Niko Townsend '17: Summer Research Evolves into a PhD and a Teaching Career

Nikolas “Niko” Townsend '17 always had a passion for math, and Emmanuel College provided the perfect environment to nurture his enthusiasm.

Drawn to the close-knit community and the support of the Mathematics Department, Niko knew Emmanuel was an ideal place to fuel his academic curiosity and pursue his goals. “When I visited, I had conversations with the Math Department, and I got to know them well even before I was a student,” he recalled.

At Emmanuel, Townsend enjoyed personalized attention, with small class sizes and strong faculty relationships. One professor stood out, Dr. Brendan Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Mathematics. Townsend described him as both a mentor and a friend. "He became my advisor, and we spent many hours in his office working on problems. He was instrumental in helping me figure out what I wanted to do after college."

A key highlight of Townsend’s time at Emmanuel was his participation in Summer Research, where he worked on a project based on "Cops and Robbers, a game of pursuit and evasion.

"Cops and Robbers" is a much-studied game where a team of cops tries to catch a robber on a game board, represented as a network of dots and connecting lines. The cops and the robber take turns moving on the graph (each can move from their current dot to another across a connecting line), and the challenge is figuring out how many cops are needed to eventually capture the robber, no matter how he tries to evade capture. This number can vary depending on the type of graph being used, like a chessboard-style grid or more complex 3D and 4D graphs. Townsend’s research focused on a variation where only one cop could move per turn, and it explored how this affects the strategies and the number of cops needed.

"That was my introduction to math research," Townsend said. " I'm a gamer at heart, whether it's video games, card games, or any kind of game. Combining my love for games with math really resonated with me. That research set the foundation for my work in grad school."

After graduating from Emmanuel, Townsend went straight into a PhD program at the University of Rhode Island, where he continued his research on game theory and mathematical graph theory — and his research on “Cops and Robbers.” He studied under one of the world's leaders in games on graphs, Dr. William Kinnersley, Associate Professor of Discrete Mathematics.

Townsend’s graduate research explored variations of "Cops and Robbers", including one that allowed the robber to travel at infinite speed, leading to published papers, including one in Discrete Applied Mathematics, and ongoing collaborations.

Today, Townsend is a lecturer at UMass Boston, a role that evolved from his initial interest in research. "I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with my career at first, but after teaching a few semesters in grad school, I realized I really enjoyed it," he said. His teaching assistantship during grad school gave him his first real teaching experience, and that love of teaching continues today. "I particularly enjoy working one-on-one with students," Townsend noted, adding that his experience tutoring at Emmanuel's Academic Resource Center (ARC) helped prepare him for the classroom.

Reflecting on his time at Emmanuel, Townsend credits the college with preparing him for both graduate school and his career in academia. "The curriculum was solid, and the one-on-one attention from faculty was incredibly valuable," he said. "I loved my experience at Emmanuel, especially in the Math Department. The faculty were all role models, especially Dr. Sullivan. I definitely draw a lot of inspiration for my own teaching from what they did for me."

Now, as he balances teaching, research, and family life—his daughter was born last fall while he was finishing his PhD—Townsend is applying for tenure-track positions, hoping to further his academic career while inspiring the next generation of students, just as his professors inspired him.