Ricardo Araujo Torres in front of John Mulcahy Hall (Photo by Kelly Prinz)
Can you hear the shape of a drum? Can math help reveal what’s happening inside a human organ? For Ricardo Araujo Torres, these aren’t just riddles—they’re the focus of his research at Fordham.
“What drew me to math is this idea that, despite knowing so little, we can make a bunch of true statements,” he says.
Torres, who is from Puerto Rico, says his curiosity—and the chance to study in a rigorous STEM and liberal arts program in New York City—is what drew him to Fordham.
“I'm the kind of person who just loves learning. So I was very excited to go somewhere that has a big variety of options, and to just be able to get a taste of everything.”
Mentorship in the Math Lab
But his passion has always been math, and at Fordham, he found a home in research. Working closely with Assistant Professor Wen Li, PhD, he tackled “inverse problems”—a way to calculate the underlying causes of something from a set of observations.
“Our idea was related to medicine, and seeing essentially if by looking at the surface of some kind of organ, we could actually get information of what’s happening on the inside,” he says.
Torres says the project took over a year and involved a lot of trial and error, but their work paid off. He and Li were invited to present their findings at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Conference on Mathematics of Data Science.
“It was a great experience and I don’t know how I would have gotten that without her—she’s also helped me with grants and things like that, which is really valuable.”
Torres also explored “pure math” through a summer project with Associate Professor Thomas Beck, PhD, investigating how mathematicians can use vibrations and sound frequencies to determine the physical shape of an object, like a drum.
For Torres, a highlight of these hands-on research projects was the mentorship.
“I think genuinely, the math department has some of the best faculty,” he says. “They’re all super nice and approachable, and if you're curious, they’re available to talk about basically anything math-related.”
His Journey from NYC to PhD
Torres paid that mentorship forward as a tutor in the math help room, making complex concepts more accessible to new students.
Teaching could also be a part of his future. His Fordham journey paved his way for his next chapter: a PhD program at Penn State.
“I’ve done a lot of research and analysis, and I’m not sure if I want to [become] a professor or go into industry. But my professors always told me to keep an open mind, so that’s my plan.”