With a new academic year starting, the Faculty of Mathematics has awarded one of its coveted research chairs to Matthew Satriano, an associate professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics. The annual award recognizes excellence in research and outstanding contributions to a scholarly field.
“I’m extremely grateful to my department and to the faculty for this wonderful opportunity,” Satriano said. “It’s a great honour and will provide me with the time and resources to dig deeper into my research program.”
Satriano’s primary research areas are in algebraic geometry, arithmetic geometry and toric geometry. Some of his recent publications focus on stack theory as well as arithmetic dynamics. With respect to his research proposal for the Faculty of Mathematics Research Chair, he is interested in giving a geometric interpretation for representations showing up in number theory.
“Manjul Bhargava, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014, has revolutionized the way number theory is done,” Satriano said. “He’s given a general recipe for how to count number-theoretic objects by first parameterizing them with geometric objects.”
“One of the things Wei Ho and I showed,” he continued, “is that a precursor to Bhargava’s geometric objects can be constructed in a uniform way using a generalization of Galois closures. The next step is to use our construction to give geometric parameterization results in a uniform way too.”
Satriano tirelessly serves the Department of Pure Mathematics and the Faculty of Math more broadly. He says he is especially interested in work he does as a coordinator for a mathematics exchange program with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which sees undergraduate students come to Waterloo to study and work on research projects in various aspects of math. Satriano also sits on pure math’s graduate committee, which he says is highly rewarding.
“I feel that the grad committee is a place where I can have a big impact. It’s a committee that’s helping to decide what the department is going to look like for many years down the road.”
Satriano’s orientation to service carries over into his teaching and supervision. Long a favourite with undergrad students, Satriano is known as an approachable and amiable professor who challenges students to see the beauty and creativity in mathematics.
“One thing that can’t be overstated is how amazing the Waterloo undergrads are,” Satriano said. “There’ve been so many bright and promising student I’ve worked with. Recently, there was Spencer Whitehead, who won the Alumni Gold Medal from the Faculty of Mathematics. As an undergrad he published several papers and did stellar work on a research project with me about quotient spaces in algebraic geometry. He is an example of just how exceptional our undergrads are.”
“Working with graduate students is also a lot of fun,” he continued. “I’m currently supervising four PhD students. It can be tough when one first begins grad school since they need to familiarize themselves with a large body of literature in a short period of time. It’s incredibly rewarding experience to help them develop into experts in their field.”
Asked what’s next, Satriano said one of his goals for the research chair is to sponsor a postdoctoral researcher in short order. And he says he’s looking forward to getting to work on the project he’s proposed. “I’m excited to see where the research takes me over the coming year.”