Tatiana Shubin joined the faculty of San Jose State University in 1985 after earning her Ph.D. in Mathematics from UC Santa Barbara. In 2006, she won the Northern California, Nevada, and Hawaii Section (a.k.a. Golden Section) of the MAA Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.
She was born and grew up in the USSR, and as an eighth grader attended a specialized physics and mathematics boarding school in Siberia. These years were instrumental in kindling her passion for mathematics, and convinced her that interaction with working mathematicians can give young students much more than merely a solid training in the subject. This experience prompted her to co-found San Jose Math Circle and the Bay Area Math Adventures in 1998 – both projects have been running ever since - and to become one of the leaders of the National Math Circles movement. Shubin translated and edited several books published by the AMS in the MSRI Mathematical Circles Library. She is also the chair of the editorial board of this series.
She is a co-founder and co-director of Navajo Nation Math Circles project which is aimed at launching and supporting math circles for students and teachers on the Navajo Nation, and providing other mathematically rich experiences, such as summer math camps, to Navajo children. This project started in 2012 and is now expanding to include other Native American communities.
In 2006, Tatiana became a co-founder of the first Math Teachers’ Circle in the US (and, in fact, in the world). This circle proved to be a seed which germinated to produce the entire Math Teachers’ Circle Network. She has since remained a member of the leadership team of the organization.