Annalisa Crannell is a Professor of Mathematics at Franklin & Marshall College and Governor of the MAA-EPADEL section. Her primary research is in topological dynamical systems (also known as "Chaos Theory"), but she also is active in developing materials for courses on Mathematics and Art. She has worked extensively with students and other teachers on writing in mathematics, and with recent doctorates on employment in mathematics. She especially enjoys talking to non-mathematicians who haven't (yet) learned where the most beautiful aspects of the subject lie.

Mario Martelli is Professor of Mathematics at Claremont Graduate University. Mario came to the U.S. in 1980 from a professorship at the University of Florence, in his native Italy. He became a member of the MAA Southern California Section in 1987, when he accepted a position as Professor of Mathematics at California State University, Fullerton. He was Professor of Mathematics at Claremont McKenna College from 2000 to 2008.

Dr. Martelli is an expert in discrete and continuous dynamical systems and chaos theory. His current research is on global asymptotic stability, with a recent paper on the chaotic librations of Hyperion, a satellite of the planet Saturn. Dr. Martelli is well known for his leadership in promoting undergraduate research, both by successfully involving his own students in research and by providing opportunities for undergraduates from across the country to present their research at local and national MAA meetings. Several of Dr. Martelli’s students have co-authored papers with him and many more have presented posters at MAA meetings. One of his students was chosen to participate in the Poster Session for Members of the U.S. Congress organized by the Council on Undergraduate Research in Washington, DC, in April 1998. Dr. Martelli founded and directed for many years the enormously successful Student Poster Session at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, and helped found and direct a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the Claremont Colleges.

Dr. Martelli is the recipient of several awards, including the Outstanding Professor Award from California State University, Fullerton, the Distinguished Teaching Award from the MAA Southern California Section, and the MAA Meritorious Service Award for his service to the MAA Southern California-Nevada Section. He received his Ph.D. in Differential Equations from the University of Florence in 1966 and is a member of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America and the Italian Mathematical Union.

Robert J. Lang has been an avid student of origami for some forty years and is now recognized as one of the world’s leading masters of the art, with over 500 designs cataloged and diagrammed. He is noted for designs of great detail and realism, and includes in his repertoire some of the most complex origami designs ever created. His work combines aspects of the Western school of mathematical origami design with the Eastern emphasis upon line and form to yield models that are at once distinctive, elegant, and challenging to fold.

Dr. Lang was the first Westerner invited to address the Nippon (Japan) Origami Association’s  annual meeting (in 1992) and has been an invited guest at international origami conventions around the world. Dr. Lang is one of the pioneers of the cross-disciplinary marriage of origami with mathematics and has presented several refereed technical papers on origami mathematics at mathematical and computer science professional meetings; he also organized the Fourth International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics, and Education, held at Caltech in 2006. He has consulted on applications of origami to engineering problems including medical devices, air-bag design, and expandable space telescopes. He is the author or co-author of eight books and numerous articles on origami and is a regular lecturer on the connections between origami, mathematics, science, and technology.

Aparna Higgins received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Bombay in 1978 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in 1983. Her dissertation was in universal algebra, and her current research interests are in graph theory. She has taught at the University of Dayton, Ohio, since 1984.

Although Aparna enjoys teaching the usual collection of undergraduate courses, her most fulfilling experiences as a teacher have come from directing undergraduates in mathematical research. She has advised twelve undergraduate Honors theses; she has co-directed an NSF-sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates program; and she continues to help students prepare talks for regional and national mathematics meetings. Aparna is an advocate of academic year undergraduate research at one's own institution.

Aparna has been the recipient of four teaching awards -- from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Dayton, the Alumni Award (a University-wide award), the Ohio Section of the Mathematical Association of America, and in 2005, the Deborah and Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished University Teaching, the MAA's most prestigious award for teaching.

Aparna has served the MAA in many capacities, including being a founding member of, and then chairing, the Committee on Student Chapters. Aparna is a co-director of Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching), a professional development program of the MAA for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences.

Aparna Higgins is married to Bill Higgins, a mathematician who teaches at Wittenberg University, in Springfield, Ohio. They like to take year-long sabbaticals and spend part of that time teaching at other institutions. They feel privileged to have taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and at California State University Channel Islands, where they are on sabbatical this year. Aparna and Bill Higgins have two sons.