I began working at Lehman College in Spring 2000. Before taking the job here, I earned a doctorate at the Courant Institute in 1996 and then worked as a postdoc at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard. I am also a doctoral faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center and a frequent visitor to the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, where I work with doctoral students and postdocs conducting mathematics research.
My research is in the field of Geometric Analysis with specialties in Riemannian Geometry, Metric Spaces, Geometric Measure Theory, and General Relativity. This year, 2025-2026, I am on a research fellowship leave visiting the the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook where I have co-organized a program on Geometry and Convergence in Mathematical General Relativity and presented these SCGP lectures. In the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019, I was on leave to serve as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) where I co-organized the Emerging Topics on Scalar Curvature openning with my talk on scalar curvature . Here is a Report on my 2018-2019 Fellowship Leave (pdf). In the Fall of 2013, I was a visiting research professor at MSRI where I gave this lecture. Here is a 2013 Research Description which was distributed when being nominated for American Mathematical Society Fellow by Shing-Tung Yau and by William Minicozzi.
I was selected as an AMS Fellow in 2015 "for contributions to geometry, including the study of Ricci curvature, and for mentoring activities, especially for young mathematicians from underrepresented groups." In 2024, I was selected as an AWM Fellow for "utilizing every opportunity to open pathways to mathematics for more women and students by creating and maintaining online access to advice, mathematical resources, and information about women mathematicians; for organizing the “Inspiring Talks by Mathematicians” lecture series featuring under-represented speakers, and for dedicated and active contributions to the Association for Women in Mathematics."
I have recently been selected as one of ten mathematicians honored as 2025 AAAS Fellow for "distinguished contributions to the field of geometric analysis and the development of new notions of convergence to measure geometric stability with applications to mathematical general relativity." See the Lehman Announcement including a photo with some of my past students. I’m grateful to CUNY for supporting my research and that of my students. It has been wonderful to have the opportunity to give back to the university that educated my parents and so many other first generation college students of diverse backgrounds. Together we can advance the foundations of Geometry and deepen our understanding of Astronomy: two of the most ancient fields of study that come together now as Geometric Analysis and General Relativity.