Associate Professor
Associate Chair/Undergraduate Director
Department of Mathematics
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Email: clayton.shonkwiler@colostate.edu
Office: Weber 206C
Phone: (970)491.1822
Curriculum Vitæ
This semester I am teaching:
- Math 670 — Introduction to Differential Manifolds
Previous courses can be found on the teaching page.
My primary research interest is in using geometry to solve topological and physical problems. I am currently working on a long-term project which uses Riemannian and symplectic geometry to develop a new framework for understanding the probability theory of topologically constrained random walks and polymer networks. A newer but very promising project uses symplectic geometry to answer long-standing questions in frame theory and statistical signal processing. Please see the research page for more.
Group
Postdocs
Graduate Students
- Mason Faldet
- Tristan Neighbors (M.S. 2023)
- Page Wilson (M.S. 2025)
Undergraduate Students
Group Alumni
Postdocs
- Harrison Chapman (2017–2019; now senior software engineer at Google)
Graduate Students
- Anthony Caine (Ph.D. 2024; now assistant teaching professor at Arizona State University)
- Brian Collery (Ph.D. 2024; now instructor at Front Range Community College)
- Colin Roberts (Ph.D. 2022; now staff research engineer at Pluto)
- Thomas D. Eddy (M.S. 2019; now data engineer at the New York Times)
Undergraduate Students
- Yekaterina Aimukanova
- Laney Bowden
- Erin Gunn
- Andrea Haynes
- Nikita Lavrenov
- Tucker Manton
- Nikolai Sannikov
- Aaron Shukert
- Gavin Stewart
- Bogdan Vasilchenko
News
- March 2025 “On the existence of Parseval frames for vector bundles”, by Samuel A. Ballas, Tom Needham, and Clayton Shonkwiler, has been published in Transactions of the AMS.
- March 2025 Page Wilson has successfully defended her master’s thesis. Congratulations, Page!
- March 2025 “An exact formula for the contraction factor of a subdivided Gaussian topological polymer”, by Jason Cantarella, Tetsuo Deguchi, Clayton Shonkwiler, and Erica Uehara, posted to arXiv.
- January 2025 “Direct sampling of confined polygons in linear time”, by Clayton Shonkwiler and Kandin Theis, posted to arXiv.
- December 2024 Modular Flow is part of the Mathematical Art Digital Exhibition at Queens College (MADE@QC).
Support
My research is partially supported by the National Science Foundation (DMS–2107700), and previously by the Simons Foundation (#354225 and #709150).