What can I call you?
"Jonah" is fine! I also respond to "Dr. Ostroff", "Professor Ostroff", and "Profstroff".
What did you do before coming to UW?
I grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, and I thought math was just okay until attending the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics.
That's when I learned there's a lot of cool math out there, and I've been hooked ever since.
I completed a B.A. at Carleton College in 2008, a Ph.D. at Brandeis University under Ira Gessel in 2013, and then I moved out here.
What's your research like?
Well, as a teaching professor, my job is to teach seven or eight classes a year. Sometimes I do small research projects on the side,
but that's not what I'm paid for. That said, my research is in enumerative combinatorics.
As an undergrad I studied permutation patterns, and then in grad school I mostly did graph theory. My thesis was "Counting Connected Digraphs with Gradings".
I've also led a few WXML projects, two related to social choice ("voting theory") and one related to combinatorial game theory.
What are your cats' names?
Gomba (Hungarian for "mushroom") and Fungo (Italian for "mushroom").
...why?
No particular reason, but my fondness for Hungarian traces back to the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, which is a great program. More UW students should apply!
What's your favorite mathematical object?
The Fano plane, for sure.
Has anyone ever told you that you look like Seth Rogen?
Yeah.