Recent defenses
Master thesis defense: Sam Lichtman
Defense date: April 29, 2026
Sam Lichtman will defend the Master thesis on Wednesday, April 29. The title is
“Time zero behavior of stochastic diffusions with multiplicative noise”.
- Date: Wednesday, April 29
- Time: 10:00 am
- Location: Kerchof 111
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Alejandro De Las Penas Castano
Defense date: April 24, 2026
Alejandro De Las Penas Castano will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 24. The title is
“Zero-cycles on Products of Elliptic curves with supersingular reduction”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 3:30 pm.
Zoom link: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/92670669350?pwd=hahwy17xPUthUrqp4PP7K3h5seBcK2.1
Meeting ID: 926 7066 9350
Passcode: 551925
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Luke Moyar
Defense date: April 23, 2026
Luke Moyar will defend the DMP thesis on Thursday, April 23. The title is
“Khovanov homology and the skein lasagna module”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 from 3:00 pm until 4:00 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Anthony Doll
Defense date: April 24, 2026
Anthony Doll will defend the DMP thesis on Friday, April 24. The title is
“Classical Computational Methods in Homotopy Theory”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 317 from 1:00 pm until 2:00 pm, and will also be broadcast via Zoom (Meeting ID: 946 8945 7768, Passcode: 455863).
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: John Layne
Defense date: April 23, 2026
John Layne will defend the DMP thesis on Thursday, April 23. The title is
“Linear Patterns in Subsets of the Integers via Ergodic Theory, Hypergraph Methods, and Higher-Order Fourier Analysis”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 from 9:00 am until 10:00 am.
Zoom link: https://virginia.zoom.us/my/pclhumphries
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Mikhail Tikhonov
Defense date: April 17, 2026
Mikhail Tikhonov will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 17. The title is
“Etudes in Integrable Probability”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 317 at 2:00 pm.
Zoom link: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/92756559638?pwd=Lg9knrt9MzxhRdpVA3HAZJzqCf9tUo.1
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Yangxiao Luo
Defense date: April 14, 2026
Yangxiao Luo will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Tuesday, April 14. The title is
“Thompson’s group, braid groups and link homology”.
The defense will be held at New Cabell 411 at 2:15 pm.
Zoom link: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/98531468031?pwd=GJzuddDLIStYV9TqcH9hnoOG68uEcD.1
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Michael Wills
Defense date: April 10, 2026
Michael Wills will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 10. The title is
“Local-to-global Principles for zero-cycles on products of CM elliptic curves”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 3:30 pm.
Zoom link: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/94002919490?pwd=a2FRksdl3FvTaXP8wS6wlmsYGBWa74.1
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Eleftherios Chatzitheodoridis
Defense date: April 6, 2026
Eleftherios Chatzitheodoridis will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, April 6. The title is
“Models for rational (∞,1)-categories”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 12:30 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Valentina Zapata Castro
Defense date: July 28, 2025
Valentina Zapata Castro will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, July 28. The title is
“Segal Theta_2-monoids as monoidal (infty,1)-categories”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 11:00 am.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Matthew McCarthy
Defense date: July 12, 2025
Matthew McCarthy will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, July 12. The title is
“Connectedness Properties of some Subcomplexes of Twin Buildings and Their Group Theoretic Applications”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 3:30 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Kian Aik Cheong
Defense date: June 30, 2025
Kian Aik Cheong will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, June 30. The title is
“Explicit Kummer theory for some 2-dimensional formal group laws”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 317 at 10:00 am. The defense will be in hybrid format. For those interested, the Zoom link is: https://virginia.zoom.us/my/valiagazzoomspace
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Nikolas Dillery
Defense date: May 5, 2025
Nikolas Dillery will defend the DMP thesis on Monday, May 5. The title is
“Kazhdan’s Property (T): General Results and SL_n(Z)”.
- Date: Monday, May 5
- Time: 3:00 pm
- Place: Kerchof Hall 317
Everyone is cordially invited to attend.
Master thesis defense: Declan Stacy
Defense date: April 30, 2025
Declan Stacy will defend the Master thesis on Wednesday, April 30. The title is
“Stochastic Persistence in Infinite Dimensions”.
- Date: Wednesday, April 30
- Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
- Place: Kerchof Hall 111
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Liran Li
Defense date: April 30, 2025
Liran Li will defend the Distinguished Major Thesis on Wednesday, April 30 titled
“Automatic groups: a brief introduction”.
- Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
- Time: 11:30 am
- Place: New Cabell 027
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: James Harbour
Defense date: April 29, 2025
James Harbour will defend the DMP thesis on Tuesday, April 29th. The title is
Discrete measured groupoid von Neumann algebras via the Gaussian deformation
- Date: April 29th, 2025
- Time: 11:00 am
- Location: Ker 111
Everyone is invited to attend.
Masters thesis defense: Samir Fridhi
Defense date: April 25, 2025
Samir Fridhi will defend the Master’s thesis on Friday, April 25th. The title is
Tate’s Thesis
- Date: April 25th, 2025
- Time: 5:00 pm
- Location: Kerchof 111
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Aoran Wu
Defense date: April 25, 2025
Aoran Wu will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 25. The title is
“Von Neumann orbit equivalence”.
- Date: Friday, April 25
- Time: 2:00 pm
- Place: Kerchof 317
Everyone is cordially invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Mojdeh Tarighat Feller
Defense date: April 25, 2025
Mojdeh Tarighat Feller will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 25th. The title is
Products of Closed k-Schur Katalan Functions
- Date: April 25th, 2025
- Time: 1:30 pm
- Location: Zoom
For Zoom link, please reach out to Jennifer Morse .
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Catherine Cossaboom
Defense date: April 22, 2025
Catherine Cossaboom will defend the Distinguished Major Thesis on Tuesday, April 22 under the direction of advisor Ken Ono. The title is
“Distribution of Primes in Short Intervals”.
- Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2025
- Time: 9:00 am
- Place: Kerchof 111
Thesis defense: Louisa Liles
Defense date: April 11, 2025
Louisa Liles will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 11th, at 9:30 am in New Cabell Hall, Room 323.
Quantum invariants and their connections with Thompson’s groups F and T
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Miika Tuominen
Defense date: March 24, 2025
Miika Tuominen will defend the thesis on Monday, March 24. The title is
“Completions and DK-equivalences of Θn-spaces”.
- Date: Monday, March 24, 2025
- Time: 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm
- Place: Ridley Hall 179
Thesis defense: Wojciech Tralle
Defense date: March 19, 2025
Wojciech Tralle will defend the thesis on Wednesday, March 19. The title is
“Almost strong approximation in reductive groups”.
- Date: Wednesday, March 19, 2025
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: Kerchof 111
- Committee: M. Ershov, V. Gazaki, I. Klich, A. Rapinchuk
Everyone is invited to attend.
DMP thesis defense: Declan Stacy
Defense date: April 30, 2024
Declan Stacy will defend the DMP thesis on Monday, April 30. The title is
“Stochastic extinction, An average Lyapunov function approach”.
- Date: Monday, April 30
- Time: 1:00 pm EST
- Place: Kerchof 111
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Yuan Zhang
Defense date: April 24, 2023
Yuan Zhang will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Wednesday, April 24. The title is
“Root group data (RGD) systems of affine type for significant subgroups of isotropic reductive groups over \(k[t,1/t]\)”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 3:00 pm.
Yuan and I hope that many of you will be able to attend.
Master thesis defense: Mason Barnes
Defense date: April 22, 2024
Mason Barnes will be defending the Master thesis on Monday, April 22. The title is
“Kashaev Conjecture Solved for the Five Punctured Spheres”.
- Date: Monday, April 22
- Time: 10:00 am
- Location: Kerchof 111
Mason will demonstrate his solution to the Kashaev conjecture for type-preserving representations of the five punctured sphere in PSL(2,R).
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Tanner Carawan
Defense date: April 19, 2023
Tanner Carawan will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Friday, April 19. The title is
“2-Segal maps associated to a category with cofibrations”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 317 at 3:00 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Donnelly Phillips
Defense date: April 15, 2023
Donnelly Phillips will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, April 15. The title is
“The Hypoelliptic Heat Kernel on Infinite-Dimensional Lie Groups: Heisenberg-Like Quasi-Invariance and the Taylor Isomorphism”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 128 at 12:00 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Shunyu Wan
Defense date: April 9, 2023
Shunyu Wan will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Tuesday, April 9. The title is
“Naturality of the Legendrian LOSS invariant under positive contact surgery”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof Hall 111 at 3:15 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Alec Traaseth
Defense date: April 8, 2023
Alec Traaseth will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, April 8. The title is
“Combination Theorems for Convergence Groups”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof 111 at 10:00 am.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Hasan Saad
Defense date: March 25, 2024
Hasan Saad will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, March 25. The title is
“On the Distributions of Point Counts on Hypergeometric Varieties”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof Hall 111 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Yaolong Shen
Defense date: April 1, 2024
Yaolong Shen will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Monday, April 1. The title is
“Schur dualities arising from quantum symmetric pairs”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof Hall 111 from 1:30 - 3:00 pm.
Everyone is invited to attend.
Thesis defense: Eleanor Mcspirit
Defense date: April 2, 2024
Eleanor Mcspirit will defend the Ph.D. thesis on Tuesday, April 2. The title is
“Insights from Number Theory: From Arithmetic Geometry to Quantum Topology”.
The defense will be held at Kerchof Hall 111 from 9:00 - 11:00 am.
Everyone is invited to attend.