Example right-aligned image

I have been in the math department at the University of Western Ontario since 2002.  I received my PhD at the University of Michigan in 1999.

I was on sabbatical from July 2009 -- June 2010: I visited the EPFL (Lausanne) from September through November, and the University of Oregon from January through summer 2010.

Research

My mathematical interests fit roughly under a heading of algebraic combinatorics.  More precisely, this includes arrangements of hyperplanes and subspaces, combinatorial aspects of rational homotopy theory, and "toric topology."

I have some preprints and publications available here.

I gave a talk in the November, 2010 BIRS workshop Topological methods in toric geometry, symplectic geometry and combinatorics: here is the pdf file.

Teaching

Fall 2011:
Winter 2012:

Other Activities

With Alex Suciu, I organized a special session "The Algebraic Geometry and Topology of Hyperplane Arrangements" at the AMS spring sectional meeting in Worcester, MA, April 9-10, preceded by a workshop at Northeastern University on April 8. 

Together with Dan Cohen and Nicole Lemire I organized a Conference in Honour of Peter Orlik in August, 2008 at the Fields Institute.

I am a fan of Macaulay 2 (software for commutative algebra and algebraic geometry). Greg Smith and I have written a package for computation with hyperplane arrangements.  It is included with the standard Macaulay 2 distribution (versions ≥ 1.0): the latest version of the package is also available here for download.