3. Postdoctoral Program - MSRI

As his mentor at UCSC, I had frequent contact with Scott, and often discussed his outstanding
research. I've enjoyed having him around!
Scott works in a technical, fascinating, and (in the long term ) vitally im portant corner of
representation theory. Specifically he works on certain "double-co vers" of linear real redu ctive
groups. These groups have been around for many d ecades, but they've never quite fit into the
general "parameterization" program of Langlands, Arthur, and Vogan. Many leading researchers
avoid these double-covers entirely, but this has left significant gaps in our understanding.
Scott has succeeded in two ways. First, he has fill ed in some of these gaps in our u nderstanding
of double covers, and his significan t thesis work is now accepted for publication. Secondly, his
work is not only theore tical, but re alistically computable. W orking with the ATLAS project,
Scott has adapted Vogan's geometric parameterization (pairs of K-orbits on the flag variety of a
group and its dual) to som e double covers, in order to describe a param eterization of
representations that a com puter can carry out. This ability to com bine proof and algorithm is
rare, and Scott has excelled.
Scott was n ot only an activ e researcher during his tim e at UCSC, but he was also actively
involved in the department. He spoke in our algebra seminar, as well as the undergraduate math
colloquium. He taught two course s, and as the undergraduate vice -chair, I'm aware that he did
an excellent job. I'm not sure what the future holds for Scott, but I certainly hope that his
successful research is appreciated and can continue.
Please feel free to drop a note if you have further questions. It 's been a pleasure working with
Scott!
Marty Weissman
Assistant Professor
Undergraduate Vice-Chair
Dept. of Mathematics
UC Santa Cruz