3. Postdoctoral Program - MSRI

Nisse, Mounir
Stapledon, Alan
Williams, Lauren
Mounir received his Ph.D. from Unversite Pierre et Marie-Curie – Paris 6
in 2009 under the supervision of Jean-Jacquest Risler. His dissertation
was titled “On the geometry and the topology of amoebas and coamoebas
of complex Algebraic varieties.” While at MSRI, Mounir worked on
these objects with Petter Johansson and Mikael Passre, and they gave a
complete description of them in the case of complex linear spaces. It is
his first preprint in MSRI titled “(Co) amoebas of complex linear
spaces”. He also worked with Frank Sottile at Texas A&M University.
They defined a new object (the analogous of the logarithmic limit set) for
any algebraic variety which they call Phase limit set, and they proved
some analogous combinatorial properties of this object similar to that of
the logarithmic limit set. It is his second preprint titled “Complex and
non-Archimedean Coameobas”. After his stay at MSRI, Mounir went to
Paris 6 for one semester, and now he is a Vistiting Assitant Professor at
Texas A&M University in College Station.
Alan received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2009 under
the supervision of Mircea Mustata. His dissertation was titled
“The Geometry and Combinatorics of Ehrhart h*-Vectors”. While at
MSRI, Alan spent time learning about tropical geometry and exploring
connections with Hodge theory. Alan and a fellow MSRI postdoc, Eric
Katz, introduced a new invariant associated to tropical varieties called
the "tropical motivic nearby fiber", which appears in a recently submitted
paper. Alan also spent time working with Benjamin Nill on several topics
in Ehrhart theory, and Gregg Musiker and Christian Haase on chip-firing
in higher dimensions. After his stay at MSRI, Alan began a postdoc at
the University of British Columbia.
Lauren received her Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
2005 under the supervision of Richard Peter Stanley. Her dissertation
was titled “Combinatorial Aspects of Total Positivity.” While at MSRI,
Lauren continued thinking about total positivity and its connections to
tropical geometry. She also investigated the connections between
Teichmuller theory and tropical geometry via cluster algebras associated
to surfaces. But probably the most beneficial aspects of her postdoc at
MSRI, according to Lauren, was establishing new contacts. She had
several very interesting discussions with Mark Gross about mirror
symmetry and possible connections to cluster algebras. She also met
several time with her mentor Grisha Mikhalkin who explained to her the
Thurston compactification of Teichmuller space. In addition, she met
Rick Kenyon and had several very interesting discussions with him,
which may lead to a joint project. After her stay at MSRI, Lauren took
on a position of assistant professor at the University of California,
Berkeley.
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