Current PhD Students
Andres Martinez Servellon is working on perivations and other exotic things in mixed characteristic.
Havi Ellers is working on Hartshorne-Speiser-Lyubeznik numbers for local cohomology modules of semigroup rings. (preprint)
Ben Baily is working on understanding when a complete intersection has the minimal possible F-pure threshold. He also recently finished a paper with post-doc Amichai Lampert on Strength, Partition Rank and Algebraic Closure.
Former PhD Students in Reverse Chronological Order
Olivia Strahan (UM PhD 2025) PhD thesis: Combinatorial Methods in Mixed Characteristic: The Theory of t-Monomials. Olivia will be a postdoc at the University of New Mexico. At her graduation.
Anna Brosowsky (UM PhD 2024) PhD Thesis: The Cartier Core Map and F -Graded Systems. She will join Jack Jeffries’ group as an NSF postdoc at the University Nebraska for Fall 2024. At her defense.
Suchitra Pande (UM PhD 2023) PhD Thesis: The F-signature and the Frobenius-Alpha Invariant of Projective Varieties, winner of the 2025 Sumner Myers Prize for Best Michigan Math PhD thesis. Suchitra (formally known as Swaraj) is an C.R. Wiley Instructor at the University of Utah, following a postdoctoral position at MSRI for the 2024 program in Commutative Algebra. Together at MSRI.
Alapan Mukhopadhyay (UM PhD 2023) PhD Thesis: The Frobenius-Poincare function and Hilbert-Kunz Multiplicity Alapan is now a member of the group of Zsolt Patakfalvi at EPFL (Lausanne).
Zhi Jiang (UM PhD 2022) PhD Thesis: Tensors, Cap Set and Invariant Theory. Zhi worked primarily with Harm Derkson. He is now a data scientist for Key Bank and lives in Ann Arbor!
Eamon Quinlan (2021 University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Bernstein-Sato Polynomials in Prime Characteristic.
Eamon is an NSF post-doctoral fellow at the University of Utah working with Karl Schwede and Anurag Singh. In my backyard.
Robert Walker (2019 U Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Uniform Symbolic Topologies in Non-Regular Rings.
Robert was a NSF/Van Vleck Visiting Professor at University of Wisconsin, working with Dan Erman. He has since moved to Seattle as a visiting scholar at Google. Here’s me and Robert at the MAA MathFest in DC.
Rankeya Datta (2018 UM PhD) PhD Thesis: A Tale of Valuation Rings in Prime Characteristic.
Rankeya is an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, after post-docs at MSU (2021-2022) and the University of Illinois, Chicago (2018-2021). Celebrating!
Gilad Pagi (2018 UM PhD) PhD Thesis: Enhanced Algorithms For F-Pure Threshold Gilad is currently employed at Google. Here we are at Gilad’s PhD graduation ceremony.
Balin Fleming (2015 UM PhD).
PhD Thesis: Arc schemes in Logarithmic Algebraic Geometry. Balin was a post-doc with Kalle Karu at the University of British Columbia. Christmas 2014
Xiaolei Zhao, (2015 U Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Topological Abel-Jacobi Mapping and Jacobi Inversion, co-advised by Herb Clemens.
Xioalei is now an Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara, after a Zelevinsky Research Instructorship at Northeastern University, working with Emanuele Macrì. Xiaolei and me at his thesis defense with his wife Chen.
Brooke Ullery, (2015 UMichigan)
PhD Thesis: Tautological vector bundles on the Hilbert scheme of points and the normality of secant varieties , co-advised by Rob Lazarsfeld.
Brooke is now a mathematician at Nvidia, after serving as an Assistant Professor at Emory University in 2020-2-24 and a NSF/Pierce Instructor at Harvard. At Brooke’s Thesis Defense Party
Sarah Mayes (2013, U Michigan)
PhD Thesis: The Asymptotic Behavior of Generic intital systems.
Sarah is now an professor of practice at Toronto, having moved there from a Professorship Quest University in Canada.
Here we are with Michael Von Korff at his defense party.
Michael Von Korff (2012, U Michigan)
PhD Thesis: The F-signature and Frobenius Splitting of Toric Varieties.
Michael worked for several years an education start-up called Reasoning Mind based in Houston but recently relocated to a Boston-based ed-tech job at Curriculum Associates. Here’s Michael and my daughter Helena on a hike with us in Finland.
Daniel Hernandez (2011, University of Michigan)
PhD thesis: F-purity of hypersurfaces
Emily is Associate Professor at the University of Kansas, after an NSF post-doc at UTAH and a Dunham Jackson Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota.
Here’s Daniel on Halloween in front of my house with wife and my academic sister Emily Witt, a powerful mathematician herself.
Chelsea Walton (2011, U Michigan)
PhD Thesis: On Degenerations and Deformations of Sklyanin Algebras, co-advised by Toby Stafford.
Chelsea is Associate Professor at Rice since 2020, when she moved from UIUC, and before that after serving as the Selma Lee Bloch Brown Assistant professor at Temple University. Before that she was an NSF post-doc at UW Seattle and a Moore Instructor at MIT. She also won our department’s Cornwell Prize in 2011 for the most promising mathematics student, and just recently the Andre Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson geometry, 2019.
I think we make a pretty cool pair of witches.
Kevin Tucker (2010, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Jumping Numbers and Multiplier Ideals on Algebraic Surfaces, the winner of the Sumner Myers Prize for our department’s best 2010 thesis. Kevin is a Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, after a post-doc at Princeton and and NSF fellowship at Utah, working with my former post-doc Karl Schwede.
Halloween 2008 on my front porch.
Yogesh More (2008, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Arc Valuations on Smooth Varieties.
Yogesh is a Professor at the college of Old Westbury, SUNY, after first completing a post-doc at the University of Missouri.
Here we are in my kitchen at Yogesh’s graduation party, and at the milkshake party with Andrey, Tapio and Helena.
Cornelia Yuen (2006, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Jet Schemes and Truncated Wedge schemes.
Cornelia is a Professor at SUNY Potsdam, after a post-doc at the University of Kentucky. Here we are at Mel’s conference and then later with some academic siblings at a party at my house for Mel’s birthday.
Amanda Johnson (2003, University of Michigan).
PhD Thesis: Multiplier ideals of determinantal ideals.
Amanda has a mathematical research position at the National Security Agency.
Manuel Blickle (2001, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: The intersection homology D-module in finite characteristic.
Manuel is a professor at Mainz. His first job was a post-doctoral position at the University of Essen, working in Esnault and Viehweg’s algebraic geometry group. He held Germany’s very prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship.
Here we are at a conference for my own advisor Mel Hochster ‘s 65th birthday, August 2008, and in January 2011 on a hike at Luminy, Marseilles France.
Sara Faridi (2000, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Closure Operations on Ideals.
Sara Faridi is now a Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, after being an Assistant Professor at George Washington University and at the University of Ottawa.
Uriel Scott (2000, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Sparse Systems of Parameters for Projective Varieties
Uriel Scott is a founder of Digital Mint, a financial company founded in 2014 providing Bitcoin ATMs and teller locations. After finishing his degree, Scott worked as a trader for the famous proprietary trading firm Susquehanna, then moved on to a ‘quant’ position at Mirant Atlanta (formally Southern Energy), then Constellation Commodities in Baltimore, and other finance research positions throughout the country.
Joel Rosenberg (1999, University of Michigan)
PhD Thesis: Geometry of Moduli of Cubic Surfaces, co-advised by Joe Harris.
Rosenberg is currently a mathematical researcher at the Institute for Defense Analysis Center for Communications Research (IDA-CCR).
Will Traves (1998, University of Toronto)
PhD Thesis: Differential Operators and Nakai’s Conjecture
Professor and Math Department Chair, US Naval Academy, Annapolis. Traves first job was at as an NSERC post-doc at Berkeley.
Here we are with my more recent students Robert Walker and Sarah Mayes-Tang at the MAA MathFest in DC.
I was also a surrogate advisor for Andrey Mishchenko, circle packer extraordinaire, who defended summer 2012 and worked for Formlabs, a 3D printing company, briefly at Google, then Instabase, and now at Open AI. Me and my Buddy.
