About Me

Octopus Math is run by Kelli Talaska.  That’s me!

I’ve been tutoring since I was a teenager, and I have over nineteen years of experience teaching, tutoring, and mentoring students.  I took on my first official tutoring student when I was 16 years old, and I have been working in math education ever since.

In addition to tutoring, I currently teach part-time in the Mathematics Department at UC Berkeley.  I am also involved with Epsilon Camp (returning to St. Louis for summer 2016) and several Bay Area math circles, including the Berkeley Math Circle and the Santa Cruz Math Circle.

I have a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and I was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley from 2010 to 2013.  My research was in algebraic combinatorics.

Prior to graduate school, I taught math at Lowell High School in San Francisco. I also attended Honors Summer Math Camp as a student for two summers in high school and as a counselor for two summers as an undergraduate.

You can check out my academic CV for even more details (last updated in 2016).

Developing skill and adaptability in math and problem solving