Dr. Lily Yen
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Capilano University

A bit about me

I was born in a small town, Po-Chu, in Chia-Yi, Taiwan, but soon moved to Tainan City where I received schooling until my family immigrated to Canada. In Burnaby, (a suburb of Vancouver), I attended McPherson Junior High, Burnaby Central Senior, and Simon Fraser University (Burnaby Campus), interrupted by one semester of mathematics in Budapest, Hungary. Following my Bachelor’s degree from SFU, I became a William Penn scholar and an NSERC 1967 fellow to study at the University of Pennsylvania. My husband, Mogens Lemvig Hansen, and I met as first year graduate students, and did homework together in Professor Wilf’s Generatingfunctionology course.

After completing my Ph.D. thesis, we moved to Waterloo where our son, Kristian, was born. I had a post-doc at the University of Waterloo and published a few papers. Then we returned to the beauty of Vancouver, where our daughter, Justine, was born. Nikolaj arrived after I had taught at Capilano University (then College) for three years, and was ready to join the Canadian coaching team for the International Mathematics Olympiad in Tokyo. In June 2005, as a Lyon’s Senior Lecturer in Waterloo Seminar, I brought our whole family back to the University of Waterloo to visit our friends and our church, Mount Zion.

We enjoy classical music and jazz, subscribe to Recital Society, and love God and our church. When resting, I enjoy cooking, gardening, singing with Mogens and our children and playing the piano alone or in a chamber music ensemble.

Kristian now has a degree in Environmental Science & Applied Biology from SFU. Justine is in her last semester studying Neuroscience, Religion, and Mathematics at McGill University, and Nikolaj is in grade 11 at Burnaby North Secondary School.

I returned to research in mathematics in 2008.