2022)

(Even though I occasionally brought my laptop to the classroom in my courses in Spring 2022, I have decided not to list these as Blended Synchronous Teaching.)

MATH 183 - Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences I (Autumn 2022)

MATH 153 - Calculus III (Winter 2022)(Hybrid or Blended Synchronous Teaching-Most students attended in person, students staying at home joined classes on Zoom)

MATH 152 - Calculus II (Autumn 2021)(Blended Synchronous Teaching-Most students attended in person, remote students enrolled in the class and students staying at home joined classes on Zoom)

MATH 196 - Linear Algebra (Winter 2019, Winter 2020)

MATH 195 - Mathematical Methods for Social Sciences (Autumn 2018, Winter 2019, Spring 2019, Autumn 2019, Spring 2020(Remote),Autumn 2020(Remote))

Extra Credit Python Tutorials -- Introduction of Python coding in Mathematics courses

As part of an extra credit project, I prepared these tutorials for my students enrolled in Math 195 (Math Methods for Social Sciences)0 and Math 196 (Linear Algebra). The learning is measured by online quizzes posted on the class pages at CANVAS.

Github page for all the Tutorials 

Other Courses Taught at UChicago

Youngs Scholars Program (YSP)

I taught two courses in the YSP Program ( Young Scholars Program ) This is a program for talented high school students who would like to explore more advanced topics in Mathematics. The duration of the program is about four weeks.

In Summer 2021, I taught remotely on Zoom and shared responsibilities with another instructor. Several undergrad and recently graduated UChicago students helped us by actively working with students in Zoom breakout rooms.

In Summer 2023, I was the only instructor. Several undergrad and recently graduated UChicago students again worked with students during problem sessions.

The theme for both summers was Geometry. In Summer 2021, we decided to talk about topics at the intersection of Geometry and Linear Algebra. Besides teaching actively on Zoom, we created a curriculum taking students' level of knowledge into account. In Summer 2023, the course was about topics in Geometry and Linear Algebra. While I kept some previous parts, I updated the content significantly.

Some activites and more content might be posted later on this webpage.

Phoenix STEM Program in September 2023

I taught three lectures for Calculus II, held three office hours and a two-hour problem session discussion. In addition, I prepared and posted content for students in the Canvas course page.


Publications / Submitted Papers and Preprints

1. Eigenvalue inequalities for Klein-Gordon operators, Journal of Functional Analysis, 256(12) (2009) 3977–3995 (with E. Harrell).

2. An Improvement to a Berezin-Li-Yau type inequality for the Klein-Gordon Operator, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 138(11) (2010) 4059–4066.

3. Multidimensional lower bounds for the eigenvalues of Stokes and Dirichlet Laplacian operators, Journal of Mathematical Physics, 53(4) (2012) 043508 (with T. Yolcu).

4. Bounds for the eigenvalues of the fractional Laplacian, Reviews in Mathematical Physics, 24(3) (2012) 1250003 (with T. Yolcu).

5. Estimates for the sums of eigenvalues of the fractional Laplacian on a bounded domain, Communications in Contemporary Mathematics, 15(3) (2013) 1250048(with T. Yolcu) .

6. Heat trace of non-local operators, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 87(1) (2013) 304–318 (with R. Banuelos).

7. Estimates on the eigenvalues of the clamped plate problem, Journal of Mathematical Physics, 54(4) (2013) 43515  (with T. Yolcu).

8. Eigenvalue bounds for the poly-harmonic operators, Illinois Journal of Mathematics 58(3) (2014)  (with T. Yolcu)

9. Sharper estimates on the eigenvalues of Dirichlet fractional Laplacian, Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems – Series A, 35(5) (2015) 2209– 2225.  (with T. Yolcu)

10. Refined Eigenvalue Bounds on the Dirichlet Fractional Laplacian, Journal of Mathematical Physics, 56 (2015) 073506  (with T. Yolcu).

11. Sharper estimates on the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet fractional Laplacian on a planar domain, Electronic Journal of Differential Equations, 2018 (165) (2018) 1–14  (with T. Yolcu).

12. Sharp Bounds for spectral functions of the Klein-Gordon operator, preprint (2010) (with L. Hermi).


Some Educational Resources

 Metacognition for Teaching and Learning

Metacognition is knowing about one's own cognitive learning processes. Metacognition is first introduced by Flavell, please look at one of his articles to learn more about his perpective. With the amount of resources available on the internet, and adoption of more AI tools, knowing about one's own learning processes is becoming more important everyday. So, I have decided to collect some resources, presentations, reports and educational materials that I prepared for my students on this webpage and I hope you will also find them inspirational and useful.

 Using Internet Resources to Enhance Students' Learning

Please click here to see some activities that I created by using some tools and internet resources.

 GeoGebra applets

Please click here for GeoGebra Applets that I created for my students.

 Some Useful Gradescope Practices

Please click here for some tips and practices when using Gradescope.


2018-2019 Data Science Projects Completed

1 Million Women to Tech , Winter of Data (January 14- April 7, 2019)

Datathon project: Global Gender Gap Report

(Jupyter notebook including Python codes)

Bertelsmann-Udacity Data Foundations Nanodegree Program (Certification Date: October 4, 2018)

Data Science Projects (Certification Date: October 4, 2018)

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Projects completed using R (Statistics program)  -- info will be posted later

Projects completed using Python -- info will be posted later


The University of Chicago Department of Mathematics

Math Circles of Chicago

Association for Women in Mathematics