Biography
Lukasz Pruski received his graduate degrees in applied mathematics and engineering from the Warsaw University of Technology (under Professor Jan Oderfeld), and before leaving Poland for California he made his living applying mathematics in automatic control, biomechanics, and sports research (where he modeled pole vault and strategies in weight lifting), and managing a computer research lab that featured a top-of-the-line PDP-11 computer with 32Kb of memory and a 5Mb hard drive. Lukasz Pruski joined the mathematics department at USD in January 1983. Since then he has taught 36 different couses in five fields: in addition to mathematics and computer science he has taught engineering courses and co-taught Honors courses in psychology and philosophy. He also developed and taught an interdisciplinary course Modeling Mechanics that combined mathematical modeling of physics phenomena with the use of MATLAB programming. He has mentored undergraduate research projects in the areas of differential equations, neural networks, and applications of Brownian motion to economics and soil science. He has received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Southern California Section of the Mathematical Association of America, the Davies Award for Faculty Achievement, the Mortar Board Award (twice), and the University Professorship at USD, but his ultimate reward is getting his students to learn and understand mathematics and appreciate its power and beauty. Lukasz Pruski's research interests focus on mathematical modeling and digital simulation, and in recent years he has been working on modeling various aspects of Brownian motion. He also published in the area of heuristics and mathematical problem solving and wrote texts for computer programming in C++ and Java. Lukasz Pruski has been extensively involved in service at USD. He served as the department chair in the mid-Nineties and has served as the math program coordinator in the recent years. Chairing an amazingly collegial and friendly department is not a difficult task, so he looked for challenge serving on almost all College of Arts and Sciences committees, including a stint as the chair of the Rank and Tenure Committee. His most favorite activities, second only to teaching, are reading books, running races from 5k to half-marathon, and relaxing to the music of Bach, Coltrane, and Sonic Youth.
