Associate Professor of mathematics
and Rosevear Faculty Leadership Fellow
Department of Mathematics, Cornell University
k.mann @ cornell [dot] edu
Office: 563 Malott hall
Research:
Topology, geometry, geometric group theory, dynamics...
I study actions of infinite groups on manifolds, motivated by questions of rigidity and examples from geometric settings.
Recent projects include hyperbolic groups and Gromov boundaries, Anosov flows on 3-manifolds, surface and mapping class groups acting on the circle, and a general structure theory for
groups of homeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms...
In simple English: I work with abstract spaces and dynamical systems, studying their shape and the structure of
their symmetries or how flexible or rigid they are. Sometimes the spaces are themselves collections of mathematical objects
(for example, you could think about the space of all 1-variable functions, or the space of all solutions to a problem or...)
This gives us new tools to understand these objects.
For an invitation to, and motivation around, my recent work on Anosov flows on 3-manifolds, see this article in Quanta magazine
Some projects I am involved in:
• Communicating Mathematics workshop Summer 2022.
• Cornell Topology Festival
• Cornell math DRP
• The Directed Reading Program network, an NSF-funded project to support
undergraduate-graduate independent study/reading programs in mathematics.
• Topology Students Workshop