New Faculty in CNSM
Welcome to our newest CNSM tenure-track faculty members! This Fall, Dr. Andrew Le, Dr. Thuy Le, and Dr. Brian Tran join our Mathematics and Statistics department.
In Spring Dr. Alex McInturf will join Biological Sciences, and Dr. Jared Goldberg will join Physics and Astronomy.
Dr. Andrew Le
Dr. Le returns to Long Beach, this time as an incoming Assistant Professor, after earning a master's in Applied Statistics at The Beach, and completing a Ph.D. in Statistics at UC Santa Cruz.
Dr. Le's research interests lie in Bayesian nonparametrics, with a particular focus on developing flexible models for analyzing point patterns, which arise across many fields such as ecology, epidemiology, and neuroscience.
Dr. Le has had the opportunity to apply data science in industry during an internship at Genentech, working with clinicians to develop decision-making frameworks for evaluating treatments in clinical trials. More than anything, Dr. Le loves teaching and equipping students with the mindset and skills of a data scientist, and teaching them to use data to uncover insights, make informed decisions, and tell stories, and to make data science accessible to everyone, no matter their field.
Dr. Le also loves to cook, and once even made homemade enchiladas for students on their final exam day.
Dr. Thuy Le
Dr. Thuy Le is an applied mathematician and recently joined CSULB as an Assistant Professor after completing a Ph.D. at UNC Charlotte and a postdoc at NC State.
Dr. Le's research focuses on developing and analyzing novel computational methods to solve scientific problems motivated by high-impact applications, such as the detection of underground explosive devices, optical imaging, and seismic exploration.
Dr. Le's work is concentrated in three key areas of applied mathematics: inverse problems, which extract hidden information from indirect measurements; numerical analysis for nonlinear PDEs, which provides the theoretical foundation for robust algorithms; and machine learning, which leverages data to uncover new insights and solve problems intractable for traditional models.
Outside of mathematics, Dr. Le enjoys cooking, especially making desserts and trying new recipes, traveling, discovering new places, and experiencing different cultures through their local food, traditions, and everyday life.
Dr. Brian Tran
Dr. Brian Kha Tran is an Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. A SoCal native and first-generation student, before coming to CSULB, Dr. Tran was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2025-2026 and a Mark Kac postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2023-2025. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a specialization in Computational Science from UC San Diego in 2023.
Dr. Tran’s research interests are broadly mathematical and computational methods for simulating dynamical systems arising in scientific computing applications and engineering; particular interests include optimization, optimal control, mathematical physics, geometric integration, and applications to plasma physics and nuclear fusion models. Dr. Tran is Co-Principal Investigator on a recently funded NSF DMS Computational Mathematics grant "Nonlinear Splitting for Modeling and Control" (2026 - 2029).
In his free time, Dr. Tran enjoys producing and composing music on guitar and piano, and surfing. Fun fact: Dr. Tran has an identical twin brother!
Dr. Alex McInturf
Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. McInturf graduated from Williams College with degrees (B.A.) in Biology and English in 2015. Dr. McInturf received a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis in 2021. From 2021-2026, Serving as a postdoctoral researcher from 2021-2026, and then Research Associate at Oregon State University’s Big Fish Lab, Dr. McInturf was also Graduate Faculty in OSU’s Departments of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences and Environmental Sciences.
As of January 2027, Dr. McInturf will be moving to CSULB as an Assistant Professor of Marine Biology and Director of the CSULB Shark Lab. Dr. McInturf’s research generally focuses on how marine organisms (specifically threatened marine fishes like sharks and their relatives) respond to biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) environmental variables and using this information to contextualize and predict animal behavior and movement patterns.
Outside of the ocean, Dr. McInturf was a collegiate soccer player and played in the NCAA Division III National Championship in 2014!
Dr. Jared Goldberg
Dr. Jared Goldberg grew up in the (star-studded!) San Fernando Valley and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Santa Barbara.
Prior to joining the faculty at CSU Long Beach, Dr. Goldberg has been a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, TARDIS Fellow at Michigan State University, NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University, and Adjunct faculty at Santa Barbara City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Goldberg describes his research as stellar engineering, astrophysical demolitions, and space forensics — building and destroying stars on a computer to connect stellar structure to observable emission in stars' dynamic lives and explosive deaths.
Non-professionally, Dr. Goldberg loves large open bodies of water, martial arts, live music, stringed instruments, good food, hiking, biking, woodworking, puzzles, and puns.
