Home

Rena Chu

I will be starting a postdoc position at the University of Goettingen in September 2025, mentored by Lilian Matthiesen. I am interested in analytic number theory and more specifically, additive and multiplicative character sums.

I obtained my PhD at Duke University in May 2025. My advisor was Lillian Pierce.

Before starting a PhD at Duke, I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and a master's degree (Part III) at the University of Cambridge.

Email: rena[dot]chu[at]duke[dot]edu

Here is a list of my publications and preprints:

Estimates for short character sums evaluated at homogeneous polynomials (arXiv)
Generalizations of the Schrödinger maximal operator: building arithmetic counterexamples, with L. B. Pierce, Journal d’Analyse Mathématique 2023 (arXiv)
Counterexamples for high-degree generalizations of the Schrödinger maximal operator, with C. An and L. B. Pierce, International Mathematics Research Notices 2023 (arXiv)
Constant root number on integer fibres of elliptic surfaces, with J. Desjardins, Journal of Number Theory 2023 (arXiv)

Recent funding and awards:

Katherine Goodman Stern Fellowship, Duke University, 2024/2025
L.P. Smith Award for Teaching Excellence, 2024
Finalist for the Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship, 2024

Talks given:

Apr 2025 AMS Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting (invited)
Mar 2025 Duke Number Theory Seminar
Mar 2025 Stanford Student Analytic Number Theory (invited)
Feb 2025 University of South Carolina Algebra, Geometry, and Number Theory Seminar (invited)
Feb 2025 NC State Stochastics and Discrete Analysis Seminar (invited)
Feb 2025 Johns Hopkins Junior Number Theory Days (invited)
Nov 2024 Triangle Area Graduate Mathematics Conference (contributed)
Sep 2024 Palmetto Number Theory Series (PANTS) XXXVIII (contributed)
Jan 2024 LSU Algebra and Number Theory Seminar (invited)
Dec 2023 Monodromy and Its Applications, on the Occasion of Nicholas Katz' 80th Birthday (contributed)
Oct 2023 AMS Fall Southeastern Sectional Meeting (invited)
Jul 2023 32èmes Journée Arithmétiques (contributed)
May 2023 IAS Women and Mathematics Evening Research Talks (invited)
Feb 2023 Triangle Area Graduate Mathematics Conference (contributed)
Mar 2022 Triangle Area Graduate Mathematics Conference (contributed)
Jun 2021 Zoom On Rational Points (ZORP) (invited)
Oct 2020 Duke Number Theory Seminar

Workshops and conferences attended:

AMS Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting, Apr 2025, Hartford, CT
Hot Topics: Interactions between Harmonic Analysis, Homogeneous Dynamics, and Number Theory, Mar 2025, SLMath
Palmetto Number Theory Series (PANTS) XXXVIII, Winston-Salem, NC
Hausdorff Summer School: Uniformity and Stability of Oscillatory Integrals, Jul 2024, Bonn, Germany
Monodromy and Its Applications, on the Occasion of Nicholas Katz' 80th Birthday, Dec 2023, Princeton, NJ
AMS Fall Southeastern Sectional Meeting, Oct 2023, Mobile, AL
RHB70: Analytic Number Theory and Its Interfaces, Jul 2023, Oxford, UK
32èmes Journées Arithmétiques, Jul 2023, Nancy, France
IAS Women and Mathematics, May 2023, Princeton, US
Mordell 2022, Aug 2022, Cambridge, UK
Elliptic Curves Graduate School, Aug 2022, Baskerville Hall, UK
PCMI 2022 Graduate Summer School: Number Theory Informed by Computation, Jul-Aug 2022, Park City, US
Arizona Winter Semester 2021: Virtual School in Number Theory, Jan-Mar 2021, on zoom

Teaching:

Math 112L Laboratory Calculus II (Instructor), Fall 2023
Summer Workshop in Math (SWiM) at Duke (Instructor), Summer 2023
IAS Women and Mathematics Program (TA), May 2023
Math 111L Laboratory Calculus I (Instructor), Fall 2022
Math 290 Special Topics in the History of Mathematics (Grader), Spring 2022
Math 111L Laboratory Calculus I (TA), Fall 2021

Expository writing:

On large gaps between primes, Cambridge Part III essay (an exposition of Long gaps between primes by Ford, Green, Konyagin, Maynard, and Tao)
On Waring's problem with restricted digits (an exposition of Waring's problem with restricted digits by Green) (pdf)
On Roth's theorem on Diophantine approximation of algebraic numbers (an exposition of Roth's theorem as recorded in Diophantine Approximation by Schmidt) (pdf)

Others:

My colleague Kairi Black and I started a graduate number theory seminar at Duke University in 2022. See more details here: https://sites.google.com/view/winter-at-duke/home.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse