Alex McDonough

About Me:

I am an RTG Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Oregon working under the supervision of Benjamin Young. Previously, I was a Krener Assistant Professor at University of California, Davis under the supervision of Fu Liu. Before this, I got a PhD in Mathematics at Brown University, advised by Caroline Klivans.

Contact Info:

Email: alexmcd [at] uoregon [dot] edu

Note: This Fall, I will be working virtually from California before returning to Oregon in January. I am also on the job market, particularly interested in permanent positions where research and teaching are both highly valued.

Here's me at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia for the Encuentro Colombiano de Combinatoria (ECCO) in July 2022.

Research Overview:

I study algebraic, geometric, topological, and dynamical combinatorics. A few of my favorite topics are chip-firing, matroid theory, and discrete geometry. More generally, I tend to enjoy any project where I can play around with concrete examples to search for hidden structure. Thankfully, these kinds of projects are plentiful in combinatorics!

When doing research, I like to seek a compelling story to help explain a curious phenomenon. When a result feels neither obvious nor arbitrary, I usually take that as a sign that there is more to explore.

For particularly intriguing phenomena, I find it helpful both for presentations and my own understanding to design animations about the material. The first research animation I made is below, and you can find others in the visuals tab.

Animation.mov

Personal

On August 16, 2025, I got married to the amazing Julia Schedler, who is currently a statistician at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

One of my favorite hobbies is playing, collecting, and reading about board games. A well written board game instruction manual has many of the same characteristics as a well written research paper (such as clear logic, judicious structure, and plenty of examples). I feel that learning new games has been great practice for learning new mathematics, and teaching rules to others has been great practice for lecturing! If you are curious about my collection, here is my BoardGameGeek Profile.

I also love participating in rec league/ intramural sports whenever I can. Last Winter, I was captain of the Epsilon Ballers, the math department coed basketball team. While we didn't win any games, we did manage to lead the league in point differential!

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