Michael Stillman

Mike Stillman is a professor of Mathematics at Cornell University. His research involves computational algebraic geometry. He is one of the principal authors of the open-source computer algebra system Macaulay2. His research involves both commutative algebra, and computational algebraic geometry: finding algorithms, implementing these algorithms, and applying computational algebraic geometry to other areas.

Part of his current research involves applications to string theory, and theoretical physics in general: string theorists have many problems, whose computation is currently out of reach. Stillman is working to solve these problems (e.g. compute effectively and nef cones and semigroups for Calabi-Yau varieties related to toric varieties, and the more efficient computation of cohomology of line bundles on a toric variety).

His commutative algebra and algebraic geometry research involve syzygies, regularity, and Hilbert schemes.

He recently visited MPI MiS for the “Summer school on Randomness and Learning in Non-Linear Algebra”, where he gave a talk on quadratic Gorenstein algebras and the Koszul property (joint work with Mastroeni and Schenck).