Advising students is one of the most important and fun parts of my job!
I am interested in making academia more welcoming, more open, more transparent, more accessible, and less intimidating.
I am a member of the Math Alliance.
Graduate student advisees
- Joshua Mirth, Department of Mathematics. PhD in Summer 2020 and Masters in Fall 2017.
Joshua is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at Michigan State University.
[PhD Thesis, PhD Slides, Master's Thesis, Master's Slides] - Johnathan Bush, Department of Mathematics. Masters in Fall 2018. Current PhD student, 5th year.
John recently accepted a Postdoctoral Researcher position in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Florida - congratulations John!
[Master's Thesis, Master's Slides] - Lara Kassab, Department of Mathematics. Masters in Spring 2019. Current PhD student, 4th year.
[Master's Thesis, Thesis on arXiv, Master's Slides] - Brittany Carr, Department of Mathematics. Masters in Spring 2019. Current PhD student, 4th year.
[Master's Thesis, Master's Slides] - Mark Heim (co-advised by Chris Peterson), Department of Mathematics. Masters in Spring 2020. Current PhD student, 3rd year.
[Master's Thesis, Master's Slides] - Lander Ver Hoef (co-advised by Emily King), Department of Mathematics. Current PhD student, 2nd year.
- Michael Moy, Department of Mathematics. Current Masters student, 2nd year.
Undergraduate student advisees
- Leah Gibson and Jack Pfaffinger, Lions and contamination on a triangular grid, 2020-present.
[arXiv:2012.06702] - Ty Jensen, Sophia Ressler, Taylor Rogers, Caroline Wendt, Laplacian eigenmaps, 2020-present
- Natalie Burke, Bachelor's thesis An exploration in Perron's theorem, 2020.
[Bachelor's thesis] - Lu Xian from Macalester College; main advisor is Professor Lori Ziegelmeier. Research paper Capturing dynamics of time-varying data via topology, 2018-2020.
[arXiv:2010.05780] - Ethan Coldren. Bachelor's thesis On Vietoris-Rips complexes: The persistent homology of cyclic graphs and research paper The persistent homology of cyclic graphs, 2018-2019.
[arXiv:1812.03374, Bachelor's thesis] - Sean Willmot. Research paper The persistent homology of cyclic graphs, 2017-2019.
[arXiv:1812.03374] - Adam Jaffe (Stanford University) and Bonginkosi Sibanda (Brown University), via the Summer@ICERM 2017 program. Research paper Vietoris-Rips complexes of regular polygons, 2017-present.
[arXiv:1807.10971, Slides, Webpage, Photo] - Samadwara Reddy via the Duke PRUV Fellowship. Bachelor's thesis The Vietoris-Rips complexes of finite subsets of an ellipse of small eccentricity and research paper On Vietoris-Rips complexes of ellipses, 2015-2017.
[Publisher Link, arXiv:1704.04956, Oberwolfach Preprint, Bachelor's thesis, Slides] - Colin Roberts. Bachelor's thesis Sweeping costs of simply-connected domains and research paper Sweeping costs of planar domains, 2016-2017.
[Publisher Link, arXiv:1612.03540, Bachelor's thesis] - Brooks Adams. Research paper Sweeping costs of planar domains, 2016-2017.
[Publisher Link, arXiv:1612.03540] - John Obuch. Undergraduate research paper Crystallization processes in 1-D, 2016, co-advisied with Patrick Shipman.
- Honors option for 3 students (Isabella Zapata, Math 366, Spring 2019; Leah Gibson, Math 301, Fall 2018; Andrea Vigil, Math 301, Fall 2015).
I am also the co-coach of the CSU Putnam team, 2015-present.
Where can I find resources if I am interested in applied topology?
- You may be interested in the Applied Algebraic Topology Research Network. Become a member to receive email invites to the online research seminars. Recorded talks are available at the YouTube Channel. There is also a forum.
- Another source of applied topology news is appliedtopology.org.
- A second online research seminar is GEOTOP-A: Applications of Geometry and Topology.
- Mailing lists with announcements in applied topology include WinCompTop and ALGTOP-L.
- See this partial list of applied topology software options.
- See this partial list of applied topology book options.
Unsolicited advice
All students
- Attending talks: Whenever you attend a talk, and especially if you are a student, prepare at least one question that you could possibly ask (this is possible even if you understood only the first sentence of the talk). If nobody else asks a question at the end of the talk, then you are required to ask your question! The speaker and the seminar organizer will both greatly appreciate it. Half of the questions I try to ask are misinterpreted to be more interesting than I intended them to be. If there's not time to ask your question after the talk, you now have a question prepared if the speaker sits next to you at lunch. Asking a question is a great way to meet people!
- Letters: Here are instructions if I am writing a letter of recommendation for you.
- Grading: Here are my tips for serving as a grader for one of my classes.
- LaTeX: Here is a LaTeX template for beginning LaTeX users. For more advanced LaTeX users, here are some LaTeX guidelines that I generally follow.
- Overleaf: Here are my tips for using git with Overleaf. Please email Henry if you'd like a link that will allow you to clone and play with this practice repository. UPDATE: It turns out that using git with Overleaf for free is only possible if you were grandfathered in as an Overleaf v1 user.
- High school math: Here is a list of mathematics opportunities for advanced high school (or middle school) students, primarily in Colorado.
Graduate students
- Conferences: It's important for students to keep their eyes open for conferences they want to attend, for example by subscribing to the WinCompTop and ALGTOP-L mailing linsts. A good place to look for conferences is at the math institutes, such as the following, where you are often able to apply for travel funding: ICERM, MSRI, IMA, IPAM, Mathematical Problems in Industry (MPI) Workshop. For folks two years prior through 5 years after receiving their PhD, I highly recommend the MRC program, which is a great way to meet new folks in your research area, start a new research area, obtain funding for follow-up collaboration travel, and to travel to the Joint Meetings the following year.
- arXiv: Here are my tips for posting a paper to arXiv.
- MSC codes: Here are my tips for choosing MSC codes for a paper with me!
- CSU thesis formatting: The webpage on formatting your CSU thesis contains a link to a semi-official LaTeX thesis template, which several of my students have used.
- Sharing your thesis with your committee: One optional trick is that when you share your thesis with your committee, don't send them a PDF. Instead, email them a link to your thesis posted on your webpage. This allows you to make tiny changes and your committee "automatically" has the most up-to-date version (depending on how long they procrastinate their reading). Even if you don't make any changes then you're no worse off!
- Applying for academic jobs after your PhD: Here are some sample materials for applying to academic jobs after your PhD.
Everybody!
- Giving talks: Here are my tips for giving a math talk.
- Moderating talks: Here are my ``minutes remaining" signs. Print them dual sided; that way you can tell speakers that when you hold up the sign, they will know how many minutes they have left, and also the audience will know how many minutes they have left! Hopefully that will keep the speakers honest :).
- Women in math: See Lara Kassab's collection of resources for women in math and related disciplines.
- Applied topology software: See this partial list of applied topology software options.
- Online instruction: See my current thoughts and plans for online instruction. In particular, I explain how to make screen-capture videos of class content, along with an inset talking head.
- How to develop an online research seminar: I wrote an article How do I ... develop an online research seminar? for the September 2020 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. See this list of online math seminars that I currently know about.