Clay Mersmann
Instructor of Mathematics
clayton@kastnerhill.com
Clay began tutoring as a high school student at South Gwinnett High School in Snellville, Georgia. He was a well-rounded student who enjoyed taking both STEM and humanities classes, playing violin in the chamber orchestra, and competing on club and high school soccer teams. Clay graduated as his class’s valedictorian and with his school’s highest SAT score (1560/1600). He matriculated to the University of Georgia as a National Merit Scholar in 2009.
At UGA, Clay double majored in Physics and Mathematics with a minor in German. He worked with Americorps as a homeless advocate, landed an energy technology internship in Berlin, Germany, and continued tutoring high school and college students as a subject and test prep tutor. He gained valuable experience as an undergraduate grader for the math and physics departments, and won the Linville Hendren Scholarship for Outstanding Proficiency in Physics. Clay graduated with highest honors in 2013 and was recognized as an “Outstanding Graduate” by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
After graduation, Clay remained in Athens to pursue a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He earned a perfect score on the math portion of the GRE and was admitted to the graduate program as an Etchberger Graduate Scholar. For his work with advisor Dr. Ming-Jun Lai applying multivariate splines to solve partial differential equations, Clay received a Masters of Applied Mathematics Science in 2016 and his Ph.D. (A Multivariate Spline Approach to the Maxwell Equations) in 2019. As a graduate instructor of record from 2016-2019, Clay thrived in his first formal classroom experiences teaching precalculus and calculus to UGA undergrads. In 2018 he won the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the UGA graduate school and the David Galewski Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the mathematics department.
In fall 2019, Dr. Mersmann moved to Tampa, Florida to work as a professor of math and statistics at the University of South Florida. He sincerely enjoyed getting to know the USF students and faculty on the St. Petersburg campus, and his time in the classroom teaching statistics, business calculus, and calculus I and II. In June 2021 Clay relocated to Austin, Texas with his wife, who is beginning a medical fellowship at UT’s Dell Seton Medical Center.