Teaching

Current semester:

In Fall 2025, I am teaching the following courses:

• Math 790 (Graduate topics course on algebraic topology)

• Math 226 (Calculus I)

If you are a student in one of these courses, you can find all of the course information on Canvas.

Past semesters:

I have advised the following Master's theses and academic reports at San Francisco State University:

• Nathaniel Schenker, Title TBD (Master's thesis), in progress.

• Vanessa Jelmyer, Continued fractions and the mathematics of Western tuning (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2025.

• Jason Meintjes, Projective embeddings of the moduli space of genus-zero curves (Master's thesis), completed Spring 2024

• Michael Byrd, The cohomology of complex hyperplane arrangements (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2023

• Nitan Avivi-Stuhl, The topology of boundary complexes of moduli spaces of curves (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2022

• Jan Tracy Camacho, Dimension of the boundary complex of the moduli space of curves (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2022

• Corey Carito, Signed permutations and the signed permutahedron  (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2021

• Matt Gil, A Hopf algebra structure on the cohomology of a universal Grassmannian  (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2021

• Rose Johnson-Leiva, Realizing graphs as curve-incidence graphs (Master's thesis, advised jointly with Dusty Ross), completed Summer 2020

• Dante Luber, Boundary divisors on moduli spaces of curves with weighted marked points (Master's thesis), completed Summer 2020

• Katie Waddle, Incidence graph statistics for curves in projective space (Master's thesis, advised jointly with Dusty Ross), completed Spring 2020

• Cody Delos Santos, An exploration of the Riemann-Hurwitz formula (Master's academic report), completed Spring 2020

• Stephanie Magallanes, Neural codes and the neural ideal: an application of algebraic geometry (Master's academic report), completed Spring 2019

• Anastasiya Timchenko, Toric moduli spaces of genus-zero curves (Master's thesis), completed Fall 2018

• Kyla Quillin, The dual complex of \Mbar_{g,n} in higher genus (Master's thesis), completed Spring 2018

I have also mentored several undergraduate research groups and individual projects:

• Elijah Valverde (Spring 2025), on boundary strata on moduli spaces of genus-one curves

• Kevin Cassman, Ishmael Gravatt, Rebeca Hernandez, and Kayla Kerstetter (Fall 2023), on a generalization of the signed permutohedron

• Beatrice Aragones, Anissa Lopez, Alexander Low, and Jairo Martinez (Fall 2022), on the mathematics of musical tuning

• Neo Gerard Diesta and Codelia Petronelli-Horne (Fall 2021), on the mathematics of musical tuning

See my CV for a full list of courses I have taught.  Alongside these, some of the other teaching-related activities in which I have had the pleasure of participating are the following:

• In Spring 2019, I spoke on "Out-of-This-World Geometry" at Nerd Nite SF, which was the only time I've uttered the phrase "I am a mathematician" and been met with raucous applause.

• In Fall 2018, I led a Math Circle at San Quentin State Prison on the Euler characteristic and its relationship to things like graphs and platonic solids.

• In Summer 2014, I assisted in teaching a two-week course on Art and Mathematics with the Michigan Math and Science Scholars (MMSS), a program for high school students from around the world.  The course was led by Professor Martin Strauss.  I also worked with MMSS during the summers of 2011 and 2012, on a course centered around number theory and related topics that was led by Professor Mel Hochster and co-taught by Mark Shoemaker.

• In July and August 2012, I co-taught a three-session workshop for middle school students with Daniel Reck at 826michigan, on the interaction between mathematics and creative writing.  We re-taught the workshop (in modified form) in May 2014, with a sixth-grade class at Ypsilanti Middle School.  Lesson plans for this workshop have been published in STEM to Story: Enthralling and Effective Lesson Plans for Grades 5-8, under the title Infinite Recess.