Rate My Professor Nancy Rodriguez

Nancy Rodriguez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011, mentored by Andrea Bertozzi, along with an M.S. from UCLA in 2008 and a B.S. from the University of San Diego in 2006. After completing her doctorate, Rodriguez held an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University from 2011 to 2014. She joined the University of Colorado Boulder as faculty and received tenure, advancing to Associate Professor.

Her research specializes in nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) with applications to urban crime modeling, social segregation, biological aggregation, chemotaxis, and ecology. Rodriguez uses mathematical modeling, numerical analysis, and mathematical analysis to explore pattern formation, traveling waves, hotspot dynamics, bifurcations, and equilibrium solutions in social, biological, and ecological systems. Her contributions have advanced the theory of non-local PDEs, offering insights into crime prevention through law enforcement strategies, protest dynamics, gentrification under rent control, riot contagion as in the 2005 French riots and 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests, and ecological phenomena like the Allee effect and pest control. She received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award in 2021 and the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in 2006. Key publications include "Global bifurcations and pattern formation in target–offender–guardian crime models" (European Journal of Applied Mathematics, 2026), "Formation and suppression of hotspots in urban crime models with law enforcement" (Chaos, 2025), "Dynamical system model of gentrification: Exploring a simple rent control strategy" (Physical Review E, 2024), "An analysis of protesting activity and trauma through mathematical and statistical models" (Crime Science, 2023), "Nonlocal Mechanistic Models in Ecology: Numerical Methods and Parameter Inferences" (Applied Sciences, 2023), and "Epidemiological modelling of the 2005 French riots: a spreading wave and the role of contagion" (Scientific Reports, 2018).