Category: News Postings

Jesse Elliott (1973 – 2025)

We are deeply saddened to share with the community the news of the passing of Jesse Elliott, died on June 29, 2025, at the age of 52. Elliott was a student of Hendrik Lenstra, and was a Professor of Mathematics at California State University Channel Islands. Elliott authored the book Rings, Modules, and Closure Operations. Elliott’s forthcoming book Analytic Number Theory and Algebraic Asymptotic Analysis will be published posthumously in 2025.

Jesse’s obituary can be found here.

YouTube Channel: Commutative Algebra at Nebraska

The new YouTube channel Commutative Algebra at Nebraska contains videos on topics within commutative algebra. This includes videos produced by the Nebraska graduate students, and video presentations from the International REU in Commutative Algebra held at CIMAT this summer and the FGFY REU held at UNL this summer.

This work is supported by NSF RTG Grant DMS-2342256Commutative Algebra at Nebraska, which supports activities for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs in commutative algebra. More information can be found here.

WICA proceedings: call for submissions

Sara Faridi, Elisa Gorla, Elisa Postinghel and Alexandra Seceleanu are editing a proceedings volume to appear in the Association for Women in Mathematics series published by Springer Nature. This proceedings volume will showcase the progress of the groups formed during the conferences WICA II (Trento, 2023) and WICA III (Oaxaca, 2024), but will also include papers developed outside of this conference series.

This is a last call for submissions to this volume. If you would like to submit a paper, please let the editors know of your intention as soon as possible. Alternatively, please follow the  link “Make a new submission” at this webpage. Please do not hesitate to contact the editors if you have any questions.

WICA IV seeking proposals

The workshop WICA IV – ICMS will be held July 20-24, 2026 at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) in Edinburgh, Scotland. All program participants should hold a PhD or equivalent degree by the time the workshop takes place.
The organizers are currently seeking proposals for research problems and also for topics for dialogue groups.  Proposals should be submitted via this link.  The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2025.  The form will ask for a PDF upload describing your proposed topic, following the description given below. A (likely proper) subset of the proposals will become part of the information available to those who apply to participate in the workshop.  (Applications to participate in the workshop will open in July 2025.)  Selection of topics will depend on interest from potential participants.
Workshop participants will participate in one of three types of working groups during the week.
  1. Traditional groups: There will be two research groups in the by-now-traditional WICA format, each with group leaders who have been recruited in advance of this announcement by workshop organizers.
  2. Proposed research groups: There will be three research groups whose group leaders are selected from among those who propose a research problem via the link above.  Proposals may be made by a single mathematician or by a team of two.  Proposers need not be senior mathematicians. They are expected to take the lead in getting the group started on the proposed problem during the workshop. However, because proposers will not necessarily be more senior than other group members, there is less of an expectation that they will serve as mentors within the group if the group chooses to continue the project beyond the week of the workshop.  Because (parts of) these problem proposals will be posted publicly, we understand that people may wish to keep the statements of their problems somewhat vague. The most important information is the general topic of the problem and the background that would be required for someone to work on it.
  3. Research dialogue groups: There will be two groups, each with four to six participants, who will work together to learn background material on topics on which they are not yet experts. The goals in these groups will be to build working relationships and lay the foundation for future research collaborations. There is no expectation that these groups will continue beyond the week of the workshop itself.
In order to propose a research problem, please prepare a brief summary (~1/4 page to a page) of the problem itself and, roughly, of the background one would need to have in order to engage meaningfully with the problem.  Please submit at most one research problem proposal.
In order to propose a dialogue topic, please choose a survey article, book chapter(s), research paper, or similar that you would like to study with others during the workshop week.  If there is a topic that you would like to learn and a small family of references you would be happy to learn from, including all of the options that would be appealing to you is perfectly fine.  If you want to propose more than one topic, please submit separate proposals.  Please submit at most three dialogue topic proposals.
Funding is available through ICMS and from a gift from Jane Street Capital to cover participants’ local expenses.  We are in the process of seeking sources of funding to defray the costs of participant travel; there is no guarantee that such funding will be obtainable.  Additionally, there may be a 150 GBP registration fee.
If you have questions about the workshop or about proposal topics, please email the workshop organizers, Susan Cooper, Elena Guardo, Sema Güntürkün, and Patricia Klein.

International REU in Commutative Algebra

The University or Nebraska-Lincoln and CIMAT are co-organizing an international REU in Commutative Algebra, to be held at CIMAT, in Guanajuato, Mexico, in Summer 2025.

American citizens and permanent US residents will be supported with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), while Mexican citizens or residents in Mexico will be supported with funds from the Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencias, y Tecnologías (CONAHCYT). Participants will receive a stipend for the duration of the program and assistance with housing and travel.

More information, including how to apply, can be found on the REU website.

Postdocs at MPI CBG Dresden

The mathematics groups at the MPI CBG Dresden are looking for postdocs interested in interdisciplinary work. The deadline is December 1st. More information can be found at

https://www.mpi-cbg.de/join-us/open-positions/job-offer/postdoctoral-researchers-m-f-d-in-mathematics-and-applications

Aida Maraj’s group Algebra in Data Analysis has a special interest in candidates with background in algebraic geometry, commutative algebra and combinatorics that are enthusiastic about interdisciplinary research with statistics and biology. She is happy to answer questions via email at maraj@mpi-cbg.de.

PhD position at Imperial College

Ben Briggs is advertising a PhD position at Imperial College London, to start in October 2025 (there may be some flexibility in this). Please pass this announcement onto any students you know who might be a good fit!

The successful candidate will, very broadly, work on topics in commutative algebra and representation theory using homological/homotopical methods. Slightly less broadly, the plan is to produce a thesis on the structure of Hochschild cohomology and its relation to other things like the cotangent complex, support varieties, K-theory, proxy-small objects, Koszul duality, etc.

To apply, first write to Ben Briggs (b.briggs@imperial.ac.uk) with a description of your own background and interests, and the names of some reference writers. After that, if we decide your background fits well, you should formally apply through the “My Imperial” system here.


In your application you should say that you are interested in working with Ben Briggs, and you should discuss in detail your background and your interest in the potential project. If you write to him then you can discuss potential thesis ideas in more detail, and this could help your application a lot.

Please apply soon: a shortlist will be made in early November and hold some interviews shortly after that. At present the funding is for home fees, but international applicants will have a chance to apply for a top up that will hopefully cover the full tuition amount.