Group members

Tom Bridgeland

Interests: Mirror Symmetry, Derived Categories, Moduli Spaces, Hall Algebras

Contact: Personal website, t.bridgeland@shef.ac.uk, room J18b

Biography: Tom learnt his trade in Edinburgh before moving to Sheffield in 2004. He spent the years 2011 and 2012 as a Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Andrea Brini

Interests: Topological Strings, Mirror Symmetry, Gromov-Witten theory, Integrable Systems

Contact: Personal website, a.brini@sheffield.ac.uk, room J21

Biography: Andrea got his PhD at SISSA in 2009 and spent time as a postdoc in Geneva and Imperial College in 2009-12. He obtained a CNRS permanent research position in 2013, and held visiting research positions at Imperial College (2016-18) and MSRI Berkeley (2018), followed by an academic post in Birmingham in 2018/19. He joined the University of Sheffield in 2019.

Marco Fazzi

Interests: Superconformal Field Theories, Dualities, Geometrical aspects of AdS/CFT, D-brane dynamics, K-stability, Matrix Factorisations

Contact: m.fazzi@sheffield.ac.uk, room J10

Biography: Marco got his PhD at ULB Brussels in 2016. He was a postdoc at the Technion (2016-2019), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Milano-Bicocca (2019-2022), and finally a postdoc at Uppsala University (2022-2023), holding visiting positions at UC Santa Barbara, Weizmann Institute, SISSA Trieste, and Nordita. He joined the University of Sheffield in 2024. 

Paul Johnson

Interests: Gromov-Witten theory, Orbifolds, Hilbert schemes, Partitions

Contact: Personal website, paul.johnson@shef.ac.uk, room J06b

Biography: Paul initially completed his undergraduate at the University of Chicago. Following this he obtained his master’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and PhD at the University of Michigan under Yongbin Ruan. He then held various postdoctoral positions at Princeton, Imperial College London and Columbia University. He was associate professor at Colorado State University for one year before moving to the University of Sheffield.

Albrecht Klemm

Interests: Topological String theory, Mirror symmetry,  Gauge theory, Arithmetic of Calabi-Yau motives with applications to Feynman integrals

Biography: Albrecht got his PhD at the University of Heidelberg in 1990, and held professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Bonn. He joined the University of Sheffield in March 2025 as the Leverhulme International Professor of Mathematical Physics.

Cheuk Yu Mak

Interests: Symplectic topology, Fukaya category, mirror symmetry, low dimensional topology, Hamiltonian dynamics 

Contact: c.mak@sheffield.ac.uk, room K10

Biography: Cheuk Yu Mak obtained his PhD in Mathematics at the University of Minnesota in 2016. Subsequently, he worked at the Institute for Advance Study (2016-2017), University of Cambridge (2017-2020), Edinburgh (2020-2022) and Southampton (2022-2024) before joining Sheffield in 2024.

Cristina Manolache

Interests: Moduli spaces, Gromov-Witten theory

Contact: c.manolache@sheffield.ac.uk, room J23

Biography: Cristina got her PhD at SISSA, Trieste and following this, she held postdoctoral positions at Humboldt Berlin and at Imperial College London. She came to the University of Sheffield as a senior lecturer in 2019.

Evgeny Shinder

Interests: Derived Categories of Coherent Sheaves, Grothendieck Group of Varieties

Contact: Personal website, e.shinder@sheffield.ac.uk, room J24

Biography: Evgeny defended his PhD at Northwestern University under Andrei Suslin. Afterwards he was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, University of Bonn, the Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics and the University of Mainz. In 2013-14 he was a Whittaker postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, before coming to Sheffield as a lecturer in 2014.

Alexey Elagin

Interests: derived categories of coherent sheaves, semi-orthogonal decompositions, representations of finite-dimensional algebras, group actions on categories 

Contact: Personal website,  a.elagin@sheffield.ac.uk, room H11

Biography: Alexey got his PhD in Moscow, and worked there as a research fellow before moving to Edinburgh in 2023 and then to Sheffield in 2024 as a postdoc. 

Grant Elliot

Interests: string theory, superconformal field theories, vertex operator algebras

Contact: g.elliot@sheffield.ac.uk, room K29

Biography: Grant earned his PhD at UT Austin under the supervision of Jacques Distler in 2026 before moving to Sheffield as a postdoc.

Jan Lange

Interests: Algebraic cycles, degenerations of algebraic varieties, rationality questions

Contact: Personal website, j.lange@sheffield.ac.uk, room K16

Biography: Jan got his PhD in 2026 at the Leibniz University Hannover under the supervision of Stefan Schreieder. He joined the University of Sheffield for a postdoc in 2026.

Max Meynig

Interests: Resurgence, Exact WKB Analysis, Topological string theory, Quantum periods, Calabi-Yau motives in Feynman integrals 

Contact: m.meynig@sheffield.ac.uk, room K29

Biography: Max got his PhD at the University of Connecticut in 2026 under the supervision of Gerald Dunne before joining the University of Sheffield as a research associate in 2026. 

Ali Eghrari

Supervisor: Marco Fazzi

Interests: Strings, Gauge Theory, Bow Varieties, Computational Topology, Computational Algebraic Geometry, Adinkras and Supersymmetric Holography

Contact: aeghrari1@sheffield.ac.uk, room J14a

Biography: Before joining Sheffield for his PhD, Ali studied Electrical Engineering and later Theoretical Physics at King's College London.

Brais Gerpe Vilas

Supervisor: Evgeny Shinder

Interests: Derived categories, the Brauer group, birational algebraic geometry,  moduli spaces, K3 surfaces

Contact: bgerpevilas1@sheffield.ac.uk 

Biography: Brais completed dual BSc degrees in Mathematics and Physics at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, followed by an MSc in Mathematics at Universität Bonn, before joining Sheffield. 

Diego Hernandez Kent

Supervisors: Andrea Brini and Albrecht Klemm

Interests: Mirror Symmetry, Topological Strings, Gromov-Witten theory, Gauge theory, Geometric invariants from QFTs.

Contact: dhernandezkent1@sheffield.ac.uk

Biography: Before joining Sheffield, Diego completed his BSc in Mathematics at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and his MSc in Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.

Kuba Krawczyk

Supervisor: Marco Fazzi

Interests: Strings, AdS/CFT and Black Holes, Noncommutative Geometry, Geometrical and Categorical Structures in Physics 

Contact: kkrawczyk1@sheffield.ac.uk, room J14b 

Biography: Before joining Sheffield, Kuba completed his BSc at the University of Warsaw and MSc in Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam. 

Pranit Munjal

Supervisor: Marco Fazzi

Interests: Quantum Field Theory, Conformal Field Theory, Vertex Operator Algebras, String Theory, Generalized Global Symmetries 

Contact: pmunjal2@sheffield.ac.uk, Room J14a 

Biography: Pranit completed his Integrated Master's degree in Theoretical Physics at the University of Sheffield, including a year of study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, before continuing at Sheffield for his PhD.  

Robert Rogers

Supervisor: Cristina Manolache

Interests: Moduli spaces, Enumerative Geometry, GIT 

Contact: rrogers4@sheffield.ac.uk, Room J14b 

Biography: Robert completed his Integrated Master's degree at the University of Warwick before moving to Sheffield for his PhD. 

Haoran Shi

Supervisor: Cheuk Yu Mak

Interests: Symplectic topology, symplectic cohomology, Fukaya category. 

Contact: hshi37@sheffield.ac.uk, Room J25-7 

Biography: Haoran completed his Master’s degree at Beijing Normal University. Then, he moved to the University of Sheffield for his PhD. 

Keith Worden

Supervisor: Cristina Manolache

Interests: Enumerative Geometry, Nonlinear Dynamics, Theoretical Physics 

Contact: K.Worden@sheffield.ac.uk

Biography: Started off as a theoretical physist aeons ago with a degree from York University. Moved into field of structural dyamics and currently spending most of his time doing various flavours of machine learning.