Research  I am an algebraic geometer, specializing in the study of moduli spaces of curves, who has also written papers in topology, computational algebra, combinatorics and optics. With Joe Harris, I authored the graduate text Moduli of Curves and with Gavril Farkas I edited the three volume Handbook of Moduli. From 2015-2023. I served as the Series Editor for the IAS/Park City Mathematics Series. 

Positions Held  I earned my B.Sc.. at the University of Toronto in 1974 and my Ph.D. at Harvard, advised by David Mumford, in 1978 (spending 1975-76 at the I.H.E.S.) I then held Assistant Professor positions at UCLA, Toronto, and Columbia before joining Fordham in 1987, first as an Associate Professor and since 1991 as a Professor. I have also held visiting positions at the Universitá di Roma, Paris Sud, Harvard University, M.S.R.I., the Centre de Recerca Matematica in Barcelona, the Scuola Normale Superiore, Columbia University, the Tata Institute, the University of Sydney, the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics, Galatasaray University and the Univeritá di Firenze. 

Teaching At Fordham, I developed Scientific Communication, an interdisciplinary course in scientific writing and presentation, proposed, with Shaun Ault, Programming for Math and Science, an interdisciplinary course in the use of Python for scientific computation that is now part of our major, and taught the first course in Mathematics of Finance.

University Service I have chaired the University Research Council, the Senate Technology Committee, and the EP Subcommittee of the Core Curriculum committee and been a member of the Presidential Budget Committee, the Arts and Science Council and the Provost's task Force on Undergraduate Science Education.

Departmental Service For the past 20 years, most of my effort on behalf of the Mathematics Department has been devoted to managing our staffing. Since spearheading the creation of our Peter M. Curran Visiting Assistant Professorships in 2005, I have led 23 PMC searches (all successful). I have also led 12 tenure-track searches and 2 senior searches (also all successful). The best testimony to the quality of this work is that faculty hired in these searches have been poached by Edinburgh, Munster, Brown and Imperial College.

Current CV