I'm a fourth year grad student at Northwestern, and my research is advised by Mike Hill; I'm on the job market as of fall 2025. My main areas of study are homotopy theory and equivariant algebra; here's a list I wrote of a bunch of open directions for research in this area. In my free time I like to play artsy video games, read science fiction, watch pretentious movies and then complain about how pretentious they are, and play fetch with my cat Hazel.
Email: NoahAnkney2026 (at) u (dot) northwestern (dot) edu
I'm really interested in equivariant algebra: the study of Mackey, Green, and Tambara functors (which are analogues of modules and rings). These originally arose in the context of algebra, although they turn out to arise very naturally in equivariant homotopy theory. A great source of problems in this area is the following: take your favorite commutative algebra textbook, flip to a random page, and try to state and prove analogues of everything you see in equivariant algebra. For example, my UChicago REU student Emory Sun just proved a Tambara functor version of the Hilbert basis theorem!
Besides algebra, I'm also broadly interested in homotopy theory. For example: Balmer spectrum computations; all kinds of orientations; THH, TC, algebraic K-theory, and trace methods; and equivariant analogues of chromatically important spectra like Brown-Peterson spectra, Morava K-theory, and Lubin-Tate spectra.
Presenting a weak form of redshift at Talbot 2024
Layla (above) and Hazel (below)