Jude Merit
He/Him| They/Them
I am transgender, graysexual, queer and I am a PhD student in STEM education.//
I LOVE math. Growing up presenting and being seen as female, math culture didn’t always love me. Nevertheless, I persisted. I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics while working in accounting, finance, and business intelligence, and moved to the UK for a Masters in Data Science. I learned to build absolute top class databases and data warehousing solutions, and moved back to the US, where I worked as a Data Scientist in multiple roles before deciding to apply for PhD student positions. After a couple acceptances and a fair number of rejections, I came to my current university for a PhD in Mathematical Sciences. Alas, it was not to be. Math culture struck again, this time in the way of ableism. My professors were unwilling to work with my accommodation needs, and I struggled through a semester of dropped classes and hundreds of hours of grading papers. I made the decision to move to a PhD program in STEM Education at the same university and now I’m researching the experiences of queer and/or disabled students in undergraduate mathematics. All in all, if STEM isn’t going your way, pave the way to make it better!