For mathematicians:
I am interested in three and four-manifolds. I also like surfaces in 4-manifolds. I think you should be able to build smooth 4-manifolds and surfaces in them by hand with simple pieces, and I think you should be able to compute smooth 4-manifold or surface invariants by hand. I really like corks, and sometimes I study exotica, but it would be better if I could prove that things about smooth 4-manifolds are true. You can see my full CV here and my preprints here.
For non-mathematicians:
I study 4-dimensional spaces. A space is 2-dimensional if it locally looks like a piece of paper, and 3-dimensional if it locally looks like a foam block. I can't visualize a 4-dimensional space, and neither can anyone else. Studying knots turns out to be helpful for understanding spaces, so I sometimes study knots too. You can read an some articles about my research in Quanta and in the Society of Women Engineers. You can watch me talk about my research (and research math in general) at Google and at Roxbury Latin (a middle school). You can watch Mickaël Launay give a really excellent talk about the Conway knot here.
