Q&A with Galen Dorpalen-Barry, or, Playwright to Mathematician
Posted December 2025 by _haileyjay
Dorpalen-Barry's journey as a mathematician is fascinating. As it so happens, before mathematics, she was a playwright and even won a few awards. Eventually, though, she decided it wasn't for her. Signing up for a Multivariable Calculus course, she found herself rather enjoying it. Her professor then asked the fateful question: "Would you like to take a proofs based course?"
"I thought, y'know, maybe just one more."
That 'one more' turned into a few more, and then a major in mathematics, and then degrees in mathematics, and then a budding enjoyment of research. After graduating, she was once again faced with a choice. What to do?
"Okay, maybe I'll do a postdoc for a while."
Clearly, the allure of mathematics was too much to resist.
Besides for just mathematics, though, why combinatorics specifically? "With combinatorics, you can get your hands dirty really quickly," she replied. She gave a quick example: immediately prior to the event, she was chatting with Dan Cohen and was immediately able to play with examples and do some calculations. For a mathematician so interested in research, the ability to write down examples and calculations, to dig into a problem just by sitting down, is a nice plus.
Many in attendance were graduate students at the beginning of their career. As expected, many were excited for advice, perspective, and a peek into their own future. A theme that came up repeatedly was collaboration. Dorpalen-Barry emphasized the importance of finding good collaborators and working as a team. She particularly enjoys working with people that know things she doesn't: "I like learning something I didn't know yesterday." However, when it comes to finding collaborators, her answer carefully tempered our enthusiasm with the reality. "I don't know if I have any tips, like 'here's the secret sauce for finding collaborators."
When asked what she would've done differently in graduate school, and what would be beneficial to do for someone currently in a graduate program, her answer was clear. She spoke about the importance of meeting other graduate students at conferences and knowing other people of one's 'academic age.' "It's good for collaboration and diversity, and feedback."
With the importance of collaboration in mind, Dorpalen-Barry cleverly modelled the ideas she endorsed. The event was, even for a conversation event, quite conversational. After thoughtfully answering a question, she would frequently turn the question right back to the table: "What does everyone else think?" The table was thus able to not only ask questions of a talented professor, but also asked to process for themselves what they may believe. What better way to show the importance of collaboration than making a discussion session truly a discussion?
Prof. Galen Dorpalen-Barry is a professor at Texas A&M, working in the rich field of geometric and algebraic combinatorics, focusing especially on hyperplane arrangements and polytopes.
This article reports a group Q&A with Dr. Dorpalen-Barry at LSU and does not necessarily reflect her views and opinions. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Dorpalen-Barry for joining us!
