aBa's Webpage
Office: 325N MLH
Office Phone: 319 335 3772
Home Phone: 319 337 8249
Email: ambirika@math.uiowa.edu
- Paper Mail
- Aba (Abukuse) Mbirika
Department of Mathematics
15 MLH
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-1419
USA
Professional Documents
Curriculum Vitae, Research Statement, Teaching Statement, Teaching Evaluation Summaries
Publications
- A Hessenberg generalization of the Garsia-Procesi basis for the
cohomology ring of Springer varieties, preprint 2009, (Available on
arXiv soon - draft available here).
- Towards a Schur-Weyl duality for the alternating group, (In progress - draft available here).
Teaching Experience
Fall 2005 - Calculus and Matrix Algebra for Business (Teaching Assistant)
Spring 2006 - Logic of Arithmetic (Teaching Assistant)
Summer 2006 - Alliance REU Teaching Assistant in Linear Algebra
(Summer REU for underrepresented minority students in Mathematics)
Summer 2007 - Vigre REU Teaching Assistant in Graph Theory (and Undergradate Research Advisor)
Fall 2007 - Calculus I (Teaching Assistant)
Fall 2008 - Basic Algebra II (Instructor) - syllabus
Spring 2009 - Abstract Algebra (Teaching Assistant) - syllabus
Teaching Awards
2005 - Catherine Wegner Outstanding Mathematics Teaching
Assistant Award
2006 - The University of Iowa Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (25 total awarded campus-wide)
2009 - University Housing Academic Excellence Award (34 total awarded campus-wide)
Fellowships
2004 to Present - University of Iowa Presidential Fellowship
Fall 2006 to Summer 2007 - VIGRE Fellowship
2008 - Sloan Fellowship
Current Research
I am currently working on 2 main projects. My co-advisor
Julianna Tymoczko and I are currently attempting to combinatorially
describe the cohomology ring of various Hessenberg varieties.
Ongoing project from my Spring '08 semester residence at MSRI
includes me finishing a project on the Schur-Weyl duality of the
alternating group begun with Tom Halverson of Macalester University.
I am continuing this project currently with my co-advisor Fred
Goodman.
MSRI Resident Spring 2008 at Berkeley, CA
In the Spring semester of 2008, I was a Program Associate at the
Combinatorial Represenation Theory Program. During this semester,
I begun research with four different residents: Georgia Benkart, Steve
Doty, Sasha Kleschev, and Tom Halverson. Of the four projects, I
am continuing the work started with Tom Halverson on the alternating
group. Thus far I have completely determined the branching rules
for this group. Towards a Schur-Weyl duality of this group, I am
investigating the centralizer of its action on an n-fold tensor product
of its permutation representation. Vaughn Jones (also in
residence this semester) talked with me about his findings on the
symmetric group's centralizer, i.e. the so-called partition algebra. This
work was done by him in 1992. So far no one has done the
alternating group analogue. I am attempting to accomplish this.
Conferences/Workshops Attended
January 2005 - Joint Math Meetings at Atlanta, GA
April 2006 - AMS Meeting Central Section, Special Session on
Topics in Representation Theory at the University of Notre Dame
May/June 2006 - Mini-course on SL(2,R) at the University of Utah
October 2006 - Representation Theory of p-adic Groups (in honor of Phil Kutzko's 60th Bday) at the University of Iowa
January 2007 - Workshop on the Representation Theory of p-adic Groups at the University of Ottawa
January 2007 - Joint Math Meetings at New Orleans, LA
Spring 2008 - In Residence as a Program Associate at MSRI in their Combinatorial Representation Theory Program at Berkeley, CA
September 2008 - KUMUNU algebra conference at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
January 2009 - Joint Math Meetings at Washington D.C.
April 2009 - AMS Sectional Meeting [Special Session on Algebra, Geometry and Combinatorics] at UIUC
June 2009 - VIGRE Conference on Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry on Flag Varieties at University of Iowa
September 2009 - KUMUNU algebra conference at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
October 2009 - MAA Iowa Sectional Meeting at University of Northern Iowa
Talks Given
1. Various talks in the Representation Theory Seminar on
GL(2)-representations over a finite field - 2006 to 2007 (University of
Iowa)
2. Various talks in the Representation Theory Seminar on Nondegenerate Smooth Representations - 2006 to 2007 (University of
Iowa)
3. Two talks in the Algebraic Geometry Seminar on Flag Varieties and
Grassmanians of different Lie Type - Fall 2007 (University of Iowa)
4. VIGRE REU Seminar talk on Partition Theory - Summer 2008 (University of Iowa)
5. GAUSS talk to Prospective Graduate Students - Title: All of Math Grad School in a Nutshell - March 2009 (University of Iowa)
6. AMS Sectional Meeting [Special Session on Algebra, Geometry and
Combinatorics] - Title: Cohomology of Hessenberg Varieties - March 2009
(Univesity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
7. History talk to undergrads - Title: Euler, Da Man! - April 2009 (Winona State University at Minnesota)
8. Heartland Math Talk - Title: Interesting Aspects of Number Partitions - April 2009 (University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse)
9. Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry on Flag Varieties Conference -
Title: Intro to Schubert Calculus - June 2009 (University of Iowa)
10. Algebraic Geometry Seminar - Title: A combinatorial description of H^*(Peterson) - September 2009 (University of Iowa)
11. MAA Iowa Sectional Meeting - Title: Cool combinatorics arising in a
cohomology hunt! - October 2009 (University of Northern Iowa)
Service
2005 to Present - Undergraduate Math Club Adivsor
Fall 2005 - Tutor for displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina
2005, 2007, Present - Undergraduate Math Lab Tutor
2008 to Present - English Buddy Program (tutoring English language to assist foreign graduate students take the SPEAK exam)
Professional Affiliations
Member, American Mathematical Society
Member, Mathematical Association of America
Member, Iowa-NExT Fellow
Personal Stuff
My feeble attempts at being a superstar math/rap artist
The above is a poem I wrote for the class I taught in Fall 2008 at the
Univ of Iowa. My friend Max filmed me in a Chinese restaurant in
NYC with some sorta Blackberry gizmo or something. I wasn't
convinced that the machine had the capabilities to record a video, but
it did it seems. Click above to watch/listen.
This poem was delivered to my Abstract Algebra class at the Univ
of Iowa in Spring 2009. I actually wrote it while I was an undergrad at
Sonoma State University in Northern California.
When I found out my office mate Jonas Meyer was holding analysis class
on a school holiday, I felt bummed out for the students. So I
decided to write them a math treat. The holiday was July 4th (the
next day), so there's a mix of patriotism in this poem about analysis.
 |
| ... sometimes teaching indoors on a nice day is such a drag - that's when you need a blackboard on wheels!! |
This page was last modified on September 11, 2009 by extra-planetary beings from a galaxy near you. Hi Shelby!
DISCLAIMER: The University of Iowa Math Dept neither believes nor
dis-believes in extra-planetary beings from outta space. The
views of aBa Mbirika regarding space-people are indeed his own and do
not reflect those of the math dept. However they do reflect a
very common sensical view that we are NOT ALONE in the universe, eg.
space-people are out there.
