Biography

Professor Gibbons wants to change the world. From stumping for Dukakis-Bentsen ‘88 as a first-grader and mailing her first one-pager to the White House when President George H.W. Bush came out as anti-broccoli in the early ’90s, she has never been afraid to speak up on something that matters to her. Though her early efforts to effect political (and vegetable) change were not successful, she’s gotten better with practice.

Courtney Gibbons is a mathematician and policy worker with experience in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal government. Currently an associate professor of mathematics, she joined the faculty at Hamilton College in July, 2013.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, Dr. Gibbons is a fellow hosted at the National Science Foundation in the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Directorate, Intelligent Systems Division, as an AI policy fellow through the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow program. In the 2022-2023 academic year, she was a legislative branch fellow working for the majority staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate (Chairman Gary C. Peters) covering parts of the portfolio related to Federal data, artificial intelligence, and financial assistance.

In her life as a mathematician, Professor Gibbons studies commutative and homological algebra, and her primary research interest is the study of infinite free resolutions (often through the lens of Boij-Soderberg theory). Gibbons also has a secondary interest in algebraic statistics. Since coming to Hamilton College, Professor Gibbons has supervised several commutative algebra undergraduate research projects at Hamilton, the Willamette Valley Mathematics Consortium REU, and the COURAGE (virtual) REU. She is currently an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Daughter of a jazz musician and public school teacher, Professor Gibbons grew up near New Haven, CT; she attended public schools in West Haven, Woodbridge, and Bethany, CT and earned her diploma from Amity High School in 2000. In 2006, she graduated Summa Cum Laude with her B.A. in mathematics with distinction from the Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. Subsequently, she worked for CC’s Math and Computer Science Department for a year after graduation as a paraprofessional. In 2009 and 2013 respectively, she earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In addition to being a multiply-certified math nerd and a reformed college dropout, Professor Gibbons likes to rock climb, argue about notation, and snuggle with cats.