Ivan Contreras

About me:

My research lies in the intersection of Differential Geometry, Topology and Mathematical Physics. I earned my PhD degree in Mathematics at the University of Zürich, under the supervision of Alberto Cattaneo. After that I held postdoctoral positions at University of California, Berkeley (postdoc mentor: Nicolai Reshetikhin) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (postdoc mentor: Rui Fernandes).

Since 2022, I am an Editor at Quantum Journal, an open journal for quantum sciences (Verein zur Förderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften, ISSN 2521-327X, Austria). 

I co-edited (with Alexander Cardona and Andrés Reyes-Lega) the book Geometric and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory: Proceedings of the 2009 Villa de Leyva Summer School. Cambridge University Press (2013).

In March 2023, I was one of the local organizers of the 9th Gone Fishing Conference in Poisson Geometry, at Amherst College. The conference was centered on the theme “Poisson geometry and its derived, shifted, and higher variants”. The conference was partially supported by the NSF grant DMS-2232673. 

I was one of the organizers of the Primer Encuentro Colombiano de Geometría y Topología (ECOGyT) in Summer 2024, at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.

I am one of the organizers of the Conference: Interactions of Poisson Geometry, Lie Theory and Symmetry, at Insituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, in Summer 2025. The conference is partially supported by the NSF grant DMS-2451846.

During the 2024-25 academic year, I served as Faculty Equity and Inclusion Officer at Amherst College.

Starting on 2025, I am the Class Dean for the Classes of 2027 and 2027E.

Last update: July 2025