Kevin R. Vixie started his mathematical career at Los Alamos National Laboratory, first in X-8, and then in T-7, the Theoretical Division Mathematics group being led at the time by J. Mac Hyman. Immediately after finishing his dissertation at Los Alamos in 2001 (Advisor: Andrew M. Fraser), he launched what was to become the first modern (mathematically focused) big data team at Los Alamos. The team focused on the complex data sets (images and signals) generated by experiments and simulations at LANL. That team grew to about 25 members, about half at the lab and half at universities.

In 1999 he had met and become friends with David G. Caraballo, the last student to finish with Fred Almgren (Princeton). David was instrumental in introducing Kevin to geometric measure theory, which rapidly became his mathematical passion. This has led to work at the interface of geometric analysis/geometric measure theory and data analysis/big data. In 2008, Kevin (and his lead team) were recruited by WSU in Washington State. 

In addition to his mathematical and scientific interests, Kevin has a very strong interest in environments for creative, innovative teams. Over the years he has started several high-performance teams with varying degrees of success, the latest two being a research lab at a FinTech company and a new venture at a university aimed at recreating (and updating) the silo-free, collision-rich, flat-structured models from Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and other similar high-performance experiments from the past. This last experiment is in its early stages, but the early evolution, though slowed by the isolation and slowdowns of 2020 and early 2021, is promising.

He has long had an interest in the “meta” side of life, encouraged by early walkabouts leading him to experiences that argue strongly for meta/spiritual explanations. He believes the visible, concrete expression of the neglect of this side of life has led to science possessing some (or a lot of) cleverness, but little or no wisdom, in turn leading to multiple modern crisis’s (including global warming, non-empathetic approaches to life science research, agricultural revolutions that threaten our existence, and unenlightened approaches to human health, to name just four examples). His additional interest in complex systems, strongly influenced by his deep commitment to connection to family (wife, son, and brother) and friends (i.e. the family that you choose!), drives his study of the crucial influence of networks, multiple length and time scales, non-linearity and stochastic effects, and a resulting exploration of wisdom (i.e. a form of knowing that somehow grasps the whole complex system) versus understanding (a form of knowing that delights in complete grasp of small pieces of the system).

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For more information on Kevin and his research, see his research group website here.