[1] She grew up in an artistic family,[1][2] and despite a talent for mathematics preferred creating art in various mediums.
Jones dropped out of the graduate program to become a full-time mathematics tutor, but Futamura continued,[3] earning a master's degree and completing her Ph.D. in 2007.
[1] In order to continue her work combining mathematics with the creative arts, Futamura decided to teach mathematics at a liberal arts college rather than go into industry or take a research university position.
[4] Futamura won the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award of the Mathematical Association of America in 2018, with Southwestern student Robert Lehr, for their 2017 article "A New Perspective on Finding the Viewpoint".
[6][7] She is the coauthor of the book Perspective and Projective Geometry, with Annalisa Crannell and Marc Frantz, published by Princeton University Press in 2019.