Zvezdelina Stankova

Zvezdelina Entcheva Stankova (; born 15 September 1969) is a Bulgarian and American mathematician who is a teaching professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, the founder of the Berkeley Math Circle, and an expert in the combinatorial enumeration of permutations with forbidden patterns.

Early life Stankova was born in Ruse, Bulgaria (then the People's Republic of Bulgaria). and began winning regional mathematics competitions. She became a student at an elite English-language high school, and competed on the Bulgarian team in the International Mathematical Olympiads in 1987 and 1988, earning silver medals both times. She entered Sofia University but in 1989, as the Iron Curtain was falling, became one of 15 Bulgarian students selected to travel to the US to complete their studies.

Stankova studied at Bryn Mawr College, completing bachelor's and master's degrees there in 1992, with Rhonda Hughes as a faculty mentor. While an undergraduate, she participated in a summer research program with Joseph Gallian at the University of Minnesota Duluth, which began her interest in permutation patterns. She also earned a Massachusetts teaching credential in 1997 and California's equivalent credential in 1998. She remained on the Mills faculty until 2016, but began in 2002 also teaching one course per year at Berkeley as a visiting professor. From 1998 to 2004, she coached the US International Mathematical Olympiad team. In 2016, she founded Math Taught the Right Way, a Berkeley-based program that adapts Bulgarian middle- and high-school mathematics curricula for American students. Since 2014, she has been president of the United Math Circles Foundation, the nonprofit umbrella organization of the Berkeley Math Circle. She has also served on the advisory board of the Proof School in San Francisco. She has represented the letter's stance in news media and before the UC Board of Regents. She drew criticism in August 2026 following reports she had used generative AI to edit her public statements. She subsequently discussed AI, including its utility and danger for higher education, during a live interview with Greta van Susteren.

Contributions In the theory of permutation patterns, Stankova is known for proving that the permutations with the forbidden pattern 1342 are equinumerous with the permutations with forbidden pattern 2413, an important step in the enumeration of permutations avoiding a pattern of length 4.

The Berkeley Math Circle, which Stankova founded, was only the second math circle in the US (after one in Boston); following its success, over 100 other circles have been created,

Publications With Tom Rike, she is co-editor of two books about her work with the Berkeley Math Circle, A Decade of the Berkeley Math Circle: The American Experience (Vol. I, 2008, Vol. II, 2014).

Awards and honors Stankova received the Alice T. Schafer Prize in 1992, while an undergraduate. Awarded by the Association for Women in Mathematics, the prize recognized her research in combinatorics and her American Mathematical Society paper on forbidden sequences, work her advisor called "strikingly original." Among that award's first two recipients, she was credited with "doubling the number of mathematics majors at Mills College." The award recognized "her teaching ability, her enthusiasm for mathematics, and her capacity to dramatically change [students'] attitudes toward mathematics and their perceptions of their own mathematical abilities." Berkeley students selected Stankova, during her first full year teaching there, to receive the Mathematics Undergraduate Student Association's Distinguished Teaching & Service Award in 2017.

From 2009 to 2012 she was the Frederick A. Rice Professor of Mathematics at Mills College.