Categories

Introductions

This is a space for all conference participants to introduce themselves and hopefully meet others with overlapping mathematical interests!

As well as name, career stage, home institution, and research focus (as specifically as you like), consider giving a short description of a math paper you read recently and think is really great!

80 replies on “Introductions”

Piotr.Suwarasays:

My name is Piotr and I’m interested in Floer theory and its applications to 3- and 4-dimensional topology. Working on a construction of Floer theories using infinite-dimensional chains instead of Morse theory, aiming to give less involved and more flexible definitions (in particular to construct equivariant Floer homologies). Doing analysis so that you don’t have to!

Piotr Suwara, about-to-graduate PhD student at MIT supervised by Prof. Tom Mrowka. Starting Fall 2020: associate professor at Institute of Mathematics of Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.

Allison Millersays:

Hi all! I’m Allison Miller- I’m a postdoc/ instructor at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I’m interested in knot concordance from both a smooth and topological(ly locally flat) perspective and often end up thinking satellite operations and/ or metabelian/Casson-Gordon invariants. I recently enjoyed reading a somewhat-less-recent paper by Chuck Livingston called “Examples in concordance”- it has some good examples!

Aaron_Calderonsays:

Hi folks! I’m Aaron Calderon, a (5 – epsilon)th year grad student at Yale (I just completed my 4th year, but I don’t think I’m a 5th year yet?). My advisor is Yair Minsky.

I’m interested in all sorts of things, but have recently been thinking mostly about flat surfaces (abelian and quadratic differentials) and their relationship with hyperbolic geometry, Teichmüller theory, and the mapping class group.

[…] Introductions […]

Swatee_Naiksays:

Hi, I am Swatee. My interests are low dimensional topology, concordance, symmetries, and related topics. I am a program officer in Topology and Geometric Analysis at the National Science Foundation and an emeritus professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. If you have questions about applying to NSF, feel free to contact me.

Rachel.Harrissays:

Hello! My name is Rachel Marie Harris. I am a graduate student at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX. My advisor is Razvan Gelca. After graduation, I have accepted a position at the Air Force Research Lab. I look forward to many years of research and collaboration ahead!

Jacobsays:

Howdy y’all. My name is Jacob Caudell. I just finished my third year of grad school at Boston College, but am currently in exile in central Texas. My advisor is Josh Greene. I am interested primarily in Dehn surgery, and I usually approach the subject through a mix of Heegaard Floer homology and combinatorial techniques. In particular, I like changemaker lattices (see Greene’s “The lens space realization problem”).

frafoursays:

Hello! My name is Francesco Fournier Facio, I’m a 1st year PhD student at ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Alessandra Iozzi. I am interested in geometric group theory, particularly in questions related to amenability, bounded cohomology and stability.

calvin_mcphail_snydersays:

I’m Calvin McPhail-Snyder. I’m a fifth (sixth?) year graduate student at UC Berkeley. My advisor is Nicolai Reshetikhin.

My interests are in quantum topology, but the kind where you’re doing actual topology in addition to the representation theory. Specifically, I’m interested in an upgraded type of quantum invariant called a holonomy invariant. These relate to things like the Jones polynomial in the same way that twisted Alexander polynomials are an upgrade of the usual Alexander polynomials. They are also (conjecturally/hopefully) connected to the volume conjecture.

Yi_Wangsays:

Hi everyone! I’m Yi Wang, a first-year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. My research interests are just starting to crystallize. In general, I’m quite interested in low-dimensional topology. If I were to pick a central theme around which most of my interests revolve, I think it would be “studying knots and 3-manifolds through the lens of geometric structures” – for instance, hyperbolic or contact.

To reflect this, some of the topics I’ve been reading/thinking about lately are (P)SL(2, C) character varieties of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and contact Dehn surgery. Papers that I’ve recently enjoyed are Reid and Long’s “Fields of definition of canonical curves” and Ding and Geiges’ “Symplectic fillability of tight contact structures on torus bundles”.

AlexManchestersays:

Hello! My name is Alex Manchester. I’m a first year graduate student at Rice University. I’m still figuring out my research interests but they are broadly in low-dimensional topology.

Roland.van.der.Veensays:

My name is Roland van der Veen, assistant professor at Groningen (Netherlands) working in quantum invariants and their applications to low-dimensional topology. My goal is to clarify the topological underpinnings of quantum invariants and simplify their use. Both in theory and in practice (sometimes by computer). Part of the charm of the subject is the mysterious algebraic relations inspired by physics and representation theory but perhaps it is time for topology to step up and reclaim some of its territory.
“Bottom tangles and universal invariants” by Kazuo Habiro paper may be long but is well worth browsing through to see how intimately Hopf algebras and 3-manifolds are intertwined.

Paula_Truoelsays:

Hi all! My name is Paula Truöl and I’m about to finish my first year as a PhD student at ETH Zurich. My advisor is Peter Feller. I am interested in low-dimensional topology and in particular in positive braid knots and knot concordance. I recently found reading “Branched covers bounding rational homology balls” by P. Aceto, J. Meier, A. N. Miller, M. Miller, J. Park and A. I. Stipsicz very helpful.

eduardduryevsays:

Hi, I am Eduard Duryev. I am a postdoc in Paris 7 Diderot, working under the supervision of Anton Zorich. My thesis was about SL(2,Z)-orbits of square-tiled surface. In general, I am interested in geometric structures on surfaces, combinatorics and enumeration of things. I like square-tiled surfaces and flat surfaces in general.

My talk is mostly an elementary introduction to square-tiled surfaces and related questions, it should be accessible to mathematicians of all levels. Please, leave comments, ask questions, I will be happy to answer and discuss.

Filip.Misevsays:

Hello, I’m Filip Misev. I’m an instructor at the University of Regensburg, Germany, interested in fibred knots, knot concordance and singularities.

james.farresays:

Howdy, I’m James.

I’m a postdoc at Yale University, in the cult of Yair Minsky. I’m interested in hyperbolic 3-manifolds of infinite volume, their deformation spaces, dynamics of the mapping class group thereon, Teichmüller Theory, generally, surfaces and geometric structures on manifolds. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time thinking about bounded cohomology of groups and spaces (mostly in degree 3).

I really like talking math with people and encourage you to contact me to discuss topics even tangentially related to what I listed above.

A paper that stands out to me at the moment Volume Rigidity for Finite Volume Manifolds by Jeffrey Boland, Chris Connell and Juan Souto. The results are great and the proofs are slick and not-so-hard.

Hi, I’m Tyrone Ghaswala (most people call me Ty, with the exception of my mother when she’s angry).

I’m a postdoc at L’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) working with Steve Boyer in the CIRGET (geometry and topology) research group, and I’m here for postdoc number 2.

My research interests lie in mapping class groups (big and small, I love them both equally), and orderable groups (mostly the circularly-orderable variety). Anything connecting these areas to low-dimensional topology tends to tickle my fancy.

I really enjoy having a chat about math(s), especially during a pandemic! So please don’t hesitate at all to contact me about anything at all, however tenuously related to my talk or my interests.

A paper I read recently that I think is super cool is “Large scale geometry of big mapping class groups” by Katy Mann and Kasra Rafi. I think there are lots of really excellent tools developed in that paper, and has provided lots of interesting questions about the topology of infinite-type surfaces.

Konstantinossays:

Hi, my name is Konstantinos Varvarezos, and I’ve just finished my third year as a PhD student at Princeton. I am a student of Zoltán Szabó, and I have a variety of interests within low-dimensional topology and knot theory, with recent research focused on problems related to Dehn surgery. A recent paper I read is: “Knots with infinitely many non-characterizing slopes” by T. Abe and K. Tagami.

TyeLidmansays:

My name is Tye Lidman and I am an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. I’m interested in knot theory, three- and four-manifold topology, Floer homology, and adjacent areas.

I am always happy to talk about math or any other aspects of the profession (inclusivity, Dehn surgery, etc), so please reach out and introduce yourself.

Hi, I’m Alex Rasmussen. I just graduated from Yale and will be starting a postdoc at the University of Utah in the fall.

I’m interested in mapping class groups of infinite type surfaces and their actions on certain hyperbolic graphs. Relatedly, I’m very interested in laminations on infinite type surfaces. I also have side interests in classifying group actions on hyperbolic metric spaces and in generalizations of hyperbolicity for groups (such as relative hyperbolicity).

A paper I read recently which I found really interesting was “The universal Cannon-Thurston map and the boundary of the curve complex” by Leininger-Mj-Schleimer. They relate the Birman exact sequence to the boundary of the curve graph of a punctured surface and obtain an interesting boundary map in that setting.

If you’d like to chat I’ll be very happy to do it in whatever setting!

SumeyraSakallisays:

Hi everyone! I’m Sumeyra Sakalli. I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute.
I am interested in smooth and symplectic 4-manifolds. I like constructing exotic 4-manifolds via complex surfaces and by using tools from algebraic geometry. Recently I am also interested in complex and symplectic curve configurations.
I’d be happy to talk math or anything else. Please do not hesitate to leave comments!

IrenePasquinellisays:

Hey there! I am Irene Pasquinelli and I am a Postdoc at Sorbonne Université in Paris (also called Jussieu, Pierre and Marie Curie or Paris 6 – it changes every couple of years!!).
My main research is in complex hyperbolic geometry, from the point of view of group actions. I am interested in lattices in PU(n,1), the holomorphic isometries of complex hyperbolic space.
As a side project, I also think about symbolic dynamics on translation surfaces.

I recently looked at “A new non-arithmetic lattice in PU(3,1)” by Martin Deraux. He considers some lattices in PU(n,1) built by Couwenberg-Heckman-Looijenga and studies commensurability classes and arithmeticity. This is exciting because he finds the second ever example of non-arithmetic lattices in PU(3,1). In my talk I tell you a bit about why this is so exciting.

Please feel free to contact me and comment on my talk at any time. I don’t bite, unless you are a fish (I am pescatarian!).

Arielle_Leitnersays:

Hi, my name is Arielle, I am a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. I am interested in the Chabauty topology (studying limits of geometries and subgroups), convex projective geometry, dessin d’enfant, symmetric spaces, and anything that you can make sufficiently pretty 🙂

I’m always happy to chat, please send me an email or find me on Zoom!

Abhishek_Mallicksays:

Hi, I am Abhishek. I am a graduate student at Michigan State University working under the supervision of Matthew Hedden. I am primarily interested in studying low-dimensional topology using the tools of Heegaard Floer homology.
Lately I have been thinking about incorporating the techniques of involutive Heegaard Floer homology to manifolds equipped with involutions.
I gave a talk in the 4-manifold mini-session (under Knots, surfaces, and 4-manifolds topic). Any questions, comments or concerns regarding that will be much appreciated. I am happy to chat in whatever format you would like.

SubhankarDeysays:

Hi, I’m Subhankar Dey, a 5th (tending towards 6th) year PhD student, working under Prof. Cagatay Kutluhan in Dept.of Mathematics, University at Buffalo SUNY. I am really interested in learning and talking and trying to apply techniques related to Heegaard Floer homology to knot theory and 3-manifold topology problems.

A paper that I read recently is ‘Counting Genus One Fibered knots in Lens Spaces’ by Kenn Baker. I learned a lot while having fun reading it.

I am definitely up for a chat about anything math (or soccer) related. Please feel free to shoot me an email! Thanks!

Martin Bobbsays:

Hello everyone, I am Martin Bobb. I am currently between my Ph.D. at UT Austin and beginning a post-doc position at the University of Michigan. I am interested in hyperbolic geometry, surfaces, deformation theory and geometric representation theory, and mostly real convex projective geometry.
If you want to talk about any of those things, or a different thing, please send me a message, I have oodles of time at the moment.

Artem_Kotelskiysays:

Hi! My name is Artem Kotelskiy, and I am currently a postdoc in Indiana University. I study Floer and Khovanov invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, mostly through their bordered variants associated to tangles and 3-manifolds with boundary. I also like symplectic geometry.

Always happy to chat about math! (artofkot@gmail.com, or @artofkot in telegram)

Piotr.Suwarasays:

Finally a human face!

Piotr.Suwarasays:

Y’all look like monsters.
(couldn’t resist :D)

Anja Randeckersays:

But very cute monsters, no? 🙂

Piotr.Suwarasays:

Some are quite frightening IMHO :O

giuseppe_martonesays:

Hi everyone!

This is Giuseppe Martone. I am a 2nd -> 3rd year postdoc at the University of Michigan. I am predominantly interested in higher Teichmuller theory. Using keywords: Anosov representations, Positive representations, geodesic currents, symmetric spaces and buildings, compactifications of character varieties, pressure metrics.

A couple of papers I have looked at recently and that I have enjoyed reading are Benoist-Hulin’s “Cubic differentials and hyperbolic convex sets” and Tholozan’s “Entropy of Hilbert metrics and length spectrum of Hitchin representations in PSL(3,R)”.

I would be happy to have a conversation about these or other topics with you! Feel free to find me via email or Zoom.

Hi! My name is Samantha Allen and I am a postdoc at Dartmouth College. I am interested in knot theory in dimensions 3 and 4. I particularly like to use Heegaard Floer invariants to study knots and knot concordance.

I recently read and enjoyed Sato’s paper “The $\nu^+$-equivalence classes of genus one knots.”

I am very happy to discuss math with anyone. Feel free to leave comments on my talk, send me an email, or show up to my office hours (on Friday, June 5).

francoevpsays:

Hi everyone! My name is Franco Vargas Pallete, I’m a postdoc at Yale. My interest are hyperbolic geometry and topology. Main topics I’ve been interested are renormalized volume and minimal surfaces in hyperbolic 3 manifolds.

GageMartinsays:

Hi! My name is Gage Martin and I just finished my 3rd year as a graduate student at Boston College. My advisor is Eli Grigsby. My research interests mostly involve using Khovanov homology and related invariants to study links and braids in S^3. A recent paper I read that I thought was really great was a paper by Yi Xie and Boyu Zhang where they classified all links with “minimal rank Khovanov homology” by using a relationship between Khovanov homology and singular instanton homology.

diana_hubbardsays:

Hi! My name is Diana Hubbard and I just finished my third semester as an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Before being in NYC I was at the University of Michigan for a postdoc and Boston College for grad school. I like thinking about knots, braids, three-manifolds, concordance, and contact structures. I was just re-reading Ken Baker’s “A note on the concordance of fibered knots” which is one of my favorite short papers. I love doing math with other people, so feel free to reach out!

KasiaJankiewiczsays:

Hello! My name is Kasia Jankiewicz. I am a postdoc at the University of Chicago. I study geometric group theory. Among things I like are CAT(0) cube complexes and CAT(0) groups, Artin groups, Coxeter groups, coherence and fiberings of groups.

EthanFarbersays:

Hello all! My name is Ethan Farber, and I just finished my third year of grad school at Boston College. My advisor is Kathryn Lindsey, and recently I’ve been thinking about a lot of questions about pseudo-Anosovs: how to create them, as well as how to use a combination of topology, geometry, and ergodic theory to study them.

A few papers that I’ve been thinking about recently are Rick Kenyon’s “Pseudo-Anosovs and toral automorphisms” and Birman-Brinkmann-Kawamuro’s “Polynomial invariants of pseudo-Anosov maps.” Baik-Jo-Kim-Wu also have an interesting paper on computing the Teichmüller polynomial of certain 3-manifolds arising from pA’s.

William.Wordensays:

Hi! My name is Will Worden, and I am a postdoc at Rice University working under the mentorship of Alan Reid. Broadly, I am interested in topological and geometric invariants of finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and how they relate to each other. I like to study hyperbolic 3-manifolds via triangulations and polyhedral decompositions, and this has led in particular to studying commensurability and hidden symmetries of knot and link complements, the Thurston norm, and essential surfaces in 3-manifolds. I am also interested in computation of invariants of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and experimental methods.

Although I didn’t schedule office hours for my talk, I am happy to chat via Zoom if folks have questions or just want to know more about the topic—just leave a comment or send an email and we’ll set something up.

IsaacSundbergsays:

Hi everyone, my name is Isaac. I am about to be a fifth-year graduate student at Bryn Mawr College, working with Paul Melvin. My research focus has been on Khovanov homology, though I want to learn more about other topics in low-dimensional topology (specifically, knot concordance and Heegaard Floer homology).

Lately, I have been rereading Bar-Natan’s paper “Khovanov’s homology for tangles and cobordisms”, which I’ve found particularly helpful for producing explicit maps on Khovanov homology induced by oriented link cobordisms. They’re an absolute nightmare to write down, but it’s somehow enjoyable.

Hi everybody, I am Mauro Artigiani, and I am currently an assistant professor at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia.
I am interested in Teichmüller dynamics and more generally parabolic dynamics (i.e.: things like horocycle flows). I ventured into infinite (flat) surfaces and their dynamical properties too.

samidoubasays:

Hi, everyone. My name is Sami Douba; I’m a third-year PhD student at McGill University, under the supervision of Piotr Przytycki and Dmitry Jakobson. Recently, I have been looking at representations of certain graph manifold groups.

I recently read Daniel Allcock’s paper HYPERBOLIC SURFACES WITH PRESCRIBED INFINITE SYMMETRY GROUPS, in which he proves that, given any countable discrete group $Q$, there is a complete hyperbolic surface whose isometry group is precisely $Q$. It made me wonder which simple lie groups $G$ have the property that, given any countable group $Q$, there is a Zariski-dense discrete subgroup $\Gamma$ of $G$ such that $N_G(\Gamma)/\Gamma \cong Q$.

Justin.Laniersays:

Hi there. My name is Justin Lanier. I’ve just finished my PhD at Georgia Tech. I’ll next be starting a postdoc at the University of Chicago.

My interests are in very-low-dimensional topology and its connections to group theory and dynamics. In particular, I like thinking about mapping class groups of surfaces as well as topological polynomials.

I recently read and enjoyed Dennis Johnson’s “Homeomorphisms of a surface which act trivially on homology”.

Hello, everyone!

My name is Jeffrey Meier, and I am an assistant professor at Western Washington University. Previously, I held postdocs at the University of Georgia and Indiana University and received my PhD from The University of Texas at Austin, under the direction of Cameron Gordon.

The topological objects that most interest me these days are fibered, homotopy-ribbon knots; homotopy four-balls; knotted surfaces in four-space; and trisections and bridge trisections of all the aforementioned objets. I’m also interested in Dehn surgery and knot concordance.

I’m always happy to chat about math or the profession, either via email or on Zoom, so don’t hesitate to reach out.

mitul_islamsays:

Hi, I am Mitul. I am a graduate student (between 4th and 5th year now) at the University of Michigan working under the supervision of Ralf Spatzier. I am interested in geometry and dynamics of group representations and questions about their deformation/ rigidity.

More speecfically, my interests are in geometric structures, geometric representation, real convex projective geometry geometry and geometric group theory. I enjoy thinking about weak notions of hyperbolicity and how it influences the properties of a group.

I am giving a talk in the Geometric Representation Theory mini-session (under Convex Projective Geometry). Any questions/ comments/ thoughts around that will be very appreciated.

I am always happy to chat about anything math! Feel free to reach out – email, zoom, skype, … – options abound.

Hi all! I’m Caitlin Leverson. I’ll start as an assistant professor at Bard College in the fall and am currently finishing up a postdoc at Georgia Institute of Technology. I did my PhD at Duke University where my advisor was Lenny Ng.

I’m interested in the intersection between low-dimensional topology and contact and symplectic topology, more specifically Legendrian knot invariants and Lagrangian cobordisms.

Sarah_Blackwellsays:

Hi! I’m Sarah Blackwell. I am a graduate student at the University of Georgia. I think I am technically a fifth year student now (yikes), although it is a little unclear because I just finished up a “gap” (?) year at Max Planck in Bonn, with my advisor Dave Gay.

Most recently I have been thinking about trisections of 4-manifolds, group trisections, Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian knots, and ways to make connections between those things. I’ve recently been reading Jeff Meier’s paper (hi Jeff) “Trisections and spun 4-manifolds”.

Sangsan.Warakkagunsays:

Hi everyone. I’m Sangsan Warakkagun and I go by Tee. I’m about to enter my 6th year at Boston College. My advisor is Ian Biringer.

I study hyperbolic surfaces, finite or infinite-type. In particular, I enjoy thinking about the space of all of them, in the Chabauty topology sense. I’ve been reading a paper by Jenya Sapir “A Birman-Series type result for geodesics with infinitely many self-intersections”.

Peter_Fellersays:

Hi all, I am Peter Feller, a low-dimensional topologist working at ETH Zurich. I am interested in concordance, 3- and 4-manifolds, and complex algebraic curves and their links of singularities (e.g. torus knots). Check out my fabulous collaborators Patrick Orson (Topologically embedding spheres in knot traces, office hour on 6/2 at 10:00) and Gabriele Viaggi (Uniform models for random 3-manifolds, office hour on 6/8 at 11:00).

nathanielsagmansays:

Hi all! If it’s not evident from the username, my name is Nathaniel Sagman. I’m finishing the third year of my PhD at Caltech, where I’m working under the supervision of Vlad Markovic.

I’m mostly studying harmonic maps and surface group representations, in the context of understanding (hyperbolic, anti-de Sitter, etc.) geometric structures on manifolds. Recently I’ve been thinking about some classical problems related to minimal surfaces.

ElainaAcevessays:

Hello everyone! My name is Elaina Aceves. I am going to be a 5th year graduate student this fall. My advisor is Keiko Kawamuro. I am interested in low dimensional topology and in particular, braids and quasipositivity.

JoseAndresRodriguezMiguelessays:

Hi all! I’m Andrés Rodríguez MIgueles. I am a postdoc fellow at the University of Helsinki. My research interests are in the areas of low dimensional topology, hyperbolic geometry and geometric group theory.

I will be talking about volumes estimates of link complements on Seifert-fibered spaces.

Justin.Bryantsays:

My name is Justin Bryant and I am going to be a 4th year grad student this fall at Wesleyan University. My advisor is Connie Leidy. I am interested in knot theory, in particular Hedden’s conjecture and how certain invariants behave under string link infection.

Hello everyone. I am Mihai Marian, a MSc student at UBC working with prof. Liam Watson. I will be starting a PhD with him in the fall. I am currently interested in Heegaard Floer theory and 3-manifold topology. Recently, I have been thinking about the work my advisor and his collaborators did in reinterpreting the type D structures that arise in Heegaard Floer theory and Khovanov homology as immersed curves in surfaces. The idea of turning algebraic information into geometric data in some useful manner is pretty exciting and it was used to prove the L-space conjecture for graph manifolds. I wonder what else can be done with it.

I am thankful for this NCN conference and I hope to meet some of you!

AndrewYarmolasays:

Hi! I am Andrew Yarmola, a postdoc at Princeton University. I like all things hyperbolic and low-dimensional (up to 4, at best). I usually work on hyperbolic 3-manifolds, geometric structures on surfaces (complex projective, flat, etc.), circle packings, geometric identities, and Teichmüller theory.

AruRaysays:

Hi everyone!
My name is Arunima Ray, I usually go by Aru. I work at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. I study knot concordance and 3-/4-manifolds. I especially like satellite knots and topological 4-manifolds.

Embarrassingly, the other day I read Fox’s Quick Trip for the first time and thought it was really cool!

Scott_Taylorsays:

Hi all,

I’m an associate professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. My research interests are primarily in knots and spatial graphs in 3-manifolds with a focus on Heegaard splittings and sutured manifold theory. I’m happy to chat about math or life at a liberal arts college. Thanks to all the speakers for such interesting talks!

DidacMGsays:

Hi everyone,

I’m Didac Martinez-Granado, a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, starting as a postdoc at UC Davis this coming Fall.
My interests are hyperbolic geometry and low dimensional topology. Some topics I am studying are geodesic currents, curve counting problems on surfaces, and systoles on surfaces.

I am currently reading a very interesting paper by Burger, Iozzi, Parreau and Pozzetti, entitled “Currents, Systoles, and Compactifications of Character Varieties”. They study the structure of geodesic currents on finite type surfaces based on whether their systole vanishes or not, and then they apply this to study character varieties of geometric structures of higher rank.

In my talk, will be speaking about the extremal length systole.

holtbodishsays:

Hello everyone,

My name is Holt Bodish. I am a second year PhD student at the University of Oregon working with Robert Lipshitz. I am interested in using Khovanov Homology and Knot Floer Homology to answer geometric questions. Recently I have been thinking about ribbon concordances and unknotting operations.

Two papers that enjoyed reading recently are:

Sucharit Sarkar: Ribbon Distance and Khovanov Homology

Cha, Friedl, Powell: Splitting Numbers of Links.

Zhenkun.Lisays:

Hi Everyone,

I am Zhenkun Li. It’s a little bit hard now to introduce myself, because I used to say that I am a graduate student at MIT under the supervision of Prof. Tom Mrowka, but I then realized that I just graduated four days ago. Anyway, I am interested in knot theory, sutured manifolds, and Floer homology.

Recently I am particularly focusing on how sutured manifold theory and sutured instanton Floer homology can help us to understand the instanton Floer homology for closed 3-manifolds.

I would like to thank the organizers of NCNGT for creating this great platform to chat and discuss math with all of you!

marius.hubersays:

Hi everyone!
My name is Marius Huber, I’m a grad student at Boston College. I will start my 4th year this fall under the supervision of Josh Greene.
These days I’m primarily concerned with ribbon cobordisms between lens spaces, but also like to think about the non-orientable slice genus of knots every now and then. For both of the subjects I like useing Heegaard Floer-y things.
Papers that I’m currently liking a lot are “Lattices, graphs, and Conway mutation” by Greene and “Rational Cobordisms and Integral Homology” by Aceto, Celoria and Park.

cfrohmansays:

Hello Everyone.

My name is Charlie Frohman. I got my PhD in 1984 under Allan Edmonds at Indiana University. I have worked on quantum topology since 1992. Before that I did stuff about Heegaard Splittings, Minimal surfaces, gauge theory and Bianchi groups. I am the moderator for math.GT on the Arxiv. I have graduated 21 PhD students and have 3 more.

That last few years I have focused on the representation theory of skein algebras. My current project with Joanna Kania-Bartoszynska is to construct holonomic invariants of three-manifolds equipped with an irreducible SL(2,C)-representation using skein theoretic methods.

Joanna.Kania_Bartoszynskasays:

Hi, my name is Joanna and my main research interests lie in quantum topology.
After being a university professor for many years I changed career, and now I am working as a program director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the National Science Foundation. Program directors are all mathematicians (or statisticians) and we gladly answer questions and talk to people.

Jonathan_Johnsonsays:

Hello, my name is Jonathan Johnson, a 6th year graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin working under Cameron Gordon. I like to think about knots in 3-manifolds. Currently, I’m investigating the bi-orderability of knot groups. In particular, I’m trying to understand the connection of the bi-orderability of a knot group with whether or not the branched covers of that knot are L-spaces.

Feel free to contact me if you want talk about anything, like for example…
…my research.
…someone else’s research.
…what it’s like to be an African-American in math.
…board games.
…sports.

SiddhiKrishnasays:

Hi! I’m Siddhi Krishna. Together with Hannah Turner and Jonathan Johnson, I’m co–organizing the “Investigating the L-space Conjecture” topic group.

I just finished by PhD at Boston College, where I was advised by Josh Greene. Next, I’ll be spending a year as a postdoc at Georgia Tech, before heading to Columbia as a Ritt Assistant Professor.

I like lots of things in low-dimensional topology! I’m primarily interested in Dehn surgery and related questions, though I also like braids, applications of homology theories, and using geometric structures to make topological conclusions. Most of my work so far has been focused on constructing taut foliations, but I’m excited to start branching out!

Some papers I’ve enjoyed looking at recently include: Peter Feller’s “A sharp signature bound for positive four-braids” and Kyle Hayden’s “Exotic ribbon disks and symplectic surfaces”.

Please reach out if you would like to chat! I really like meeting new people within the community, and am happy to talk about most things!

MariaTrnkovasays:

Hello everybody! I’m Maria Trnkova, a postdoc at UC Davis.
I like hyperbolic objects especially of dimensions 2 and 3. I like to triangulate them, compute their volumes and geodesics, so I cut, drill, fill, glue and do surgeries on them.

Yannick_Krifkasays:

Hi! My name is Yannick Krifka and I’m a PhD studentworking with Alessandra Iozzi at ETH Zurich.

I am interested in a wide range of mathematics; in particular in geometric group theory, (Higher) Teichmüller theory and dynamical systems.

Lately, I have been thinking about invariant random subgroups and how they can be used to obtain a new compactification of the moduli space of hyperbolic surfaces. Very related notions are the Chabauty space of closed subgroups (see Arielle’s talk), Benjamini-Schramm convergence, and unimodular random manifolds.

I love to chat about mathematics, so feel free to contact me:
firstname „dot“ lastname „at“ math.ethz.ch

Dave.Aucklysays:

Many folks are writing “Hi All,” I still read this as “Hi Y’all” from my days as a postdoc there. I think these virtual conferences are wonderful, so kudos to the organizers. I do a miss of low D topology, some gauge theory and things even further afield.

I have been contemplating the work of Baraglia and Konno recently. I’m happy to chat with anyone, so feel free to reach out with a question, or to say hi.

MarcKegelsays:

Hello, I’m Marc Kegel, based at the Humboldt university in Berlin, working in low dimensional contact topology and related fields.

MikeWillissays:

Hi everyone,
I’m Mike Willis, a postdoc at UCLA. I mess with Khovanov homology and stable homotopy for the most part. Within these realms, infinite twists and other infinite braids have been my main objects of interest. Here’s a nice paper summarizing some aspects of the lifting of homology to stable homotopy:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.03602

LisaPiccirillosays:

Hi Folks!

I’m Lisa Piccirillo, I used to be a Texan (for PhD) and now I’m at MIT. I like 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds and knot concordance and I really like trying to build manifolds that satisfy some long list of given properties.

Recently I read Livingston’s “Surfaces bounding the unlink” for the first time and Osoinach’s “Manifolds obtained by surgery on an infinite number of knots in $S^3$ for the $100^th$ time. You should feel very welcome to contact me about these papers or my papers or your papers or the profession or inclusivity in math or expositing about the maths or tacos.

Francisco_Arana_Herrerasays:

Hi! I’m Francisco, a 4th year PhD student at Stanford. I spend most of my time thinking about counting problems and dynamics in moduli spaces.

Mike_Wongsays:

Hi everyone! I’m Mike Wong, a postdoc at Louisiana State Univerity in Baton Rouge, LA. I’m interested in both the theory and the applications of Floer homologies. In particular, I have worked on understanding the behavior of Floer invariants under cobordisms – between knots, and between 3-manifolds – with topological or contact-geometric constraints. A recent paper I’ve been reading is “Framed instanton homology and concordance” by Baldwin and Sivek, where they compute I^# for many 3-manifolds!

christineleesays:

Hi everyone, I’m Christine Lee, and I am co-organizing a session on quantum topology with Carmen Caprau. I’m really interested in understanding the geometric and topological content of quantum invariants. I’m currently based at the University of South Alabama.

I’m currently reading “Categorified Young Symmetrizers” by Matt Hogancamp for a bit of a first foray into categorification + representation theory, and I am reading “the Quantum Content of Normal Surfaces” by Charlie Frohman and Joanna Kania-Bartoszynska for (only) the 50th time.

Sally.Collinssays:

Hi everyone!
My name is Sally Collins and I’m a 3rd/4th year graduate student at Georgia Tech working with Jen Hom. I’m interested in all things Heegaard Floer homology, and am particularly interested in the immersed curves reformulation of bordered Floer homology. I would be excited to discuss this and all things math, including how we can broaden the inclusivity of this field.

francesco.linsays:

Hi everyone! I am Francesco Lin and I am an Assistant Professor at Columbia. I am interested in gauge theory and geometry and topology in low dimensions. I am always happy to chat about math and other aspects of the profession, please reach out in case you are interested!

HannahTurnersays:

Hi! I’m Hannah Turner- a soon to be 6th year grad student at UT Austin studying under Cameron Gordon.

I like to think about branched covers of links and ask questions like “is their fundamental group left-orderable?” or “are they L-spaces?”

Recently I’m also interested in fibered links and in particular an invariant of their monodromy – the fractional Dehn twist coefficient. I’ve read Honda, Kazez and Matic’s “Right-veering diffeomorphisms of surfaces with compact surfaces i” (and part ii) many times!

Tamsays:

Hi! I’m Tam Cheetham-West, a soon-to-be third year graduate student at Rice University. My research interests are in low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory. I recently read Bridson, McReynolds, Reid and Spitler’s paper “Profinite rigidity and Triangle groups” and I often think about profinite completions of 3-manifold groups hoping to see what else they can say about the 3-manifolds that produce them.

MattHeddensays:

I’m Matt Hedden, a professor at Michigan State University. Our overzealous spam filter ate a bunch of emails regarding the conference, so I missed out on introducing myself last week. In any event, I’ll do it now.

I’m interested in 3- and 4-manifolds, and knots and surfaces embedded therein. I enjoy thinking about knot concordance, homology cobordism, contact and symplectic geometry, Dehn surgery, Floer homology, gauge theory, and categorification. I like meeting new people and talking math with anyone, and really enjoy interacting with students.

I’ll be moderating a problem session tomorrow, and look forward to meeting some of you there and hearing about your interesting questions.

Stefano_Vidussisays:

I’m Stefano Vidussi and I am professor at the University of California, Riverside. Over the years I’ve been working in various areas of low dimensional topology, using quite varied approaches and techniques. The overarching aspect of my research is the presence of a fibered 3-manifold (or at least my delusion that it should be lurking somewhere).