By trade, I am what you might call a mathematical physicist; in practice, and in feeling, this lies somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle between bridge-builder, preacher, and itinerant tinsmith.

Currently, I teach at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, England, where I hold a permanent post as Senior Lecturer. Before that, I spent five years as a senior researcher in mathematical physics at the LMU München, working under Ilka Brunner in the mathematical physics and string theory group (Lehrstuhl Dieter Lüst). Before that, I was a postdoc with Johannes Walcher in the math department at Heidelberg University.

I think about a variety of different things, but lately I've been preoccupied by a few main interests:

If you'd like more of a sense of what I mean by this, this talk (though no longer so recent) is a good place to start.

Teaching

In Hatfield, my primary teaching duties currently consist of

I also teach a unit of "Recent Advances in Theoretical Physics" and advise master's research projects. In the past, I've also taught a fraction of "Computational Physics."

Here's a summary of some prior teaching activities (just during the Munich years). Course websites are unfortunately only available from within the LMU network or VPN.

Summer 2025: I taught Lie groups and Lie algebras again.

Winter 2024/25: I taught the master's course "Physics and Geometry," and also led a seminar on mathematical applications of supersymmetric field theory (with Dayuan Wang and Dušan Novicic).

Summer 2024: I taught a course on Lie algebras, Lie groups, and other issues related to symmetries in physics. The website is here.

Winter 2023/24: I was off teaching, and was in residence for a semester at the LMU Center for Advanced Studies.

Summer 2023: I taught a course on supersymmetry in the TMP master's program. The website is here.

Winter 2022/23: I gave the central tutorial for "T4: Thermodynamik und Statistische Physik für Bachelor."

Summer 2022: I taught a course on supersymmetry in the TMP master's program. The website is here.

Winter 2021/22: I gave the central tutorial for "Quantenmechanik II."

Summer 2021: I taught a topics course on the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism, modern mathematical methods, and pure spinors. The website is here.

Winter 2020/21: I gave the central tutorial for "T4: Thermodynamik und Statistische Physik für Bachelor."

For information about earlier teaching (in Heidelberg or during graduate school), send me an email.

Papers

  1. Exceptional symmetry in six-dimensional superconformal quantum field theory.
    With Brian Williams. Available (for now) from his website.
  2. Kodaira-Spencer theory for flux backgrounds. In Physical Review D 114.
    With Caleb Jonker, Julian Kupka, Charles Strickland-Constable, and Fridrich Valach. 2604.25803.
  3. Duality of generalized Maxwell theories as an equivalence in derived geometry.
    With Chris Elliott, Owen Gwilliam, and Brian Williams. 2603.19161.
  4. Kodaira-Spencer theory for Courant algebroids.
    With Julian Kupka, Charles Strickland-Constable, and Fridrich Valach. 2602.04658.
  5. Notes on derived deformation theory for field theories and their symmetries. In Symmetry 17.
    This review article was an invited contribution to a special issue edited by Ivano Basile.
  6. Local superconformal algebras.
    With Fabian Hahner, Surya Raghavendran, and Brian Williams. 2410.08176.
  7. Eleven-dimensional supergravity as a Calabi-Yau twofold. In Selecta Mathematica 31.
    With Fabian Hahner. 2304.12371.
  8. Canonical supermultiplets and their Koszul duals. In Communications in Mathematical Physics 405.
    With Martin Cederwall, Simon Jonsson, and Jakob Palmkvist. 2304.01258.
  9. Felder und Räume: Symmetrie und Lokalität in der Mathematik und den theoretischen Wissenschaften.
    An expository article (in German). In Snapshots of Modern Mathematics from Oberwolfach.
  10. Six-dimensional supermultiplets from bundles on projective spaces. Communications in Mathematical Physics 406.
    With Fabian Hahner, Simone Noja, and Johannes Walcher. 2206.08388.
  11. Branes and DAHA representations. In the book series "SpringerBriefs in Mathematical Physics."
    With Sergei Gukov, Peter Koroteev, Satoshi Nawata, and Du Pei. 2206.03565.
  12. The derived pure spinor formalism as an equivalence of categories. In SIGMA 19, 022.
    With Chris Elliott and Fabian Hahner. 2205.14133.
  13. Twisted eleven-dimensional supergravity. In Communications in Mathematical Physics 402.
    With Surya Raghavendran and Brian Williams. 2111.03049.
  14. Perspectives on the pure spinor superfield formalism. In Journal of Geometry and Physics 180.
    With Richard Eager, Fabian Hahner, and Brian Williams. 2111.01162.
  15. Holomorphic boundary conditions for topological field theories via branes in twisted supergravity. Submitted.
    With Ilka Brunner and Ioannis Lavdas. 2110.15257.
  16. Twisting pure spinor superfields, with applications to supergravity. In Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly 20.
    With Brian Williams. 2106.15639.
  17. Constraints in the BV formalism: six-dimensional supersymmetry and its twists. In Advances in Mathematics 412.
    With Brian Williams. 2009.07116.
  18. Superconformal algebras and holomorphic field theories. In Annales Henri Poincaré 24.
    With Brian Williams. 1910.04120.
  19. Twisted characters and holomorphic symmetries. In Letters in Mathematical Physics 110.
    With Brian Williams. 1906.04221.
  20. Nonarchimedean holographic entropy from networks of perfect tensors.
    In Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics 25 (3).
    With Matthew Heydeman, Matilde Marcolli, and Sarthak Parikh. 1812.04057.
  21. Nilpotence varieties. In Annales Henri Poincaré 22.
    With Richard Eager and Johannes Walcher. 1807.03766.
  22. Holomorphic field theories and Calabi-Yau algebras. In International Journal of Modern Physics A 34 (16).
    With Richard Eager. 1805.02084.
  23. An introduction to spin systems for mathematicians.
    In Topology and Quantum Theory in Interaction, AMS Contemporary Mathematics 718. 1801.07270.
  24. Holography and local fields. In p-adic Numbers, Ultrametric Analysis, and Applications 10.
    A review article on p-adic AdS/CFT. 1801.04942.
  25. Signs of the time: melonic theories over diverse number systems. In Physical Review D 98. 1707.01087.
    With Steve Gubser, Matthew Heydeman, Christian Jepsen, Sarthak Parikh, Bogdan Stoica, and Brian Trundy.
  26. Edge length dynamics on graphs, with applications to p-adic AdS/CFT. In Journal of High-Energy Physics 2017.
    With Steve Gubser, Matthew Heydeman, Christian Jepsen, Matilde Marcolli, Sarthak Parikh, Bogdan Stoica, and Brian Trundy. 1612.09580.
  27. Tensor networks, algebraic curves, and p-adic local fields: arithmetic generalizations of the AdS3/CFT2 correspondence. In Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics 22 (1).
    With Matthew Heydeman, Matilde Marcolli, and Bogdan Stoica. 1605.07639.
  28. Sequencing BPS spectra. In Journal of High-Energy Physics 2016.
    With Sergei Gukov, Satoshi Nawata, Marko Stošić, and Piotr Sułkowski. 1512.07883.
  29. Real homotopy theory and supersymmetric quantum mechanics. In Journal of Mathematical Physics 59.
    With Hyungrok Kim. 1511.00978.
  30. Lectures on knot homologies and quantum curves.
    In Topology and Field Theories, AMS Contemporary Mathematics 613.
    With Sergei Gukov. 1211.6075.
  31. Nonconservative forcing and diffusion in refractive optical traps. In J. of the Optical Society of America B 28 (10).
    With Fred Gittes. 1102.3343.
  32. Remarks on the relationship between Lp stability and internal stability of nonlinear systems.
    In International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control 23 (16).
    With Xu Wang, Håvard Grip, Ali Saberi, and Anton Stoorvogel.
The style of this website owes deep debts of gratitude to Jacob Rasmussen and Brian Williams, from whom I borrowed CSS notions liberally.