Joy Morris facts for kids

Joy Morris, born in 1970, is a Canadian mathematician. She studies interesting areas of math like group theory and graph theory. She also looks at how these two areas connect through something called Cayley graphs. Besides her research, she cares a lot about mathematics education. She has written two free online math textbooks for university students. She also runs a special program where university students help parents of middle schoolers with math. Joy Morris is a professor of mathematics at the University of Lethbridge.

Joy Morris's Journey in Math

Joy Morris grew up in Toronto, Ontario. Her parents both had advanced degrees, and she was the youngest of their four children. She went to special programs for gifted students in Toronto schools.

In 1992, she finished her studies at Trent University. She earned degrees in both mathematics and English. She even did a summer research project in math with Brian Alspach. After graduating, she continued her studies with Brian Alspach. She earned her Ph.D. in 2000. Her main research was about Isomorphisms of Cayley Graphs.

Joy Morris started working at the University of Lethbridge in 2000. She became a full professor in 2015. As of 2017, she worked part-time at the university.

Helping Parents with Math

In 2017, Joy Morris noticed that many parents were struggling to help their middle school children with math homework. To help, she started a special math tutoring center at the University of Lethbridge.

In this program, university students studying math education tutor parents. They help parents understand the math their children are learning. They also suggest fun math activities parents can do with their kids. This program has been very successful and continues to help many families.

Her Contributions to Mathematics

Joy Morris has done important research in math. Her work often involves groups, graphs, and how they relate to each other. She has explored the "symmetries" of these math structures.

One of her cool achievements was proving Toida's conjecture. This idea explains how the symmetries of certain types of graphs, called circulant graphs, are connected to the symmetries of the math groups they come from. It's like finding a hidden link between different math puzzles!

Joy Morris has also written two useful open textbooks for university students. "Open textbooks" are free to use and share. They are:

• Proofs and Concepts: the fundamentals of abstract mathematics (written with Dave Witte Morris in 2013)
• Combinatorics: an upper-level introductory course in enumeration, graph theory, and design theory (published in 2017)