Faculty: Dagbovie, Ayawoa (PhD)

Teaching Statement

Often students have mental barriers to effective Maths learning; they believe the discipline is boring, too difficult and irrelevant. For them to build a positive attitude towards the subject, it is essential to break these barriers by

helping them see that Mathematics is meaningful and applicable so that they understand its relevance to everyday experiences. I also believe that to really understand Mathematics, one has to actually solve mathematical problems rather than passively studying theorems along with their proofs. Therefore, it is very important to teach students useful skills such as critical thinking, mathematical problem solving skills—both theoretical and computational.

My primary goal is give students a great learning experience, to encourage open discussions and group work, to help them not only establish a firm foundation in Mathematics but also know how to use their mathematical skills when facing a complex problem. The best reward is to see weaker students becoming stronger and more independent.

Courses Taught at Ashesi

College Algebra
Discrete Mathematics and Applications

Research Statement

My research interests lie within the area of Mathematical Ecology, more particularly Population Dynamics. I study how two populations—prey and predators—interact in the wake of invasion of the prey by the predators. I am also interested in self-organised vegetation patterns in semi-arid regions. These patterns are seen in many parts of the world, particularly Africa, Australia and North America. I use maths and computation to investigate how annual rainfall affect arid vegetation patterns.

Publications

• Ayawoa S Dagbovie, Jonathan A Sherratt (August 2014) 
Pattern Selection and Hysteresis in the Rietkerk Model for Banded Vegetation in Semi- Arid Environments Journal of the Royal Society Interface 11(99) DOI: 10.1098/rsif. 2014.0465
• Ayawoa S Dagbovie, Jonathan A Sherratt (April 2014) 
Absolute Stability and Dynamical Stabilisation in Predator-Prey Systems Journal of Mathematical Biology 68(6), p1403-1421
• Jonathan A Sherratt, Ayawoa Dagbovie, Frank M Hilker (January 2014) A Mathematical Biologist’s Guide to Absolute and Convective Instability Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 76, p1-26