Abubakarr Yillah

Abubakarr Yillah joins the FAS as a Lecturer in Mathematics. He earned both his BSc and PhD in Mathematics from Texas Tech University, completing his doctorate in 2026, with research at the intersection of numerical analysis and inverse problems.  

Yillah’s dissertation, Characterizing Atherosclerosis with PDE-Constrained Optimization, developed an adjoint-based optimization framework to reconstruct the spatially varying stiffness of arterial walls from blood-flow data, bridging computational mathematics and cardiovascular modeling.  

Yillah is a dedicated educator whose teaching has been recognized with the Helen DeVitt Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award (2025) and the Professing Excellence Award (2024); he is especially committed to reducing math anxiety and making rigorous mathematics accessible to students across the sciences and engineering.

At Yale, Yillah looks forward to working closely with students through engaging, carefully scaffolded courses and continuing to refine the student-centered approaches that define his teaching.