My name is Mike Pawliuk and as of January 2019 I am an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, CLTA at the University of Toronto Mississauga in the Department of Mathematical & Computational Sciences.
Prior to this, in 2017-2018 I completed a research Post Doc at the University of Calgary, with advisors Claude Laflamme (Calgary) and Robert Woodrow (Calgary). I completed my PhD in math at the University of Toronto, with advisors Stevo Todorcevic (Toronto) and Vladimir Pestov (Ottawa) in July 2015.
I really enjoy teaching and I like thinking about how to make my course as awesome as it can be. I taught point set topology in the summers of 2013 and 2014 (which was the first time a graduate student taught that course at the University of Toronto). In the summer of 2016 I helped teach a flipped classroom style course for second year calculus. Part of what makes me such a strong teacher is that I consider myself a mentor as well; I teach math, but I also teach life. I have written two guides to succeeding in first year calculus and curated a collection of 35 mathematical summer projects.
Mathematically, I am interested in set theory and topology, with an emphasis on (large) topological groups, topological dynamics and universal spaces (like the Urysohn space). My thesis checks the amenability and unique ergodicity of the automorphism groups of the homogeneous directed graphs. Problem solving for contests and Olympiads is also something I commit a lot of time to. Recently I was a lecturer at the 2018 Summer Camp for Canadian IMO students; I lead this session about graph theory.
Extra-mathematically, I juggle, cheer for the Edmonton Oilers (the Winnipeg Jets weren’t around when I started watching hockey!), geocache and play Magic the Gathering (I published an article that got mentioned on the official Magic website!). I take reading, etymology and dictionaries quite seriously.
Mike Pawliuk - Mathematics 