Former members

Julia Schneider

Interests: Groups of birational transformations, birational geometry over non-closed fields 

Contact: Personal website, j.schneider@sheffield.ac.uk, room H11

Biography: Before coming to Sheffield for a short postdoc in 2024, Julia had already collected some postdocs: she was at the University of Zurich, at EPFL in Lausanne, and at the University of Toulouse, after getting her PhD in Basel under the supervision of Jérémy Blanc in 2020. She then moved to the University of Bourgogne as a CNRS junior researcher in February 2025.

Fabrizio Del Monte

Interests: Integrable Systems, String Theory, Stability Conditions and BPS states, Conformal Field Theory 

Contact: Personal website, f.delmonte@sheffield.ac.uk, room K16

Biography: Fabrizio got his PhD from SISSA, Italy, in 2020 under the supervision of Giulio Bonelli and Alessandro Tanzini. Following this, he was a CRM-ISM postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques in Montréal, before moving to the University of Sheffield in 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow. 

Patrick Kennedy-Hunt

Interests: Algebraic geometry; logarithmic geometry; moduli spaces and enumerative invariants; combinatorial and tropical geometry.

Contact: Personal website, pfk21@dpmms.cam.ac.uk, room K12

Biography: Patrick was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge supervised by Dhruv Ranganathan, and came to Sheffield as an LMS early career fellow mentored by Tom Bridgeland. He then returned to Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow at Peterhouse College.

Joshua Jackson

Interests: Non-reductive GIT, moduli spaces 

Contact: joshua.jackson@sheffield.ac.uk, room K24

Biography: Joshua got his PhD in Oxford under the supervision of Frances Kirwan, where he was later a postdoc. He was then a Heilbronn Fellow at Imperial College London, before moving to Sheffield in 2022. He then took up a position as  College Associate Lecturer and Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge 

Nadir Fasola

Interests: enumerative properties of moduli spaces, quiver matrix models, connections to physics and combinatorics. 

Biography: Nadir obtained his master's degree at the University of Insubria, Italy. He then got his PhD from SISSA, Italy, in 2020 under the supervision of Giulio Bonelli and Alessandro Tanzini, after which he joined the University of Sheffield as a postdoctoral fellow. He then moved back to Sissa Trieste as a postdoc in 2024.

Ananyo Dan

Interests: Hodge theory, Noether-Lefschetz locus, Moduli spaces of semi-stable sheaves, Hilbert schemes, Singularity theory

Biography: Ananyo got his PhD from Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Germany. Following this, he had postdoctoral positions in Tata Insitute of Fundamental Research, India, Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics, Spain, and at the University of Sheffield, after which he obtained a tenure-track position in Madrid.

Nikita Nikolaev

Interests: Meromorphic Connections, Stokes Phenomenon, Exact WKB Analysis, Quantum Curves, Higgs Bundles

Biography: Nikita obtained his PhD at the University of Toronto in 2018 under the tutelage of Marco Gualtieri. He then held a postdoctoral research position at the University of Geneva under the mentorship of Anton Alekseev. In March 2021, he joined the University of Sheffield as a postdoctoral researcher under the mentorship of Tom Bridgeland. He then moved to the University of Birmingham as a Marie Curie Fellow.

Kento Osuga

Interests: Topological Recursion, Airy Structures, Supersymmetry, Gromov-Witten Invariants

Biography: Kento completed his BSc at Shizuoka University in 2014 under Shogo Aoyama, and then moved to the University of Alberta for his PhD under Vincent Bouchard and Don N. Page. 

Afterwards, he was appointed as a temporary postdoctoral fellow at the same institution before moving to Sheffield in October 2021. He went on to obtain a postdoc at the University of Warsaw, en route to a JSPS Fellowship at the University of Tokyo.

Anna Barbieri

Interests: Frobenius manifolds, Stability Conditions

Biography: Anna completed her undergraduate at University of Udine, Italy. She then undertook her PhD studies at the University of Pavia, Italy before moving to the University of Sheffield as a postdoc. She then moved on to another postdoc position at the University of Milan in May 2020.

Sven Meinhardt

Interests: Donaldson-Thomas Theory, Derived Algebraic Geometry, Mirror Symmetry, Mathematical Physics

Contact: Personal website, sven@meinhardt.ai

Biography: Sven initially completed his diploma at the Humboldt University Berlin. He then moved to the University of Bonn for his PhD under Daniel Huybrechts as well as staying on as a postdoc. 

Following this he spent time at the Imperial College London and at the University of Oxford, and then completed two further postdocs at the Universities of Wuppertal and Sheffield. 

He is now a freelance consultant in Data Science and Deep Learning Engineering.

Barbara Bolognese

Interests: Moduli Spaces of Sheaves on Surfaces, Tropical Geometry, Derived Categories

Biography: Barbara completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Rome, then she obtained her PhD at Northeastern University. 

She held postdoctoral positions at the Fields Institute, Toronto, and Sheffield until November 2019, after which she moved to Roma Tre University as a postdoc.

Dylan Allegretti

Interests: Cluster Varieties and Cluster Algebras, Quantum Teichmuller Theory, Mathematical Aspects of Quantum Field Theory and String Theory

Biography: After three years of postdoc at the University of Sheffield, Dylan moved to MSRI, Berkeley, for a postdoc, in August 2019.

Joe Karmazyn

Interests: Noncommutative Algebras, Derived Equivalences, Moduli Constructions to Study and Construct Examples in Algebraic Geometry

Biography: Joe studied his PhD in Edinburgh under the supervision of Michael Wemyss and Iain Gordon. He won a EPSRC post-doctoral fellowship, that he held at the University of Bath first and later at the University of Sheffield until June 2018.

Reinder Meinsma

Supervisor: Evgeny Shinder

Interests: Derived categories of coherent sheaves, moduli spaces, K3 surfaces

Biography: Reinder obtained his bachelor's and master's degree at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He then moved to Sheffield to start as a PhD student, graduating in 2024. He took up a postdoc position in Brussels next.

Eve Pound

Supervisor: Paul Johnson

Interests: Hilbert schemes, Combinatorics of partitions, Representation theory of symmetric groups, Geometric group theory

Biography: Eve completed her undergraduate degree and Part III at the University of Cambridge. She then moved to Sheffield as a PhD student, and moved to Penn State as a postdoc after graduating in 2024.

Alberto Cobos Rabano

Supervisor: Cristina Manolache

Interests: Enumerative Invariants, Toric Geometry

Biography: Alberto studied for his bachelor's degree in Salamanca, Spain. After that, he obtained his master's degree at KU Leuven, Belgium. He then moved to Sheffield to study for his PhD. He moved back to Leuven as a postdoc in 2024.

Yannik Schüler

Supervisor: Andrea Brini

Interests: Gromov-Witten theory, Mirror Symmetry, Airy Structures, Topological Recursion

Contact: Personal website

Biography: Yannik obtained his bachelor's and master's degree at the University of Bonn, Germany. He then moved to Sheffield to do his PhD. After a short stint in Cambridge, he moved to ETH as a postdoc in 2024.

Yirui Xiong

Supervisor: Tom Bridgeland

Interests: Stability conditions and Calabi-Yau algebras

Contact: yiruimee@icloud.com

Biography: Yirui completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, and then came to Sheffield as PhD student.

Karoline Van Gemst

Supervisor: Andrea Brini

Interests: Frobenius Manifolds, Gromov-Witten theory, Quantum Cohomology, Landau-Ginzburg Theory, Mathematical physics

Contact: kvangemst1@sheffield.ac.uk, room J14b

Biography: Karoline obtained an MPhys Mathematical Physics from University of Edinburgh, and then an MSc in pure mathematics at Imperial College London. She got her PhD in Sheffield in 2023. She then obtained a postdoc at the University of Milan-Bicocca.

George Moulantzikos

Supervisor: Evgeny Shinder

Interests: Derived Categories, Grothendieck Rings of Varieties, L-Equivalence, Hodge Theory, Torelli Problems

Contact: gmoulantzikos1@sheffield.ac.uk, room J25

Biography: George obtained his undergraduate and master’s degree at the University of Crete, and obtained his PhD in Sheffield in November 2022.

David Kern

Supervisors: Etienne Mann (Angers), Cristina Manolache (Sheffield)

Interests: Derived algebraic geometry, Enumerative and homological mirror symmetry, Operads

Biography: David obtained his master’s degree in physics at the University of Strasbourg, then in mathematics in Paris, after which he pursued a PhD in Angers and Sheffield. He graduated from the University of Angers in September 2021, followed by a postdoc position at Montpellier.

Giovanni Marchetti

Supervisor: Tom Bridgeland

Interests: Enhancements and Invariants of Triangulated Categories, Categorification

Biography: Giovanni obtained his undergraduate and master’s degree at La Sapienza, Rome before moving to Sheffield for his PhD.

Edward Pearce

Supervisor: Paul Johnson

Interests: Algebraic Geometry, Commutative Algebra, Representation Theory, Combinatorics of Partitions

Contact: Personal website, empearce1@shef.ac.uk, room J14b

Biography: Edward completed an integrated master's degree at the University of Warwick and has since been studying for a PhD at the University of Sheffield.

Nebojsa Pavic

Interests: Derived Categories, K-Theory, Singularity Categories

Biography: Nebojsa completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Afterwards he moved to Sheffield to obtain a PhD under the supervision of Evgeny Shinder in May 2020. He then moved to the University of Hannover as a postdoc.

Caitlin McAuley

Interests: Stability Conditions, Mirror Symmetry

Biography: Caitlin obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Glasgow and completed her master’s in Bonn before coming to Sheffield as a PhD student under the supervision of Tom Bridgeland.

Rory Potter

Interests: Derived Categories, Non-Commutative Geometry, Quotient Stacks, Derived McKay Correspondence and Stability Conditions

Biography: Rory studied his MMath degree at the University of Warwick before doing his PhD at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Tom Bridgeland.

Eoin Murphy

Interests: Hall Algebras, Quiver Representations

Biography: Eoin came to the University of Sheffield for his PhD, under the supervision of Tom Bridgeland. He defended his thesis on December 2018.