Biographic information: Dr. Nathaniel Dean graduated with his B.S. degree in mathematics and physics from Mississippi State University, and then earned his M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Northeastern University. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University in 1987 with a dissertation entitled "Contractible Edges and Conjectures about Path and Cycle Numbers" under Dr. Robert Hemminger. Until 1998, Dr. Dean was a member of the Software Production Research Department of Bell Laboratories. In 1998, Dr. Dean became an Associate Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University. He was then a Professor and Chair of Mathematics at Texas Southern University and has recently taken a position at Texas State University - San Marcos.

Dr. Dean's research areas include algorithms, graph theory, geometry, and combinatorics and their application to date visualization. Not only has Professor Nathaniel Dean published over 45 papers, he has been very active in recruiting students to mathematics.

Dr. Dean is also the President of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM), a non-profit professional organization which has as its main objectives the promotion of excellence in the mathematical sciences and the promotion of the mathematical development of underrepresented American minorities. It also aims to address the issue of the serious under-representation of minorities in the workforce of mathematical scientists.